The point being made by contrasting my free speech on Twitter with Lu’s conspiratorial meddling behind the scenes is that the public opinion of a private citizen is meaningless in the grander scheme of things and cannot be categorized the same way as a foreign official’s thuggish threat that was conveyed behind closed doors and ultimately resulted in a regime change in another country.
Or, as Andrew Korybko has previously written, when you're taking flak, everyone knows that you are over the target.