Global News Podcast - The Global Story: Bolsonaro: Is it all over for the 'Trump of the Tropics'?

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, barred from running for office until 2030, has been charged with plotting a coup after his 2022 defeat. He remains a strong political force. Can he make a comeback?The Global Story brings you trusted insights from BBC journalists worldwide. We want your ideas, stories and experiences to help us understand and tell #TheGlobalStory. Email us at [e-mail] You can also message us or leave a voice note via WhatsApp on [phone]. Producers: Alice Aylett Roberts, Laurie Kalus and Beth Timmins Sound engineer: Mike Regaard Assistant editor: Sergi Forcada Freixas Senior news editor: China Collins

Hello, this is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Oliver Conway with your weekly bonus from The Global Story, which brings you a single story with depth and insight from the BBC's best journalists. There's a new episode every weekday. Just search for The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. Here's my colleague, Johnny Diamond. single episode. Here's my colleague, Johnny Diamond. He inspires passion and loathing in equal measure. He rose to the presidency as an outsider,

dominating social media and railing against progressive elites. And when he lost power in the election, he refused to concede. Instead his supporters stormed the capital, falsely claiming the election had been stolen. But he is not Donald Trump. He is Jair Bolsonaro. Until 2022, the President of Brazil. The similarities led to the nickname Trump of the tropics. The relationship between the two men is so strong that Bolsonaro was invited to Trump's inauguration. He said he was so excited that he'd stopped taking Viagra. So with Trump back in office is Bolsonaro on his way back. His supporters, and he has lots, would love that. But he's

been barred from running for election by the courts and now he's been accused of planning a coup. Is this the end for Jair Bolsonaro? With me today is the BBC South America correspondent, Ione Wells. She's in Sao Paulo. Hi Ione. Hi Jonone. Hi Johnny. Jair Bolsonaro is a curiosity because he has a very high name recognition for the president or the former president of a South American nation. People know who he is in a way that they don't know the names of other former presidents. How is that he made his name in Brazilian politics? Well, in Brazilian politics, he rose up before he was elected.

He was in the army, he was in Congress. And then eventually, of course, won Brazil's presidency in 2018. The President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro. Presidente da República Jair Bolsonaro. I think one of the reasons that he became very well known across the world was really the platform and the rhetoric that he stood on. He campaigned on a platform of very socially conservative populist policies at a time when that was a bit of a zeitgeist around the world and other parts of the world too aimed at voters generally quite frustrated with crime, with corruption, with the economy not being very good. I think there's a kind of familiar nostalgia that he

appealed to that we've seen with other populist figures as well. This sort of idea of a better time in the past. There had been four elections that had been won by the left in Brazil before. And I think there was a sense of people kind of wanting change basically in terms of sort of There had been four elections that had been won by the left in Brazil before. And I think there was a sense of people kind of wanting change basically. In terms of sort of things that he talks about on social media, on, in his speeches, he often attacked political correctness. He was accused at times of saying sort of homophobic remarks, praising the country's former dictatorship.

Some of his comments about women, for example, sparking controversy online. One really interesting thing actually as well, which really shone an international spotlight on him and I think is interesting to remind people of now, he was stabbed. Well, that's right. During his campaign rally in 2018, which really mobilised his supporters and gained him this increased media attention. And it's interesting because of course, not dissimilar to how that assassination attempt on Donald Trump in the last US election campaign did a similar thing and really mobilised his

base as well and sort of suddenly got the international media, you know, talking about it for days and days and days. You draw the parallel with Donald Trump with those assassination attempts, but there are political parallels and parallels between the sort of electoral machines that they ran as well, aren't there? Definitely. I think in terms of policies, they're quite similar, both socially conservative, appealing to their base on so-called anti-woke issues, anti-net zero, anti-environmental protections. They want a sort of low tax society, pledge to be tough on crime. On his rhetoric too, again, quite a lot of parallels with Donald Trump. He's very outspoken,

particularly on social media. His family also very involved with his brand as well, especially his sons. So again, a bit of a parallel there with Donald Trump. In terms of his base as well, I think there are some similarities. He's got a big backing in particular in Brazil among evangelicals, a religious group that has grown a lot in Brazil in particular. The left in Brazil typically do better in more metropolitan areas among unionized manufacturing workers, for example, whereas Bolsonaro has really managed to grow quite a base in some of the more rural areas, appealing to the so-called, you know, sort of left behind parts of the country. And I think in that sense, yeah, that there are lots of parallels, both in terms of policy rhetoric, but also who their base is as well.

