In an interview with FRANCE 24, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald reacted to the protests that are spreading in the US and beyond after the death of unarmed black man George Floyd while in police custody. Greenwald said that although US President Donald Trump was hoping to play the law and order card to win re-election in November, he believed this could backfire. He also called Trump's push to send in the military to quell the protests a "grave threat" to democratic values, adding that it could "give a signal to other leaders around the world", such as Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.
Speaking from Rio de Janeiro, Greenwald blasted Obama-era national security adviser Susan Rice for suggesting the current US protest movement was encouraged and funded by Russia, saying it showed the Democrats preferred such conspiracy theories to asking themselves about their own failures and losing the 2016 election to a "clown" like Trump. He argued that while Russia may have intervened in that election, it was in a "trivial" way and similar to what the US has done in Russia and other places around the globe.
>> Can Trump 'deploy the military' to quell protests over George Floyd's death?
The award-winning journalist warned that Trump's threat to deploy the military to control the protests was a threat to democracy in the US and beyond. He claimed that it would encourage "other leaders" with an authoritarian bent to resort to such means. In Brazil, where Greenwald lives, President Jair Bolsonaro has been openly threatening to bring back military rule. Greenwald believes democracy is now "in danger" in Brazil, as Bolsonaro and his family feel under attack from the justice system and media and are touting military rule as a better system than democracy.
>> Watch our Reporters show: Populism and the pandemic, the great divide in Brazil
