Thread by @jaketapper

The charges from the president’s former National Security Adviser are stunning: “Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win... wsj.com/articles/john-…

2/“... He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome...

“Trump’s con­ver­sa­tions with Xi re­flected not only the in­co­her­ence in his trade pol­icy but also...

3/“... the con­flu­ence in Trump’s mind of his own po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests and U.S. na­tional in­ter­ests. Trump com­min­gled the per­sonal and the na­tional not just on trade ques­tions but across the whole field of na­tional se­cu­rity...

4/“... I am hard-pressed to iden­tify any sig­nif­i­cant Trump de­ci­sion dur­ing my White House ten­ure that wasn’t dri­ven by re-elec­tion cal­cu­la­tions....”

Then there’s this from Bolton about the Chinese concentration camps for Uighurs, a larger Muslim ethnic group:

5/ “Bei­jing’s re­pres­sion of its Uighur cit­i­zens also pro­ceeded apace. Trump asked me at the 2018 White House Christ­mas din­ner why we were con­sid­er­ing sanc­tion­ing China over its treat­ment of the Uighurs,...

6/ “At the open­ing din­ner of the Os­aka G-20 meet­ing in June 2019, with only in­ter-preters present, Xi had ex­plained to Trump why he was ba­si­cally build­ing con­cen­tra-tion camps in Xin­jiang...

7/“... Ac­cord­ing to our in­ter­preter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with build­ing the camps, which Trump thought was ex­actly the right thing to do.” The NSC’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pot­tinger, said “Trump said some­thing very sim­i­lar” during 2017 trip to China.

8/ To recap, in this one excerpt, the president’s former National Security Adviser says Trump 1) asked Chineae President Xi for help in winning the 2020 election and 2) encouraged President Xi to build concentration camps for Uighurs.