Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday hit back at assertions that a mob attack on the Capitol showed the United States to be a “banana republic.”
A number of foreign critics, as well as former US president George W. Bush, made the analogy after rioters stirred up by President Donald Trump rampaged through a session of Congress that certified his loss to Joe Biden.
“The slander reveals a faulty understanding of banana republics and of democracy in America,” said the top US diplomat, a staunch Trump loyalist, as two other members of the cabinet resigned over Wednesday’s violence.
“In a banana republic, mob violence determines the exercise of power. In the United States, law enforcement officials quash mob violence so that the people’s representatives can exercise power in accordance with the rule of law and constitutional government,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter.
Bush in a statement Wednesday made veiled criticism of the “reckless behavior” of members of his Republican Party in fueling the “insurrection.”
“This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic,” Bush wrote.
