Earlier today, the Justice Department indicted Donald Trump on 37 counts related to his retention of classified documents after leaving office in January 2021. A good many Republicans have reacted by claiming that the indictment is "the stuff of a banana republic" (as Trump's former acting attorney general Mat Whitaker put it) or otherwise reminiscent of authoritarian states. Nothing can be further from the truth. There are several different ways of understanding the "banana republic" critique. But none of them actually apply to this case, though some might be appropriate to the much more dubious previous indictment of Trump on New York state charges.