And he, I mean, he is, for want of a better phrase, is sort of a man's man, isn't he? He projects a kind of meat-eating macho thing, which doesn't leave much space for doubt about how he wants to live his life and how he thinks other people should live theirs. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think his, even his sort of sense of humour at times has been something that might raise eyebrows among if it was sort of any other politician that said it, but with him, it's not really surprising. I mean, he did a joke recently, for example, when he was doing an interview with the New York Times where he talked about being sort of energized and he even mentions joked about

sort of not using Viagra anymore and things like that, which is just sort of comments that you wouldn't imagine most politicians to sort of be caught dead saying. And yet somehow when Bolsonaro says that he's allowed to sort of get away with that among his base, they think it's funny. It's part of his brand, I suppose. And in that case, he's not afraid to shock in a similar way to Donald Trump, I think. So he overturns, you say, four terms of victories from the left when he wins the presidency in 2018. And there's a sense I think at that point that he's pretty much unstoppable, but that fades away pretty quickly.

Yeah, I think he was always a real, as we say in the UK, a Marmite figure, people love him or hate him. As president, he did do lots of things. He slashed environmental protections in the Amazon, which his critics hated because it fueled deforestation, but his supporters loved it because it promoted farming, mining, business in the area. He still actually got quite a lot of support in that sort of Amazon region where people there working in agriculture, for example, want more development in the area, want less environmental protections. He did things like raise the minimum wage, relaxed gun ownership laws.

He was very opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage. He also oversaw the country's COVID response, which again was quite divisive because Brazil had one of the worst death tolls in the world. Brazil has now surpassed China's official death toll from the coronavirus, but the country's president continues to downplay the threat from the virus. His supporters praised him for some of what he did, including big, big cash handout programs for some of the poorest in the country, but his critics accused him of really downplaying the virus. There was a famous viral clip of him where he essentially

just sort of dismissed it as a little flu, you know, was accused of not taking it very seriously. And I think that period, especially, you know, I think, I think actually we did see this a bit around the world everywhere that no matter what the policy of the person in charge during COVID, you know, the response to it could really energise the leaders' supporters, but it could also really turn people against them because of some of the struggles that people were going through at the time. He definitely did face a big backlash by his critics, but I think he has still managed to maintain a very strong base,

even to this day now in Brazil. And that was reflected in the 2022 presidential election, which though he lost, it was, it was more fingernail lost than landslide, wasn't it? That's right. President Lula da Silva, now President Lula da Silva, who he was running against, That's right. President Lula de Silva, now President Lula de Silva, who he was running against ran again in 2022, which did give the left a big boost because he's a big name, a well-known figure, had been president before. Lula won the first round of that election in 2022, but not quite by enough to secure it for him. In the second round, Lula only received 50.9% of the votes. Bolsonaro got 49.1%. So this was the closest presidential election

result in Brazil to date, which I think really laid the ground for a very, very controversial result either way. When that result happened, Bolsonaro neither conceded defeat nor really challenged the results that divided the nation. There was a lot of kind of uncertainty as to why he wasn't really saying much at the time. His supporters didn't want to recognise President Lula as their new president. We saw some of Bolsonaro's supporters, for example, driving lorries to set up roadblocks across the country, protest the election result. And in a video statement, Bolsonaro had said to his supporters that blocking roads wasn't a legitimate protest. He encouraged people to choose other ways of demonstrating.

people to choose other ways of demonstrating. But, you know, weeks later, as I say, he wasn't really seen much. There was a bit of a confusion about what he was really doing. And there were these ongoing protests, including some of his supporters trying to attack the headquarters of the police in Brasilia, demonstrating near military bases as well. But despite this, on the 1st of January in 2023, President Lula was sworn in. And he's vowed to rebuild Brazil, which he said was in a terrible state, terrible ruins since Bolsonaro had been in power.

