The flag code is irrelevant, it's customary for the President to order the flag be lowered longer after the passing of a significant government figure.
The violation of custom was the president’s failure to issue a statement ordering the rest of the country’s flags lowered, as he did when Barbara Bush and Billy Graham died, to take a few recent examples. “If he had done that, there would not be all of this confusion,” Hartvigsen said, noting that Trump could have skipped a flowery statement of mourning and issued only a simple flag order. “He created a problem for himself that he didn’t have to create.”
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It’s also true that flags are often lowered for longer periods when a person of greater national significance dies. When Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy died in 2009, for example, President Barack Obama lowered White House flags to half-staff for five days.
And then this:
To be fair, however, we do have one piece of evidence that Trump views flag lowering as an important symbol. In 2015, some conservatives were outraged that Obama had not immediately ordered flags to half-staff after a gunman killed five service members in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He eventually did make the order, but in the meantime then-candidate Trump issued a press release scolding the president and ordering flags on his own properties lowered. At the time, the move was widely perceived to be an attempt to shore up support with veterans: Trump had recently offended them by insulting John McCain.
Suck it.
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