Much like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right former president of Brazil, has coped with his election loss by escaping to Florida, where he has been seen wearing a USA soccer jersey, walking around a Publix, and gnawing into some KFC. His Florida vacation reportedly took a turn Monday when Bolsonaro was admitted to a hospital in Orlando with “abdominal pain,” per Brazil newspaper O Globo.
But as of Sunday—when thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the presidential palace, Congress, and Supreme Court, ransacking the official buildings and demanding the former president be reinstalled à la January 6—Bolsonaro’s weird tour of the Sunshine State is raising more serious political questions for President Joe Biden.
“Nearly 2 years to the day the US Capitol was attacked by fascists, we see fascist movements abroad attempt to do the same in Brazil,” tweeted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “The US must cease granting refuge to Bolsonaro in Florida.” Likewise, Representative Joaquin Castro told CNN on Sunday that the US “should not be a refuge for this authoritarian, who has inspired domestic terrorism in Brazil. [Bolsonaro] should be sent back to Brazil.” On Monday, North America’s leading powers, the US, Canada, and Mexico, released a joint statement of their own denouncing Sunday’s violence: “We stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions. Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil.” But the White House has said little on how it plans to deal with Bolsonaro being on American soil.
Following his loss in October, Bolsonaro, an ardent Trump ally, who is facing criminal and electoral investigations from his time in office, has refused to concede to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and described his defeat as unfair. For months, far-right politics in Brazil has had strong echoes of the Trump team’s fraudulent “stolen election” campaign. The two are so linked, in fact, that Trump aides like Steve Bannon and Jason Miller advised members of Bolsonaro’s inner circle after the election, The Washington Post reported in November. Bolsonaro’s son, Brazilian congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, reportedly met with Trump in Florida, and Bannon told the Post that he spoke with the lawmaker by phone about “the power of the pro-Bolsonaro protests and potential challenges to the Brazilian election results.” (Unsurprisingly, Bannon spent his Monday show defending election fraud claims made by Bolsonaro’s backers.)
For years, Bolsonaro has sowed distrust around the vote-counting in Brazil, said he suspected hackers tried to steal the 2018 election from him, and spread false claims of fraud—all of which has been amplified by conservative media and far-right lawmakers in the country. Shortly before decamping to Orlando, Florida, last month, on the second-to-last day of his term, Bolsonaro did pay lip service to Brazil’s electoral norms, saying, “Either we live in a democracy or we don’t. Nobody wants an adventure.” Bolsonaro did not attend the January 1 inauguration of his leftist successor, known as Lula.
His supporters, however, saw things differently as they embarked on the most dramatic anti-democratic adventure since a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol building two years ago. In the months leading up to Sunday’s riot, Bolsonaro supporters set up protest camps outside the army’s headquarters in Brasília and at army bases across the county—a scene meant to persuade the military to reinstate Bolsonaro. When it became clear that troops would not intervene on their behalf, a mob of thousands used the Brasília camp as a forward operating base to launch attacks against government buildings and police. At least 70 people, including journalists and police officers, were injured during the riots, according to Brazil’s health secretary. As the dust began to settle Monday, more than 1,500 people had been detained by authorities tasked with dismantling the protest camps and rounding up rioters.
In a joint statement, Lula, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court condemned the attacks. “The three powers of the republic, the defenders of democracy and the constitution, reject the terrorist acts and criminal, coup-mongering vandalism that occurred,” wrote the three branches of Brazil’s government, per AFP. In a Sunday presser, Lula condemned his predecessor as a “genocidist” responsible for egging on the mob from afar. “Everybody knows there are various speeches of the ex-president encouraging this,” Lula said. (Bolsonaro disavowed the “pillaging and invasions of public buildings” in a Sunday tweet.)
Per Reuters, Bolsonaro may face a Supreme Court probe in Brazil as a result of these anti-democratic protests, which would likely only escalate Democrats’ demands to kick him out of the United States. Unsurprisingly, Trump and his allies have been pretty quiet about this attempted coup in Brazil.
Caleb Ecarma
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