Did Jair Bolsonaro go to the inauguration ceremony where Lula was inaugrated, where he became president? No, he wasn't at that ceremony. He had left Brazil at a time and had gone to Florida, which I think some of his supporters were a bit disappointed by that he was sort of seen by some as sort of sulking, but others felt very much still that they had his back, they were going to protest this result. A week after that inauguration ceremony, loads of Bolsonaro supporters were bussed into Brasilia wearing their flagship Brazil green and yellow football shirts, which is sort of much to the dislike of left-wing football fans has

sort of become the de facto uniform of Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil. They broke into and vandalised government buildings in Brasilia, the Supreme Court, Congress, the presidential palace, seeking to overthrow the new president, even though there was a sort of recess period at the time. So these buildings were actually not very occupied. But the scenes were reminiscent of the January 6th Capitol riots in 2021 in the US after Donald Trump lost that election. Some rioters said publicly that their purpose was to encourage the military to join them, effectively calling for a coup. And President Lula himself also wasn't in Brasilia at the time. He was in São Paulo state but he declared an emergency, a sort of state of emergency essentially, before dispatching the National Guard to

Brasilia to try to restore order. There were lots of clashes between police and these protesters before the police eventually managed to control the situation. Since then, there have been ongoing legal battles with some of these protesters. Again, a bit of a parallel there with the US. Lula has called the riots terrorist acts, said that those who took part in it would be punished. And in the end, more than 1500 people were detained, some of them even given jail sentences. and more than 1500 people were detained, some of them even given jail sentences. But what is interesting is this case now has really, it's still very much part of the dialogue here in Brazil because of questions about Bolsonaro's involvement in it.

So we've got parallels aplenty. An election that Bolsonaro refuses to concede in the same way of course that Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 election. You've got the supporters storming government buildings, again the parallel with what happened in 2021 in the US. But there is a difference isn't there because Jair Bolsonaro had comments to say about what happened in the capital, Brasilia, didn't he? He condemned the attack and he said he had no responsibility for it. That's right. He said he had no responsibility. He said it was wrong that people were protesting

in that way. And of course, physically, he was in a different country at the time in Florida. So on the surface claimed that he was distancing himself from what his supporters were doing. Another difference of course is the kind of democracy that there is in the two countries. I mean Brazil's democracy is a lot younger than America's democracy isn't it? It's democracy you could well argue is a lot more fragile. Yeah definitely. I think the reason why the mention of a coup or the call for a coup in Brazil is very troubling still and actually Latin America more generally is that military dictatorships are not distant history here. The military dictatorship in Brazil was in place until 1985 and that was

caused by the Brazilian army at the time and conservative sectors of society, some politicians, but also some figures from the Catholic Church with support from the US, initiating that coup to overthrow the government at the time. What resulted was years of extensive censorship, of human rights abuses, of torture, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, very, very traumatic period of time for many in Brazil until eventually democracy, elections were restored. And so I think it's a very different context in Brazil and in other parts of Latin America too when people talk about the threat of a coup or calling for a coup, because that is for many people living memory for them. So we've looked at the rise and fall of Jair Bolsonaro. Next, the charges over an alleged

coup plot to seize power in Brazil. This is the Global Story. We bring you one big international story in detail five days a week. Follow or subscribe wherever you listen. With me is our South America correspondent, Iaini Wells. So this week Jair Bolsonaro was charged with masterminding and leading a far-right conspiracy to cling to power through a military coup after he failed to win the 2022 election. But the curiosity is this is not actually the start of his legal troubles. He already has a seemingly insuperable obstacle to actually getting back into office because he was barred from it in 2023, wasn't he? What was that about? That's right. What's interesting as well, and maybe this is where we kind of rewind a little bit almost, because Jai Bolsonaro,'s thought, essentially saw opinion polls ahead of that

