President Trump surfaced an Immigration and Customs Enforcement-rejected and White House-abandoned immigration initiative last week in order to distract from the release of a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, The New York Times reported.

While people close to Trump told the Times that the President has been more confident and in good spirits since Attorney General William Barr released his assessment of the report, Trump is purposely “escalating his language” to appeal to his base, in the Times’ words. People close to him said he raised the policy proposal — to send detained immigrants to sanctuary cities as a way to target his political rivals — in part to shift focus off of the report’s release.

When the report is released, the White House plans to have White House counsel Emmet Flood spend the day reading the report and to brief the President on it. The main questions that aides want to be able to answer for Trump: why Mueller couldn’t conclude whether Trump obstructed justice and what he meant when he said “much” of Trump’s conduct was public.