Brazil’s awkward reminder for Americans: “presidential accountability” means more there than at home
RIO DE JANEIRO
Traveling outside the U.S. rarely allows a departure from talking about American politics, but since last January saw President Trump return to a level of power that he has already abused far more than he did in his disastrous first term, those conversations have been harder to escape.
And in this city and in this country, where Web Summit Rio took me for the fourth year in a row, those discussions were more awkward than in the rest of the world.
(I once again traveled to Brazil on my Irish passport because of the visa-free travel that allows, but my accent allowed no escape from this banter.)
Because while Brazil and the United States each saw a president attempt to overturn an electoral defeat by inciting followers to stage a violent insurrection at a national capital, the two countries have not responded to these self-coup attempts in the same way.
Less than three years after Jair Bolsonaro instigated the Jan. 8, 2023 riots in Brasilia, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court found him guilty of five criminal charges, sentenced him to more than 27 years’ imprisonment and banned him from running for public office until 2060.
That is what accountability looks like.
The U.S., meanwhile, has failed dismally to do the same with Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol.
First, too many Republicans in the Senate refused to convict him in his second impeachment trial, on the cop-out theory that courts would do the job. But then prosecutions started late–one doomed early by unforgivably sloppy misconduct–after which court after court lunged for reasons to give the disgraced former president second chances that few other defendants in America would get.
This pathetic exercise in institutional failure continued with the Supreme Court’s profoundly un-American decision in July 2024 that presidents are mostly above the law, and then voters finished botching the job by voting to send Trump back to the White House.
I couldn’t explain that to Brazilians any more than I could to citizens of any other nation. I can, however, imagine why their country would have responded so strongly to Bolsonaro’s assault on their democratic order: Brazil’s living memory includes more than two decades of a military dictatorship that many of Bolsonaro’s rioters wanted to see restored.
Too many American voters, meanwhile, could not be bothered to remember Trump’s attempted murder of democracy less than four years after it happened. We are not going to live that down anytime soon.
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Rob Pegoraro
Serge Escalé
