I don't care about hearing unprincipled tripe from a shameful Trump apologist. What I *am* interested in in this article is the revelation that under 24 months after he returned from a KGB-sponsored trip to Moscow, Donald Trump tried to become Vice President of the United States. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1310185050642829315

PS/ We always knew the beginning of Trump's political career came in 1986, when—upon returning from a failed, KGB-sponsored trip to Moscow where it became clear to him that he was not yet useful enough to the oligarchs there to make any deals—he started taking out political ads.

PS2/ What I don't think was broadly known was that those political ads were not merely a signal to Moscow that he could be politically relevant, which is what Moscow really wanted in its useful idiots, but that he took material steps to become Vice President of the United States.

PS3/ If media had any feel for the Trump-Russia story whatsoever, it would realize that the ramblings of James Baker—trying to justify ending his days by aiding and abetting unprincipled madness—are actually just sad and stupid. But Trump trying to become VP in 1988? A big deal.

PS4/ Each new data-point suggesting that Trump's failed, KGB-sponsored trip to Moscow in 1986 spawned his political ambitions underlines that his failure to do big deals in Moscow has long caused him to seek domestic routes to position himself in a more advantageous way abroad.

PS5/ Never forget that in the middle of secret business negotiations with the Kremlin—that happened while he was running for president in 2015—Trump told his fixer and Kremlin intermediary Michael Cohen that his entire presidential run was merely an "infomercial for the brand."

PS6/ Per The Guardian, after Trump returned from Moscow the KGB "stepped up its spying campaign against him...targeting him to gain information about the 'upper echelons of the U.S. government.'"

And what was Trump doing? *Trying to become Vice President of the United States*.

PS7/ We've reached the part of the thread where hopefully it's become clear why I don't care—and don't think media should—about stupid unprincipled garbage being spewed by Baker. The real question here is why Trump tried to become VP at the very moment that's what the KGB wanted.

PS8/ To review:

Trump is hosted by the KGB in 1986
He tries to do deals, but is told he doesn't have the pull
The KGB starts trying to get info from Trump about "the upper levels of U.S. government"
Trump thereafter tries to get on the 1988 Republican ticket

Got it?

PS9/ So here we've got an article focused on a useless, unprincipled, unpatriotic zealot who *no one* should care about right now, when what the story *actually* reveals is that Donald Trump has likely been trying to gain power in the Republican Party to aid Russia for 30+ years.

PS10/ Curatorial journalism—a subgenre of metajournalism—is what reveals the story *worth pursuing* underneath a story that media is following just to pump up an irrelevant book about an unprincipled man who at the end of his life is throwing over his country for *nothing*. /end