Mexico’s president slams Trump arrest, but most world leaders silent

Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador on Wednesday slammed the history-making charges against former President Trump, but as U.S. politics is consumed by the indictment, most world leaders have been largely silent on the issue. 

Trump was booked Tuesday on 34 felony counts of fabricating business records related to a hush money payment made shortly before the 2016 election to an adult film actress who alleged an affair. 

The former president has blasted the charges, which make him the first-ever current or former U.S. president to be indicted, and called the case a witch hunt meant to thwart his third White House run.

López Obrador spoke Wednesday, doubling down on comments he made last month before charges against Trump were announced and saying the case is political.

“Supposedly legal issues should not be used for electoral, political purposes,” López Obrador said. “That’s why I don’t agree with what they are doing to ex-President Trump.”

“It should be the people who decide,” he added.

López Obrador has been joined by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in publicly speaking out about the charges. 

“Keep on fighting, Mr. President! We are with you,” tweeted Orban, a Trump ally whose authoritarian rule has been celebrated by many in the U.S. far right. 

But few other world leaders have weighed in with any opinion whatsoever. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Trump’s indictment did not come up during NATO meetings this week and that colleagues there were focused on the war in Ukraine and the ascension of Finland as the alliance’s latest member.

“I don’t do politics. I can tell you, though, that the question you raised about the proceedings in New York actually did not come up in my conversations with NATO colleagues,” he said. “I think people are very focused on what we’re actually doing.”

The Biden administration has gone out of its way not to talk about the Trump indictment, with Biden and his press secretary avoiding questions about the former president’s legal troubles. 

Close Trump allies abroad, like former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have also stayed quiet on the issue.

Even the Russian government has decided against publicly broaching the topic. A representative from the Russian government said this week that the case is not of international concern.

“I don’t think this is a topic for us to comment on,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week. “These are internal U.S. processes that we do not consider necessary to comment on.”