Brazil Stopped Its Trump. It’s Pathetic that We Couldn’t Stop Ours.

And what happened in Brazil is not unusual. As Bonica writes, “This isn’t an anomaly; it’s standard democratic practice. Leaders have faced justice for offenses ranging from bribery and corruption to election interference and treason—resulting in real consequences from prison terms to lifetime bans.”

You can see the contrast with the United States. Senate Republicans blocked a conviction of Trump in February 2021 that would have barred him from future election office. The Justice Department under Merrick Garland at first focused on prosecuting lower-level people involved with January 6, as opposed to the former president. Federal charges were first filed against Trump for his election interference in August 2023, almost three years after his conduct. By that time, he was running for president again, making it easier for him to claim that the charges were partisan and creating the potential of the legal process ending because he won the election. (And that’s what happened.)

But just as big a problem as the slow formal legal process were the informal mistakes that Americans made. Democratic Party leadership including Joe Biden, along with the media and other nonpartisan elite institutions, were eager to move on from January 6 and desperate to show that they were above partisanship. They leaned too far toward the view that in a democracy, one side should not punish its political enemies, while ignoring the perspective that democracy cannot stand if politicians violate democratic principles without sanctions. Biden and Garland didn’t seem to understand that prosecuting Trump was not Democrats prosecuting Republicans but rather pro-democracy politicians prosecuting an anti-democratic politician to protect democracy.