Re: "Succumbing to 'gotcha' headlines."
Typically fake news, throwing insults at people when they call you out for being fake news.
What Hillary did was use a personal email account to send and receive secret and top secret information, had the access control security headers stripped and stored the email on an unsecured server, that is what was against the rules.
Using personal email accounts for unclassified communications is fine as long as you hand over a copy for record keeping.
"to send emails to aides, cabinet members, and personal assistants." "no classified materials were sent from the account"
As long as the emails are handed over at the end of Trump's first term no rules have been broken.
"it's not like the Trump campaign made a similar situation the focal point of its White House run in 2016 or anything."
They didn't, Hillary was using her private [unsecured] email server for secret and top secret communications and having classification headers stripped. And she didn't hand the emails over when she left the job, she had them deleted which does violate federal record keeping laws.