Sanders, Raskin Want Congress to Get Serious About Averting a Coup in Brazil |

"Reuters reported recently that US diplomats have assured Lula that Washington will quickly recognize the winner of the election, “seeking to avert any attempt to contest a legitimate result or sow chaos after the vote.” But Sanders and a number of other Democrats in the Senate and House want Congress to back that up with a strong message in advance of the election. That’s the point of the resolution, says Sanders, who argues, “It would be unacceptable for the United States to recognize a government that came to power undemocratically, and it would send a horrific message to the entire world.” 

Unfortunately, Republicans are erecting roadblocks to the measure. “We’ve not been able to get one Republican member of the Senate to make it clear that there must be free and fair elections in Brazil,” said Sanders, who told The Washington Post last week that he suspected “my Republican colleagues do not want to antagonize Trump.”

Sanders added, “That tells us a little bit about the state of democracy in this country and the Republican Party.”

It does.

Republicans used to make a big deal about political differences ending at the nation’s borders. But this is no longer the Republican Party of the past, which for better or worse embraced bipartisan diplomacy. It is the Republican Party of Donald Trump. And Trump champions Bolsonaro as “a wonderful man” who, the former US president says, called him more than any other world leader when both men were in office."

read more>> 

Sanders, Raskin Want Congress to Get Serious About Averting a Coup in Brazil | The Nation