WASHINGTON—Controversy surrounding whether the commander in chief was properly honoring recently deceased Senator John McCain increased Tuesday after reports indicated that the White House flag was now being moved up or down on its staff minute to minute to indicate President Donald Trump’s current mood. “It’s no secret that the president and the late senator had a contentious relationship, and President Trump wants the flag’s position to be perfectly calibrated to his current sentiments about Mr. McCain so the nation knows exactly how he feels,” said White House deputy chief of staff of operations Daniel Walsh as facilities employees raced to raise the flag precisely 26 inches above half-staff to reflect a surge of anger Trump had just experienced toward McCain receiving so much public adulation. “Obviously, we lowered the flag to half-staff on Monday after the president plunged into an extended bad mood due to the backlash over raising it to full staff on Sunday, but then we had to lower the flag another fifth of the way down the flagpole early this morning when Mr. Trump woke up and felt even worse about it. Then, at 9:41 a.m., we had to raise it 59 percent up the staff because Mr. Trump was feeling somewhat contrite about not honoring Mr. McCain, but not as bad as before, only to raise it to 86 percent of the way up at 9:49 a.m. because the president decided he didn’t care that much about the senator anymore. For the last couple hours, we’ve been raising and lowering the flag from anywhere to just one quarter of the way up the flagpole to 96 percent of the way up, depending on how mad, sad, guilty, jealous, apologetic, fearful, or annoyed Mr. Trump is feeling about the senator at any given moment. We also had to rush to take it down entirely from 10:47-10:54 a.m. when Mr. Trump just got bored of the whole thing. We’ve definitely been scrambling—wait, I’m just receiving word now that we’ve got to lower it another 2.6 inches because the president is excited about pissing off liberals but he’s also sleepy and hungry.” Walsh added that although it was tiring for his staff to keep raising and lowering the flag, they would keep doing it, because the position of the White House flag is of the absolute utmost national importance.

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