1) Foreign politicians hiring American political consultants is neither new or a scandal. There’s also nothing wrong with Americans hiring foreign political consultants. What’s at issue here is a foreign intelligence service committing espionage in our country to try and help an American politician.

2) Yes, American intelligence agencies have conducted operations abroad to influence the democratic process in other countries. I think we all agreed that this was bad, though. And regardless, just because our government has done something bad doesn’t mean we shouldn’t defend against that thing. The US has bombed civilians abroad. It shouldn’t do that. But that doesn’t mean we just let people drop bombs on American civilians.