An intersection of the political and the technical is not that unusual: PE Trump's meeting with industry leaders back in December is one such example. Likewise, the ongoing Manning & Snowden sagas tread ground in both territories. These are subjects that don't necessarily qualify as "off topic", but aren't as solidly technical as, say, announcement of a new Rust release or a disclosed software vulnerability.
Like everything else, not everything will be perfect and mistakes will happen. Fine line articles are of course a grey area for the "off topic" rule but at least give us some semblance of maintaining the rules. For example, the few weeks before the election were total chaos, we should strive to not reach that point of political take over again.