I think deliberately playing on racial issues in America, and deliberately leading people to think MAGA supporters attacked a black man, and doing so for personal gain, (and I'm not sure what gain beyond putting his name in the news, personally I never heard of the guy), is reprehensible. It's the act of someone who simply does not care if his hoax raises the temperature of the issues dividing us. Extraordinarily selfish.
If I said I believe we have a president who plays on our racial divide, well, I think I'd be right, but that comes in the territory of "but what about?" genre of responses, and I believe those kind of comparisons might be part of a broader conversation over the motivations of our responses, but just judging this singular incident, it's a lousy thing to do, and I imagine, if our assumptions of what actually happened are right, namely a staged event, then it will likely follow this guy for the rest of his life. There's no excuse, period.