Cable news talking heads suffered a collective conniption on Wednesday at Attorney General William Barr’s continued use of the word “spying” in reference to an FBI informant in the Trump campaign. Yet many of those melting down over this so-called “loaded language” had previously (repeatedly) used that same term in reference to the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign official Carter Page.

On the day of Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, CNN law enforcement analyst Josh Campbell did his best to explain precisely why everyone was suddenly treating “spy” like a curse word. “It’s only used to refer to what foreign governments do to us, for example when you’re trying to stop foreign spies, foreign threats,” he pontificated as the panel nodded approvingly.

Over at MSNBC, host Brian Williams was evidently appalled by Barr’s chosen terminology:

Obviously, what we just saw there was an attempt by [Senator] Sheldon Whitehouse to nail down this Attorney General on the charge of shilling for the President who appointed him. Spying, being a word preferred by the Trump right-hand side of the media to describe authorized surveillance techniques by the government the United States.

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