When news broke last week that Chinese tech executive Meng Wanzhou had been arrested in Canada at the request of the U.S., on the same day Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping sat down for dinner at the G20 summit, talk immediately turned to the effect her detainment would have on trade talks with China. Analysts called the “timing and manner” of the arrest “shocking,” and Beijing was not exactly pleased, given that Meng is a senior executive at a company expected to play a key role in Xi’s plan to dominate 5G technology, beating out foreign competitors. Considering Trump’s transactional mind-set and general proclivity for mafia-style tactics, it would be wild but not too far-fetched to see him use Meng as a bargaining chip to tip the scales of a trade deal.

Over the weekend, however, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer assured CBS’s Face the Nation that negotiations will not be impacted by Meng’s arrest and likely extradition to the U.S. on allegations of violating sanctions against Iran, saying, “this is a criminal justice matter. It is totally separate from anything I work on or anything that trade policy people in the administration work on.”

And then Donald Trump opened his mouth. Speaking to Reuters, the man who is somehow president of the United States, despite a debilitating condition that causes persistent word vomit, said he would absolutely intervene in the Meng situation if it meant Beijing would give him what he wants on trade. “If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made—which is a very important thing—what’s good for national security—I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said Tuesday. In other words, he would happily use the power of the presidency to free Meng, if doing so will allow him to tweet that he negotiated “THE BIGGEST TRADE DEAL EVER.”

This, of course, is a completely bonkers thing for any U.S. official—let alone the president—to say. Not only does it directly contradict what members of his own administration have promised, but it also had the (predictable!) effect of infuriating China, whose state media declared in a Wednesday editorial that “The U.S. and Canada are undoubtedly abusing their justice systems . . . Washington should not attempt to use its domestic laws as strategic support for its commercial and diplomatic competition.” The suggestion that Meng could essentially be used as a hostage to extract a ransom has also presumably rattled both U.S. and Canadian business executives, who were already nervous about traveling to Beijing. Earlier this week, China detained former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, and though officials say there’s no evidence his detention is related to Meng’s, the U.S. state department has nonetheless said it is “concerned.”

Further complicating matters, on Tuesday The New York Times reported that Chinese intelligence was behind a cyberattack on the Marriott hotel chain that compromised the personal data of more than 500 million guests, and that was part of a larger operation to scrape data from millions more U.S. citizens! (A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed China had no knowledge of the hack, saying in a statement that “China firmly opposes all forms of cyberattack and cracks down on it in accordance with the law.”) But have no fear! Mr. “incredible” deal is here to make sure the situation doesn’t spiral out of control.