In a Thanksgiving Day post to his 43.2 million followers, Donald Trump let his hand show, responding to a liberal Washington Post column that was critical of the president.

“MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. But that message was posted as a reply to a column by liberal Greg Sargent slamming the president for “[rage-tweeting] about a prominent African American again.”

The Post national correspondent Philip Bump posited a theory about why Trump's post replied to Sargent. “A while back, Twitter made a UI change so if you hit the ‘new tweet’ button while viewing a tweet, your new tweet was a reply to the tweet you were viewing.”

“Thanks for checking out Post reporting, Mr. President,” Bump added.

The Post report Trump tweeted called the president’s feud with LaVar Ball, the father of one of three UCLA basketball players caught shoplifting in China, part of “a gratuitously ugly pattern.”

"Trump once again attacked a prominent African American today. But, hey, the guy had it coming," Sargent wrote sarcastically. "Also, it would be deeply unfair to Trump to suggest that this constitutes a pattern of race-baiting on his part, and deeply unfair to his supporters to suggest that such a pattern might be designed to resonate with them, if that pattern existed at all, which it doesn’t."

Trump later reposted the tweet on its own.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. President,” Sargent replied to the president.

UPDATE -- 8:43 A.M:

An earlier version of this report indicated the president deleted the tweet. This article has been updated to reflect that it has not been deleted.