If the “baggage” made them targets, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, and others would have been targeted by the media, probed by agencies, and destroyed. Instead, they are lauded as model politicians and unifying figures.
So what makes Trump a target?
He won the presidential election in 2016, despite a sustained campaign of the establishment on various fronts. He won by standing against the establishment. He didn’t crave approval from the establishment. He relished mocking the “saints” of the establishment for their hypocrisy and incompetence.
It was the first time in modern history that a candidate not endorsed by the establishment won the highest office in the country. It was the first time in modern history that a grassroots movement won the White House. Trump had made the Establishment appear irrelevant.
It’s not so much his baggage, it is his track record of picking people( see MCCarthy.)
You could say the same about Zelenskyy. Totally not the establishment’s idea of who should’ve won, therefore they obsessed about his media career, his camp sketches, and who funded him.
The fact that the Ukrainian population rejected the Putin stooge and the far right stooge in favor of a Russian speaking Jewish non politician got buried.