Tariffs on Brazil are 10,000% starting tomorrow.
I’m just kidding. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
Donald Trump’s efforts to secure a legal reprieve for his Latin American analogue officially fell apart on Thursday when Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha voted to convict Jair Bolsonaro in connection with the exceedingly unfortunate events of January 8, 2023, when supporters of Brazil’s would-be military dictator stormed the country’s legislature and government buildings in a bid to overturn the 2022 election.
The allegations against Bolsonaro go beyond the coup attempt. He also stands accused of plotting to kill Lula. To be fair to Bolsonaro, he’s hardly the first person to ponder Lula’s untimely demise, but I’m afraid that’s not a court-worthy defense.
The inconvenient, but unavoidable truth for Bolsonaro is that he’s guilty. Of precisely what we don’t know, but as I reminded readers in these pages two months ago, Bolsonaro’s unapologetically sentimental about Brazil’s military dictatorship, which ran the country for more than two decades until democracy was restored in 1985. That dictatorship — the one Bolsonaro’s proudly nostalgic for — was famous for torture, and is blamed for murdering at least 200 alleged dissidents and disappearing a couple hundred more.
Maybe Bolsonaro’s not guilty of everything, but to suggest he’s completely innocent — to insist that a military man in Brazil who speaks fondly of the Fifth Brazilian Republic, who governed as a far-right authoritarian and who worked obsessively while president to sow distrust in the country’s electoral process as a pretext for disputing the result of a lost election — is a laughable proposition.
So, do yourself a favor: Don’t do that. Don’t suggest he’s innocent. Because he’s not. Really he isn’t. I’m not just saying that because I don’t care for the man. Even Bolsonaro admits that he — and try not to chuckle — explored “means within the Constitution” for staying in power after losing to Lula.
Technically, the trial didn’t end on Thursday, but Lucia’s vote was the third in favor of conviction which means the ayes have it, so to speak: There are five judges on the panel including, of course, Alexandre de Moraes, a bête noire of the American far-right and an archenemy of Elon Musk’s.
The Trump administration sanctioned Moraes in July under the Magnitsky Act for human rights abuses, an absurd allegation which Scott Bessent explained by reference to Bolsonaro’s trial. “Alexandre de Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt,” Bessent said over the summer, accusing De Moraes of presiding over “an oppressive campaign of… politicized prosecutions including against former President Jair Bolsonaro.”
Let’s just pause for moment to marvel at the Secretary of the US Treasury slapping OFAC sanctions on another country’s high court citing — checks notes — that court’s best efforts to defend democracy against a military coup.
Three weeks prior to Bessent’s brazen wielding of Treasury sanctions in the service of influencing the legal proceedings against Bolsonaro, Trump lashed out at Lula, threatening draconian tariffs unless all charges against Bolsonaro were dropped. Lula didn’t budge.
In conjunction with Bessent’s sanctions, Trump issued an executive order accusing Brazil of, among other things, “endanger[ing] the economy of the United States by tyrannically coercing US companies to censor political speech,” in the process “undermin[ing] the interest that the United States has in protecting its citizens and companies at home and abroad.”
Trump wasn’t done. In the same EO, he called the allegations against Bolsonaro “drummed up” and presumed to lecture Brazil on “the orderly development” of its institutions. “Brazil’s treatment of former President Bolsonaro contributes to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law, to politically motivated intimidation in that country and to human rights abuses,” Trump went on, in an unbearably ironic assessment.
Trump’s description of events in Brazil inverts reality. It was Bolsonaro who deliberately attempted to subvert the rule or law, his supporters regularly resorted to intimidation, including against members of the press and, as noted, he’s proud of the country’s history of human rights abuses.
In any event, Trump will almost surely weigh in on Bolsonaro’s conviction which’ll be official on Friday, when he may be sentenced. Technically, Bolsonaro could get four decades in prison. But he won’t. He’s 70 years old and already banned from running in the next election. (In 2023, Brazil’s electoral court barred him from office until 2030 for falsely denigrating the country’s election processes).
A conviction this week would mean a lifetime ban from elected office for Bolsonaro. So, he’s not going to be president again anyway. And a maximum sentence would risk further inflaming an already tense domestic political situation. It’s probably best to just put the old man on house arrest or, if he’d rather, on a plane to Mar-a-Lago where he can claim asylum.
Bolsonaro’s detractors, as well as democracy advocates around the world, will describe the verdict as a milestone in Brazil’s fraught efforts to consolidate and sustain a stable political system where the rule of law’s sacrosanct. His supporters, including the Trump administration, will call the verdict a travesty and an affront to democracy. Who you gonna believe?
I do wonder what it is in our brains that causes so many people to look at a situation like this and come to the conclusion that Bolsonaro is not only not guilty, but actually the one standing up for democracy. Of course, I ask the same question about the Trump death cult every day, but clearly it’s not specific to the US population.
And, not specific in terms of human history.
I’m certain that Bolsonaro would have treated Scott Bessent with courtesy & respect when he was in office.
Ha. Good point.
So the Dept. of War is blowing up petty drug dealers off the coast of Venezuela to protect
Exxon’s oil interests in Guyana. Not!
The SEALs etal., and the Navy, are going to personally escort Bolsonora and his offspring to their haven in Key Biscayne, where all the other Latin American crooks and deposed dictators have retired!
There were 11 people in that 40 foot center console. It doesn’t take 11 people to guard a shipment of drugs. They were human smugglers. But then, we’ll never really know for sure because they’re all dead and there’s no evidence left behind.
Also, the boat had turned around when the passengers saw the aircraft, it was heading back to Venezuela when it was fired upon. Also after the boat was destroyed, several other rounds of ordinance were fired at it which was not included in the video provided, ensuring that there were no survivors (witnesses?).
So in other words, in this case at least, Brazil has some stronger democratic institutions than the USA.
Month 6 of the US invasion of Brazil. Sporadic violence continues in the favelas of Rio, as drug gangs and milicias ambushed a US convoy, killing 4. The attackers appeared to be armed with US weapons, giving credence to reports that the PCC and Comando Vermelho have bribed senior occupation officials to protect drug export routes. In the Amazon, RFK continues to refuse approval for an MRNA Dengue vaccine, a disease which has incapacitated 10% of the army and hindered efforts to track down the government-in-exile of Lula da Silva. In the South, initial reports of a strong welcome for American troops have been undermined by rising racial tensions, with locals refusing to serve black and hispanic soldiers. President Trump addressed the nation on Thursday, stating that ‘this isn’t our Vietnam, which we won by the way’