One of the reliable news cycle winners for Democratic women over the past decade has been to dine out on grievance when men interrupt them. Kamala Harris famously did this “excuse me, I’m talking” routine even in a hearing where she interrupted Jeff Sessions nearly 20 times. Elizabeth Warren made a big deal of her right to speak even when breaking Senate rules — “and yet, she persisted.”

So where are all the women-in-politics think pieces about Alex Padilla barging into the middle of a press briefing by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and shouting at her while she was still speaking? If you watch video of the start of his intrusion, it’s clear that he was interrupting Noem. Padilla, for his part, now claims that he was already upset that she had preempted a talk he wanted to give to the press and says he was just overcome by the “rhetoric” from Noem and had to “call out” what she was saying — and he couldn’t stand to keep quiet long enough for her to finish, so he started shouting over her. He’s bigger and louder than she is, and he ended up creating a physical scuffle.

Now, if this were two men, we’d just chalk all of that up to politicians being like this. And that’s how we should respond. But do the people who routinely make a gender issue out of this when it’s a Republican man and a Democratic woman have even a little self-awareness? Or do they just understand that it’s always a partisan racket?