Vice President Mike Pence said he didn’t want to create a distraction at the Colts game, but that’s exactly what he did

Vice President Mike Pence made an appearance at this week’s Colts game, squeezing it in between a visit to Las Vegas and a trip to California for a fundraiser at 6:30 p.m. PT Sunday evening. The home stop for the state’s former governor was supposedly for personal reasons, so he could be there for the ceremony retiring Peyton Manning’s number and inducting him into the team’s Ring of Honor.

He was so adamant he wanted to keep the focus of his visit on the Manning festivities that the vice president’s office said days before the game he didn’t want to be a distraction.

But he didn’t get to see the ceremony honoring Manning. He left just after the national anthem. And when he did, he sent a tweet saying that he would “not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem” after players from the Colts locked arms during the anthem and 23 players from the visiting 49ers took a knee. In the process, he ensured he would overshadow everything else that happened on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Pence’s decision to leave snagged the spotlight. He became a distraction, and it looks like he planned it ahead of time.

Whatever their political affiliation, whatever the occasion, it’s a big deal when the vice president makes a stop somewhere other than the usual spots inside the halls of power in D.C.

It takes days of preparation for a VIP visit like this. Local governments and the U.S. secret service spend lots of time and money so an event like this can host the vice president, and even more if it’s the president.

Game day security at NFL stadiums is already pretty tight. Fans go through a strict screening process that got tighter in 2013 when the league implemented a clear bag policy. Security was so tight at Lucas Oil Stadium on Sunday because of Pence’s visit that it caused additional delays.

We can’t say just how much more it costs to secure an event like this for the VP’s visit, but we do have some insight into the cost for Pence’s trip to Indianapolis.

That’s Air Force 2, the VP’s plane. Unlike some other members of the cabinet, he doesn’t need to fly on a private jet. It cost taxpayers around $250,000 to fly him to Indianapolis, ostensibly just to be there for the game.

That’s a lot of money and inconvenience for fans and taxpayers just to accommodate a political stunt.

The vice president popping in on an NFL game would be a distraction under normal circumstances. But there is no normal anymore. A visit from Trump’s vice president to an NFL game two weeks after the president encouraged his supporters to boycott the league over protests during the national anthem is an event.

The mere act of going to the game, even if his intentions were truly just about being there for the Manning ceremony, was a deliberate political act in the wake of Trump’s statements.

As far as we know, Pence hasn’t been to a Colts game for three years. We know he was at one back in 2014 because he tweeted out a picture from that same game on Sunday morning to announce he was at the game this week.

Pence’s timing raised eyebrows when he released a statement less than 20 minutes after tweeting he was leaving the game.

Reporters traveling with the VP got an early indication that Pence might be leaving the game.

The idea that Pence’s departure was coordinated was supported by the president later in the afternoon, when he tweeted he had asked Pence to leave if any players kneeled in protest during the national anthem. Trump said again Monday morning that the trip had been planned.

Had players not kneeled, the administration could have claimed some meaningless victory.

But players from the 49ers have been kneeling from the beginning, last season with Colin Kaepernick and continuing this season without him. Niners safety Eric Reid wrote an editorial in the New York Times the week after Trump’s comments explaining that they were protesting the very real issue of police brutality. He also reminded anyone who would listen that they decided to take knee after a conversation with former Green Beret and NFL player Nate Boyer, who suggested the gesture as a way to still be respectful of the men and women who serve this country in the armed forces.

Reid called Pence out for his move after the game, too.

Pence’s camp had to know going into this game that players would kneel. With players kneeling it would give the administration the chance to act, to push the issue back to forefront of the political conversation in a week when the president has been criticized for a variety of things, from his response to the hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico, to a gun control debate in the wake of another mass shooting, to the ongoing flame war with his own party.

Culture war politics are always about the distraction, a shiny thing to stare at to avoid real, complex issues that require something beyond political orthodoxy to resolve. And this administration thrives on distraction. It’s obsessed.

There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing over whether players should stand for the national anthem. That’s the great thing about free speech: It protects both sides.

However, the players kneeling are at least telling us why they’re doing it; they want to bring attention to the issue of inequality, and to repeated incidents of police brutality directed systematically against people of color.

Pence didn’t mention police brutality and oppression during the course of his stunt on Sunday. What he did do was create a diversion from a very real problem that’s driving the player protests, not to mention the long list of bad news currently plaguing the Trump administration.

Despite what he said, Pence wasn’t at the game for Manning’s big day. He was there to frighten owners about players exercising their First Amendment rights, and in the process distract from a necessary conversation about justice and equality. He was there to make his appearance the story, whatever the cost.