Trump keeps talking about Puerto Rico like it isn’t the U.S. It doesn’t seem like a mistake.

It’s tempting to view President Trump’s many grievance-filled tweets as angry, indiscriminate lashing out at political opponents. It’s unhinged! It’s unpresidential! They’re “rage tweets!” Etc.

Often, though, if you look closely, you’ll see some design. Behind the invective and often-incorrect claims will be a controversial suggestion with built-in plausible deniability. He will be saying something without actually saying it. He’ll send the desired message to his supporters — a dog whistle — but when the media asks him and his aides, they’ll say he wasn’t really saying that. In the process, he’ll foment culture war and controversy.

Such appears to be the case with his tweets about Puerto Rico on Tuesday morning, along with an aide’s explanation of them.

In two Trump tweets about Puerto Rico and a cable news appearance from a top White House spokesman later that morning, both Trump and the spokesman talked about Puerto Rico as if it weren’t part of the United States. And they did so in a way that couldn’t help but make you think this might be deliberate.

In his tweets, Trump said the hurricane-ravaged island’s politicians “only take from USA” and said Puerto Rico will “continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments.”

Whatever you think of the reasons for Trump’s attitude toward Puerto Rico, there’s no question he’s trying to diminish it. The question is whether he’s doing that because that’s what he believes and he’s truly upset about its use of federal funds, or whether he sees some kind of political advantage in it (or both!). Even just the day before, he oddly referred to it as a “place” — in quotation marks — in a tweet. That’s four references in less than 24 hours that suggested Puerto Rico was less-than. At some point, we can’t dismiss all of these things as coincidences.

And a spokesman going on cable news and calling Puerto Rico a “country” would only seem to fan the flames of the fire Trump has lit on this issue.