Why are you booing him? He's right!

> to forsake one cause, party, or nation for another often because of a change in ideology

I don't think he left because of a change in ideology.

he was not heading to russia. he's just trapped there

Of course. He accidentally tripped, fell, and landed in Sheremetyevo International Airport with a nice cushy job in the Russian government, with Russian citizenship and a nice estate worth 10s of millions of dollars, and clearly just accidentally mispoke when he swore allegiance to Russia. All the nsa secrets he took with him were irrelevant to that story, typical of any asylum seeker arriving anywhere.

lol, oops, I forgot how triggered some people get for calling it defecting.

What do you think would have happened to him if he had stayed here?

The last whistleblower the US government got to was imprisoned for seven years and identifies as a woman now.

Snowden would be crazy to come anywhere near the US.

The parent wasn't arguing he should come back but saying that "defected" is not the correct word. The correct phrase is probably "took asylum."

I'm not sure why gender identity is relevant. I agree that the punishments he would have gotten for whistleblowing justify him not staying in the US.

He didn't disagree with the need to leave for Snowden, he said it wasn't a defection.

Snowden hasn't defected the US anymore than the Dalai Lama has been deflected Tibet.

I guess "went into exile" would be the proper naming.