Brazilian Supreme Court voted to convict Jair Bolsonaro

When President Donald Trump mustered a military parade in Washington in June, my mind flashed back to a video I once watched in a Rio de Janeiro museum.

- Trudy Rubin, Tribune News Service

It featured a 1950s Brazilian dictator waving from an open automobile in his military procession. Trump mercifully stayed on the reviewing stand. And Brazil's current democracy has remained free of military coups for 40 years. In fact, on Sept. II, the Brazilian Supreme Court voted to convict former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump pal, of attempting a coup to overturn his defeat in the 2022 election.

In other words, Brazil’s institutions succeeded where US institutions have failed in holding to account a leader who tried to undermine the most basic principles of democracy. They stood strong even though Trump imposed 508 tariffs on all Brazilian goods last July to pressure the country's courts to drop charges against Bolsonaro, who, he claimed, was the victim of a “witch hunt.” (Brazil's courts ignored Trump.)

Of course, despite being Latin America’s largest and richest country, Brazil has a different political system from ours. Yet, the similarities between Bolsonaro and Trump as politicians are amazing, as are the parallels between Jan. 6, 2021, and Brazil's Jan. 8, 2023 — the day Bolsonaro supporters stormed their Congress to reject election results. So why has Brazil been able to defend its democracy while our Jan. 6 rioters were pardoned, and Trump still insists he won the 2090 election? What lessons does Brazil have to offer those worried about democracy's future here?