Story highlights Scott Jennings: Trump appears to have brought on Papadopoulos with little vetting to show he had a foreign policy team

He says stupidity brought Papadopoulos, now a problem, into Trump's orbit. He was a hanger-on of a type familiar to people experienced with campaigns

Scott Jennings is a CNN contributor and former special assistant to President George W. Bush. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Much is being made of Donald Trump, back when he was a Republican presidential candidate under pressure to show that he had a foreign policy team, referring to George Papadopoulos as "an oil and energy consultant, excellent guy," according to a recording produced by The Washington Post.

Scott Jennings

What has not been reported much from that recording -- which was made during an interview Trump had with the Post's editorial board -- was what Trump said just before he uttered the guy's name:

"Do you have that list, so I'll be a little more accurate with it?" Trump asks an aide, responding to a question about his foreign policy advisers.

We don't know how much Trump actually knew about who was on the list, but he begins reading notes from a piece of paper. One suspects, from his delivery, that if Jason Voorhees had been listed, Trump would have read his name and said: "Hockey player. Excellent guy."

That recording was taken on March 21, 2016. On March 31, Trump's campaign released a picture of the candidate meeting with his foreign policy team, and Papadopoulos is shown at the table. At this event, according to The New York Times, Papadopoulos "pitched the idea of a personal meeting between Mr. Trump and (Russian President) Mr. Putin," but then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, "as the campaign's top national security official, spoke vehemently against the idea, asking others not to discuss it again. Mr. Trump did not challenge him."

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