It's a loaded term because it's at best unclear if Snowden truly had the mens rea (legal experts go back and forth on this). Specifically, whether or not his intent was to aid the US' enemies.

To me, mens rea is the entirety of the act of treason. Otherwise, many citizens' individual actions hurt US interests vs our "enemies".

That aside, that I still don't see how that implies it is loaded.

(by the way, I never objected to people believing he should serve jail time as the GP suggested; my comment concerned the certainty that he was a traitor)

Maybe I misunderstood, but my point is that "treason" is a loaded term because we're not really sure if what he did was treasonous or not. As mentioned, treason needs an "intent to aid enemies" which we're not sure if Snowden had -- experts go back and forth on this.

So people just say "treason" to be inflammatory. He definitely broke the law and should probably be in jail, but treason is another ballgame altogether.

Snowden is not a US citizen, so "traitor" doesn't even apply.

Since when? AFAIK they only invalidated his passport.

And since they only invalidated his passport, we can conclude that Snowden doesn't have any other citizenships (it is against international law to make a person stateless, and the US surely would've retracted his citizenship if they could).