That's semantic sleight of hand. The US is clearly a representative democracy.

One related opinion on this topic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-consti...

Yes, republics utilize some democracy. Are republics == democracy? No. Otherwise one of the two words wouldn't exist.

It's a square and rectangle situation. Republic is a subset of democracy.

If you’re only allowed a single word to represent anything, I’m afraid much of your sentence is incomprehensible because o many of those words simply can’t exist.

Which is a form of democracy...