Trump set a trap. I'll bite.

There's a decent chance that Trump's threats against Greenland are a distraction, but he overlooked a critical consequence.

There’s a decent chance that Trump is using the Greenland issue as a distraction. I understand that talking about it is a trap, but I’m going to take the bait. Here’s why:

First of all, it’s worth taking into consideration that by threatening to annex a sovereign country, Trump is completely upending the world order responsible for the longest period of peace and prosperity in history. In effect, Trump is undermining more than 200 years of our reputation in fewer than 100 days… all for a policy that has the support of - wait for it - 26% of Americans.

And for what? Because, as Vance suggests, we suddenly “need it for our national security”? Let me posit this question: do you think it’s helping our national security that our allies are now announcing that the era of cooperation with the US is over in light of our saber rattling? Do you think we come out in a stronger position if we start attempting to annex sovereign countries? Let’s not miss the forest for the trees here; not only would that not help our national security, it would make us a pariah in the international community and virtually isolate us on the world stage. This isn’t how you fix something, it is expressly how you break it.

But the direct implications of these moves notwithstanding, Trump is likely betting that the downside of this distraction is still preferable to talking about the other issues plaguing this country: a recession is on the horizon, costs are surging, the stock market is in correction territory, Trump’s approval just flipped to net negative, Republicans just lost two seats in Pennsylvania’s state legislature (one that flipped an R+15 district blue and another that officially gave Democrats a 1-seat majority in the state House), and Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be UN Ambassador was pulled for fear that Republicans would lose her House seat in a district that Trump himself carried by 21 points. All very much worth focusing on.

So why fall for Trump’s trap?

It’s because during the campaign, Trump promised Americans that he would lower costs on day one. He promised that he understood your pain. He promised that he heard you that housing was too high, rent was too high, groceries were too high. Meaning he was intimately aware of the problems that Americans were contending with. And yet since he’s taken office, not only has he exacerbated those problems by launching a trade war, but worse than that? Look where his focus is: on Greenland.

That is why I’m taking the bait on Greenland. Because Trump won the presidency by exploiting Americans’ economic pain, and not only has he exacerbated that pain (which would already be disqualifying unto itself), but rather than bother to fix it, he is instead fixated on Greenland. If I was a Trump voter who believed that he understood my pain, only to watch him cosplay as Genghis Khan on the world stage, I would begin to realize that I’d been sold a bill of goods. I would see that he does not care about me. He is not trying to make me life better. He is screwing around, creating problems, trying to build up his legacy and feed his ego, and we are footing the bill for it.

So while the issue of Greenland may be a trap, Trump didn’t take into account the cost of setting it. It shows his voters that while they are hurting on the one thing that he promised he’d fix, he’s focused instead on something so inane, so dangerous, so unnecessary - annexing Greenland! - that it only sends one message to his supporters: he just does not care about their problems. And the rest of the Republican Party isn’t going to lift a finger to do anything about it, because their allegiance isn’t to their constituents, it’s to Donald Trump.