election and almost started to roll the pitch a little bit for him not winning it. By doing things like casting doubt on the Brazilian voting system, he falsely claimed on state TV, for example, that Brazil's voting system was vulnerable to fraud. He essentially accused the electoral system of not being fit for purpose, basically casting doubt on the democratic process in total, which that and his undermining of democracy in doing that led to him being banned from running for office until 2030. Although interestingly, at the moment, there is a bill going through Congress in Brazil, which could reduce the period of ineligibility from eight years to two years if somebody has received a conviction for abusing political or economic power from the

electoral authorities in the way that Bolsonaro has. There is a sort of bill that is debating whether that ban should be reduced. Now, if that's passed, the ban that Bolsonaro is facing could potentially be shortened. But at the moment, he is not allowed to run for office by the time of the next election, which is expected next year in 2026. He's also faced numerous other legal accusations, accusations by police of faking his COVID vaccine certificate, of embezzlement related to watches and jewellery received from Saudi Arabia. There's lots of different kind of legal challenges that he's faced, but none of them so far have managed to sort of properly dampen his base or momentum really.

And the reason we are talking right now is because within the last few days Mr. Bolsonaro has been formally charged by Brazil's chief prosecutor with attempting a coup in 2022. And that's nothing to do with the storming of various buildings in Brasilia, nothing to do with him casting doubt on the voting systems that led to that eight-year ban. It's something different. What are the specific allegations against him? That's right. So as we discussed, obviously his supporters taking to the street to try and sort of physically overthrow power in those government buildings. Behind the scenes, the allegation is that Jair Bolsonaro was essentially plotting a coup in other means. There are various different

allegations against him, including that he had conversations with leading members of the military to try and get them onside to overthrow President Lula. There were also even allegations that he planned to poison President Lula or assassinate one of the top Supreme Court judges, for example. So there is a whole host of crimes that President Bolsonaro has now been charged with by the top prosecutor in the country. They include instigating a coup, posing serious threats to federal property. There are accusations as well that he may have encouraged Spurred on some of his supporters to do some of the acts that they subsequently did. And this is part of a long, long investigation that has been going on. It follows a hefty police report that came out a couple of months

ago and now the top prosecutor in the country has basically considered that report, said there's enough evidence in there to charge him and it's now going to the Supreme Court. So if the Supreme Court agree with this prosecutor's assessment, Bolsonaro could well be in a lot of trouble indeed, could face a trial potentially sometime later this year. Okay, there are clearly a fair number of hurdles to say the least to Jair Bolsonaro returning to power. We've been dancing, Ione, around these parallels with Donald Trump. President Trump made a comeback despite all the problems that he faced. Is Donald Trump's comeback something that Bolsonaro has talked about? Is it something he's reflected upon? Is it something that

has obviously emboldened him? I think so, yeah. I think there's a lot of debate actually at the moment about whether if Bolsonaro faces trial and it is still an if at the moment, it will sort of help or hinder him. Um, I remember actually when I was in the U S for the U S election in November, going to some of the Donald Trump rallies, for example, there was merchandise for sale, you know, t-shirts saying things like, I'm voting for the convicted felon. You know, his fan base almost using the criminal allegations that had been brought against Donald Trump as a form of sort of energy, really, something that really

riled up Donald Trump's base. I love Trump, because he's going to make America great again. What do you think of the conviction? He's still going to be president. I mean, you say convicted felon. I don't know what this jury was thinking. I think people are still going to vote for him anyway. They believed, like many of Bolsonaro supporters believe about him, that he was a victim of political persecution. And I think it's quite likely that Bolsonaro will have seen that and thought that that is actually something that he can sort of play to as well.

