Same crime, different fate

Why has Brazil's democracy survived an attempted coup, while America's is in great peril?

- Gwynne Dyer

If US President Donald Trump were a religious man, he might have said "There but for the grace of God go I" when he heard that former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison. Bolsonaro's crime was to have plotted a coup to take back the presidency he lost in the 2022 election.

Trump is acutely aware of the similarities between Bolsonaro's case and his own bumbling, halfhearted attempt to incite a coup on 6 January, 2021. Both men were voted out after a single term, both immediately declared that the election had been "stolen" by the opposition and both then chickened out of a coup.

Trump feels the parallels so keenly that he condemned the Bolsonaro trial, claiming t was a "witch-hunt". Although the US has a positive trade balance with Brazil, Trump imposed 50% tariffs on imports from it as an explicit punishment for putting his friend and ally on trial.