Not surprisingly, congressional Republicans have responded to Donald Trump’s felony conviction with hysterics, and as my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem noted, the former president’s GOP allies on Capitol Hill have been especially fond of one deeply flawed claim.
The trial’s outcome is proof that the U.S. is actually not a modern state: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise declared the verdict proof that the U.S. has become a “banana republic.” Never mind that treating former political leaders accountable under the law is, in reality, one of the clearest indicators of robust rule of law in a democracy.
As regular readers know, this rhetorical push is not altogether new. Indeed, in the wake of Trump’s pre-conviction indictments, much of the GOP settled on this as an unfortunate talking point: Only “third world” countries allow former leaders to face criminal charges. Such indictments are common in “banana republics,” Trump’s partisan allies have repeatedly argued, but stable and mature democracies wouldn’t tolerate prosecutors pursuing a former head of state, just because there’s evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
But this has never made any sense. Revisiting our earlier coverage, stable democracies that take the rule of law seriously hold criminal suspects accountable — even if they’re politically powerful, and even if they served in government at the highest levels. In fact, on the international stage, this has happened in recent years with some regularity.
Italy prosecuted a former prime minister. France prosecuted a former president and a former prime minister. South Africa prosecuted a former president. South Korea prosecuted a former president. Brazil has prosecuted more than one former president. Israel has prosecuted more than one former prime minister.
Germany prosecuted a former president. Portugal prosecuted a former prime minister. Croatia prosecuted a former prime minister. Argentina prosecuted a former president. Austria prosecuted a former chancellor.
These cases did not lead to violence or threats of violence. The criminal cases were tried without incident. These countries’ political systems persevered just fine, without talk of institutional breakdowns.
As far as Republicans are concerned, should Americans consider each of these countries — advanced, modern democracies, including nuclear powers and NATO members — “banana republics”? Should we see these countries as engaging in law enforcement tactics on par with what “third world” countries do? The answer should be obvious.
Last fall, as the criminal investigations into Trump intensified, former Vice President Mike Pence tried to argue that the scrutiny itself sent “the wrong message to the wider world that looks to America as the gold standard.”
But much of the wider world has shrugged its shoulders in response to the charges against the Republican. The Daily Beast reported after Trump’s initial indictment, “In the eyes of the world’s media, the indictment of Donald Trump was not the big freaking deal many Americans might expect. Save for a handful of English-language websites and newspapers, the story ranked beneath most regional and local concerns and in more than a handful it was found alongside or just above the coverage of other celebrity news items like the denial of parole to Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius and the Gwyneth Paltrow ski accident trial.” Around the same time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken participated in a discussion with his NATO counterparts, and he told reporters soon after that none of them brought up the criminal allegations surrounding the former president. I’m not suggesting that it’s a good thing when a nation’s former chief executive is accused of crimes, but I am suggesting that it’s a relatively common thing in advanced democracies, Republican hysteria notwithstanding. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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