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Of Course, Trump Tried to Sic DOJ on SNL — That’s What Dictators Do!

Former president wanted to muzzle pranksters because jokes made him sad

Manny Otiko
4 min readJun 22, 2021
Former President Donald Trump (White House)

Nigeria’s current president is Maj-Gen. (rtd.) Mohammadu Buhari. During the 1980s, he ruled as a military dictator after a successful coup. Buhari bought military tact to running the government. He tried to establish discipline by punishing tardy civil servants with physical training. And he also locked up journalists for writing articles he didn’t like and jailed people without charge.

Even though Buhari was recently elected president in a democratic election, he still has autocratic tendencies. (Nigeria has a bad habit of recycling old leaders, no matter had terrible their administration was.) On Twitter, he recently threatened separatists with a military crackdown. Twitter responded by banning him. One of the rules of the platform is that you cannot issue violent threats against other people.

Buhari hit back by banning Twitter in Nigeria. In his mind, no one should be able to tell him what to do…

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Manny Otiko
Manny Otiko

Written by Manny Otiko

Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him at @mannyotiko.bsky.social

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