Wag The Dog—sound familiar?

Wag the dog is, in politics, the act of creating a diversion from a damaging issue. It stems from the generic use of the term to mean a small and seemingly unimportant entity (the tail) controls a bigger, more important one (the dog). The phrase originates in the saying "a dog is smarter than its tail, but if the tail were smarter, then it would wag the dog." —Wilkipedia