So what was different last night? Hillary Clinton’s campaign said it was different. In Politico, we learn that Trump’s Hussein praise “finally caught up with him” because “Hillary Clinton’s campaign tore into his latest comments.” NBC News notes that Trump said this at a rally with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), which could lead to a clash and some awkward questions; otherwise, the only new thing is that “Hillary Clinton’s campaign seized the opportunity to once more paint Trump has unfit for office.”

And so on. The story is not that Trump argued America would be better off if a dictator had been allowed to stay in power in Iraq; the story is that things are different now, because the presumptive Democratic nominee is whacking him for saying it.

The timing of the Clinton campaign’s attack was telling, for two reasons. First, and most obviously, whaling on Trump gave the campaign a chance to pivot on a day when the director of the FBI gave an unusual and damaging press conference saying that its candidate, who most voters view as untrustworthy, had behaved recklessly with classified email. The press went along with this by noting the irony, and remarking that Trump stepped on what could have been a good news cycle.