MIAMI — In blasting the unprecedented FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home this week, Florida Republican leaders revived a familiar theme: The targeting of a former president and political foe is something that could only happen in a “Third-World country.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rising star in the national Republican Party, said the scene was akin to one in a “banana republic,” a pejorative term that’s been historically used for some politically unstable countries in the Americas. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott said the raid was “3rd World country stuff.” U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio made a comparison to Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega jailing political opponents. U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar tweeted she was concerned about the U.S. going “down the path of countries like Cuba & Nicaragua.”
And Trump himself used the term in his statement confirming federal officials had been at his home, declaring the U.S. had already become “one of those Countries.”
