El Salvador President Nayib Bukele weighed in on former President Donald Trump’s indictment and subsequent arrest, suggesting that the reason his political opponents are carrying this out is to prevent him from being able to run for president in 2024.
Bukele took to Twitter on Tuesday, posting: "Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted. But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate."
"The United States ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone."
However, the silencing of political opponents is well-known around the world. Alexei Navalny of Russia was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in August 2020, taking months to recover. It was only after he had recovered in Berlin that he returned to his home country, only to be arrested and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.
The countries that silence political opponents are not free countries. Many of them superficially display a democratic process, but they could more accurately be characterized as controlled forms of authoritarianism. If there is any place in the world that is familiar with political corruption, it would be Central America, which is what makes Bukele’s comments so meaningful.
On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson echoed Bukele’s sentiments, adding that top Democrats understand the implications of Trump’s arraignment, going on to say that there are some who even admit it. He mentioned that Politico had run a piece that suggested some of Biden’s top advisers predicted that Trump would be the Republican nominee, but that because he has now been charged with crimes, he would lose the general election to Biden.
Carlson went on to mention that Trump is due back in court in New York City in December, just months before the first Republican primary.
Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, relating to each time the alleged $130,000 payment made to his former legal counsel Michael Cohen was referenced. The former president, though made payments that are entirely legal, failed to account for them on his “office records,” Carlon said.
Trump could face up to 136 years in prison if he is given the maximum penalty for all 34 charges.
