Trump's plan to make America safe for gangsters

What happened

AlterNet reports that The Bulwark columnist Jonathan V. Last accused President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio of helping Flávio Bolsonaro enter the United States and obtain a visa while Bolsonaro faced charges in Brazil. According to Last, Rubio arranged the assistance with Trump’s approval and acted clandestinely to bend or disregard US law. The article supplies no government response, documentary evidence, details of the charges, or independent confirmation of that account.

Last argues that the episode exposes selective enforcement behind the administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric: suspected criminality becomes disqualifying for politically useful targets but negotiable for an ally from the Bolsonaro family. He presents the alleged intervention as protection for a political associate facing accountability abroad.

The power sits in Washington

The decisive actors in this account are not migrants, prosecutors, or border agents. They are the president and secretary of state, officials with authority over diplomacy and substantial influence over visa policy. If Last’s description is accurate, Rubio enabled the entry and Trump sanctioned it.

That distinction matters because immigration enforcement is routinely sold as an impersonal defense of law. Here, the allegation is that senior officials treated the law as adjustable from above. The weak are processed by the system; the connected may receive a customized system.

Criminality as a political category

The administration’s rhetoric, as described by Last, links immigration with gangs and violent disorder. But the alleged assistance to Bolsonaro suggests that “criminal” is not functioning as a consistent legal category. It is functioning as a label applied to disfavored people and suspended for favored ones.

The article’s strongest political point is therefore not that one visa contradicts one slogan. It is that punitive language can conceal discretionary power. Officials invoke danger to justify harsh treatment of broad populations, then reserve exceptions for ideological allies. That is hierarchy dressed as enforcement.

What the framing fails to prove

AlterNet largely relays Last’s conclusions instead of establishing the underlying case. It calls the assistance asylum in one passage and discusses a visa in another, without explaining the legal mechanism or distinction. It also does not identify which laws Rubio allegedly bent or ignored, when Bolsonaro entered, what charges he faced, or whether US authorities considered those charges in granting the visa.

Those omissions do not vindicate the administration. They limit what can responsibly be claimed. Last alleges official favoritism and legal manipulation; the supplied reporting does not independently demonstrate them. A serious account of abuse of power requires more than a columnist’s certainty, especially when the central accusation concerns clandestine conduct.

The useful misdirection

The public argument is steered toward whether particular migrants are dangerous. That keeps attention on people with little institutional power while obscuring who decides which rules are enforced, against whom, and with what exceptions.

If the reported intervention occurred as Last describes, the relevant danger is not inconsistency in political messaging. It is executive discretion used to sort human beings by political usefulness. The consequence is a two-tier regime: maximum suspicion for designated outsiders, privileged access for allies of the governing faction.

Impunity recognizes its own

Last interprets Trump’s affinity for the Bolsonaro family as solidarity among political figures hostile to legal restraint. The article does not prove that motive, but the alleged conduct fits a broader and more concrete pattern: leaders who campaign on uncompromising order often preserve their widest mercy for the powerful and connected.

That is the systemic lesson. “Law and order” can mean aggressive control below and personalized exemption above. The slogan directs fear toward weaker actors; the machinery of government determines who actually receives protection.

Thanks to Alter Net

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