Example with a context (Vox news story: The real costs of Donald Trump’s anti-Mexican slur controversy, explained):
Remember that Trump first flirted with running for president in 2000 — when he championed universal health care and a tax plan to the left of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders. But by the Obama era, there was a much bigger media economy in conservative, Tea Party–style resentment politics. So that's where Trump went. In 2012 he went so far as embracing birtherism to keep himself in the news, before ultimately deciding not to run after all.
What does that exactly mean? I don't think I understand it.