Trump is right that nothing like this has ever happened to a former president of the United States before—he always omits the former, a way of refusing to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election—but he’s wrong about what it means about the rule of law in the United States.

Trump was always more banana republican than Reagan or Lincoln Republican. Unlike his presidential predecessors, and despite his open disdain for Latin America and Latin Americans, he often styled himself as a sort of caudillo, trying to rule with an iron fist, circumvent the Constitution and legislature, enlist the military into his schemes, and use the power of the state to further his own electoral and personal fortunes. Just today, Susan Glasser and Peter Baker reported on how Trump pushed the military to conduct the sort of garish parades that, as one general put it, characterize foreign dictatorships, and complained that U.S. generals were not as loyal to him as Hitler’s top brass was to the führer. And at the end of his term, Trump retired to a palatial estate fringed by palm trees to plot his next moves.

In a real banana republic, he might have hoped to live with impunity—as long as he could outwit his political opponents’ schemes. Instead, Trump has found himself beset on many sides. He was impeached, a second time, after leaving office; a district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, continues to investigate his meddling in vote-counting after the election; the New York attorney general is investigating his company, and will soon depose him; and a House committee is probing his attempt to overturn the election and pressuring the Justice Department to bring charges against him related to that. (The DOJ has refused to comment on any related investigations.)