I mean is there anything Donald Trump can do to help Jair Bolsonaro? Is he just a sort of vocal ally or is there pressure he can put on on Brazil? They certainly do have a sort of good relationship and even though Jair Bolsonaro himself wasn't allowed to travel to go to the inauguration of Donald Trump. Certainly when I was at the inauguration of Donald Trump, I saw a lot of Brazilian fans there, people who were Bolsonaro supporters. There was even actually a Bolsonaro impersonator on my flight from Sao Paulo to Washington. Did he look much like Bolsonaro? He did. He looked identical to, I actually thought it was Bolsonaro. I thought I'd got my hands on this amazing story that Bolsonaro somehow managed to defy his travel ban and end up on my flight.

But it was actually not him. It was a professional lookalike, I should say, who had gone all the way to Washington just to be there for Donald Trump's inauguration. So that sort of friendship, alliance, whatever you want to call it, between both Donald Trump and Bolsonaro, but also between their fans, I think is certainly significant. In terms of what Trump could do to help him, interestingly this week actually as well, less than 24 hours after these charges were brought against Bolsonaro, Trump's media company sued the Brazilian Supreme Court judge, Alexander de Moraes, accusing him of illegally

censoring right-wing voices on social media. Now this is a slightly complicated angle to all of this, but Alexander de Morais is one of the Supreme Court judges who essentially will now decide Bolsonaro's future, will decide whether he goes to trial essentially. Morais has become a bit of an international name because he's in the past ordered social media platforms to take down certain accounts that have been investigated for disinformation, for particularly political disinformation or undermining democracy. And Trump's media company are now sort of taking him on legally. But I think the timing of this is significant. The fact that it's less than 24 hours

after this charge was brought. And some may the judge at the centre of it all is actually now being sort of taken on legally by Donald Trump and his company is quite interesting. On your wider point though of what could Trump actually do to assist Bolsonaro, I think a lot of it is about sort of their support that they show online, the way that they're managed to really rally up people, use them as a cause that they can get international media's attention on, get their sort of fan base energized by. Practically though, he is potentially going to face a legal process in Brazil. So there is a bit of a question mark about whether that support, that rhetoric only goes so far really. If he did get the ban on standing in the next election lifted, if he got past the charges

that have been laid against him in the last few days over an alleged coup attempt. Is the popularity still there? Does he still have that astonishing support that he once had, the kind of support of course that in the US lifted Donald Trump to that comeback. Yeah, I think to make another comparison with the US here, you know, the election that's due here in 2026 has a lot of parallels with the last US election. You have an elderly incumbent on the left who has had some recent health issues who will be nearly 81 by the time of the next election, who is probably going to face pressure not to run again. That's President Lula. Then you have, if, as you say, if Jair Bolsonaro is in some way allowed to run again, if this ban were to be lifted or if he wasn't to

face trial and legal challenges ahead, you know, you then have this very popular right-wing figure who is energised by, you know, presumably if he's got to that point, overcoming various legal barriers and still has a big base in Brazil. He is still very much the figurehead of the right in Brazil. His Liberal Party is the largest in Congress. He's still able to attract big rallies across the country. He as I say, has big support among evangelical Christians, among farmers, agriculture business. Polls still suggest that he's the most popular right-wing figure. So I think that base is certainly still there. I think where again, there are parallels to Donald Trump is you do have some figures on the right too, who can't really stomach him and feel like he is a toxic brand and basically, privately probably

would much rather that he does potentially go to jail and that they can kind of rebuild a more moderate right wing challenge to President Lula and the left in Brazil. But I think it is fair to say that, yeah, were he to overcome these barriers, he would be a really significant electoral force, not least because he still has the sort of campaigning material behind him. He's still got a big base on social media and in real life here. He may yet have a chance to make Brazil great again. Watch this space. Aini, thank you so much for guiding us through the fascinating Bolsonaro story. Great to talk to you. Thank you for having me.

And thanks so much to you for listening. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com wherever you're listening in the world. We will catch you next time. If you enjoyed listening, there's a new episode every weekday. Just search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts and be sure to click subscribe or follow. We'll have another edition of the Global News podcast later. Until then, goodbye.