throw red meat
v.— «Will it finally penetrate even the thick heads of rabble-rousers who have been throwing red meat to lions and hyenas that rabble-rousers, themselves, can be turned into red meat?» —“All They Need is Red Meat” Salisbury Times (Maryland) Oct. 17, 1958. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Responding to someone during a dispute with What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? is a way to deflect the comment or derail the discussion entirely. While the phrase the price of tea in China is the most common version...