Trump says Putin is using Biden’s ‘illegal Banana Republic style treatment’ of him to condemn US

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Donald Trump newest complaint about his four criminal prosecutions: They are supposedly ammo for Vladimir Putin as he criticises the United States.

The ex-president took to Truth Social on Wednesday to protest what he derided as “illegal Banana Republic style treatment” of him by the US government — continuing his baseless insistence that Joe Biden is somehow involved in the separate cases against him.

“The whole World is watching as the USA is being torn apart by dreams of Election Interference!” the ex-president wailed.

Worth mentioning, a “banana republic” is a term to describe politically unstable nations with few constitutional protections, derived from South and Central American dictatorships typically propped up by the United States. The capitalised alternative, “Banana Republic”, is a famous clothing brand.

It wouldn’t be the first time Mr Trump has taken Mr Putin’s view of the situation as fact in defiance of his own (now-former) experts. Even as Mr Trump’s own former attorney general, Bill Barr, and respected legal experts like J Michael Luttig defend the seriousness and validity of the charges against him, the former president continues to insist that he did nothing wrong when he pressured Georgia officials to change the election results or stood by while his supporters hunted lawmakers during a violent attack on the Capitol.

Mr Trump famously did the same thing when he took Mr Putin’s word on the issue of Russia’s involvement in illegal and hostile efforts to divide the American public and put a finger on the scale during the 2016 US presidential election. Despite his own spy agencies verifying Moscow’s use of troll farms and propaganda accounts to spread fake news stories — plus a cyberattack targeting the Democratic Party — the president said at a press conference in 2018 that he believed the Russian leader’s denials, while standing right next to him.

Now, Mr Trump is using Mr Putin’s same convenient explanations to describe the effort to hold him accountable for a wide range of criminal charges across several jurisdictions. The former president remains accused of crimes in two cases related to his attempt to change the election results after losing his court challenges in 2020, as well as for allegedly taking defence materials and other classified papers from the White House without permission. There are also charges filed in New York relating to a 2016 hush money scheme involving a porn star.

The ex-president remains a top contender for the GOP nomination while under four criminal indictments.