He didn't accept the election results
and was accused of being part of a coup
to overthrow his successor. Now, with
ex-Brazilian President Ja Bolsinaro's
trial nearing its end, could he be saved
from decades in jail by his most
significant ally, Donald Trump?
>> This is really a political execution
that they're trying to do with
Bolsinaro.
>> This is what you need to know.
Jay Bosanardo. He was president of
Brazil between 2019 and 2022. He was
known as being a hardright populist.
Some people called him the Trump of the
tropics. And Jay Bossado and Donald
Trump, they aligned politically on
pretty much everything. And their
journeys to power were pretty similar to
Balsson was one of those guys who was
seen as being sort of
anti-establishment.
He was this type of guy that was invited
on to talk shows and you could be he
could be guaranteed to say sort of
outlandish things and essentially in
2022 he was up for reelection. He lost
that re-election bid to the now current
Brazilian president Lula de Silva and
when he lost that bid he is accused
charges he denies of plotting to stay in
power. So, the charges he's facing in
his trial at the moment include
attempting to stage a coup, involvement
in an armed criminal organization,
attempted violent abolition of the rule
of power, and two charges of damaging
property. On January the 8th, 2023, and
scenes remarkably similar to what we saw
on January the 6th, 2021 in the United
States, Oscanard supporters, they
stormed Brazil's Congress. There were
over a thousand arrests there. Uh and
again it was kind of a similar endgame
and end story to the Donald Trump first
term.
>> Donald Trump is is a big ally isn't he
of scenario. Uh how is he trying to help
him?
>> Yeah. So it's interesting. So there as I
said there's a lot of parallels between
Trump and Bolsinardo. We saw with with
Donald Trump when he left power he faced
all those criminal indictments. Trump
obviously he went and appeared in court
and he won his re-election bids and he
managed to make all those indictments
essentially go away. Bsonado however
hasn't managed to make those go away.
Brazil Supreme Court is trying him and
he's largely expected to be convicted
and so it's no surprise Donald Trump has
been throwing his political weight
around and has been calling this a witch
hunt saying this is exactly what he
faced himself in the United States
court. He's calling this political
persecution and you know he's using all
the weights of his power as
commander-in-chief of the United States
to put pressure on Brazil's courts to
drop these charges. That pressure is
coming in the form of tariffs. He's put
50% tariffs on Brazil. And I think we've
got a clip of him speaking about that in
the Oval Office uh a few weeks ago.
>> And Brazil has some very bad laws
happening where they took a president
and they put him in jail or they're
trying to jail him. And I happen to know
the man and I will tell you I'm pretty
good at people. I think he's an honest
man. I think what they've done this is
an electric. This is really a political
execution that they're trying to do with
Bolsson. I think that's terrible. But
they also treated us very badly as
trading partners for many many years.
One of the worst one of the worst
countries on earth for that. They
charged tremendous tariffs and they made
it very difficult to do anything. So now
they're being charged 50% tariffs and uh
they're not happy, but that's the way it
goes.
>> It's interesting stuff, isn't it? As
well as calling Brazil a bad trading
partner, he says the US runs a trade
deficit with Brazil, meaning that the US
buys more than it sells to Brazil. Is
that actually true?
>> That's uh absolutely not true. So in
fact, the US has actually run a trade
surplus um of multi-millions of dollars
with Brazil for years now. So Trump, he
tries to sort of halfjustify these
tariffs with, you know, this these are
for economic reasons. Brazil has been
ripping us off, he says, when actually,
you know, the US actually sells way more
to Brazil than Brazil sells to the US.
So that kind of shows that these tariffs
are politically motivated. We know
another way that Trump's been exerting
pressure on Brazil is some of the
Supreme Court justices involved in
Bolsson's case. Uh the US has revoked
their US visas and they've sanctioned
the uh Supreme Court judge in charge of
this case, Allesandre Gi Morice. He's
become a bit of a pantomime villain in
the Make America Great Again world in
the Bolsinada world. He actually got
into a spat with uh former MAGA best
buddy and chief Elon Musk last year um
when he ended up suspending Twitter for
a number of weeks in Brazil when there
were some accounts in Brazil that were
spreading miss and disinformation. So
that started a sort of very big spat
between Elon Musk and Brazil's
government. We saw Lula D Silva the
current Brazilian president his wife
actually said f you Elon Musk on camera
in Brazil last last year. So you know in
this kind of sort of tel nolla soap
opera of the make America great again
world we're seeing you know these big
figures and these big egos get into
these big sort of tit fortat arguments
that culminating with real political and
economic consequences as we're seeing
now. Yeah, it's fascinating that the
parallels between the two countries are
extraordinary. If Bolsinaro is convicted
and and you think it is likely that he
might be, how do you think his
supporters might respond?
>> Yeah, that's a really interesting
question. So, we've seen pro boss
protests at a number of locations across
Brazil. The numbers haven't been that
sort of overwhelming as you'd expect. In
2023, I was actually based in the United
States with ITV News as a producer. And
I was there for Donald Trump's first
ever indictments and court appearances
when he became the first former US
president to appear in court on criminal
charges. And when I went to some of
those court appearances in New York and
in Georgia when he got the famous mug
shot, um there were, you know, huge
crowds and huge pro Trump protests and
we saw Trump's polling numbers increase
off the back of that. he was sort of
creating this narrative that he was
being politically persecuted. We saw his
fundraising, Trump's fundraising go up
massively off the back of those
indictments and court appearances. But
the interesting thing in this case in
this kind of Brazilian parallel
universe, we haven't quite seen the same
thing with Bolson, in fact, we've seen
his poll numbers uh since the US tariff,
they've actually gone down as Brazilians
think that he's damaging the country
economically. I think in one of the
latest polls after the tariffs, also
disapproval rating was 60% and Lula, the
current incumbent Brazilian president,
his approval rating shot up to 50% which
is one of the highest it's been. So in
short, if he's convicted, you know, it
doesn't seem like there's the momentum
there for sort of a big Trump style sort
of reinvigoration of his base and it
doesn't seem like he's got the
popularity to sustain that. And the
other thing as well is he's actually
barred from running again in Brazil's
next election in October 2026. So yeah,
in short, it's not looking like it would
be a resounding amazing political
comeback in the same vein as Trump when
he sort of beat or at least quashed his
own charges
>> against all the odds. I still
remarkable, isn't it? When you were
working in the US and you were
explaining that you had because you were
you working in our bureau over there,
weren't you? You came face to face with
Bolsinario, didn't you? What was that
like?
>> Yeah, that's right. So in January 2023
when Bossado's supporters stormed
Brazil's Congress and we saw those sort
of ugly scenes, incredibly reminiscent
of January 6th, 2021 in Washington, uh
Bossado, he wasn't actually in Brazil at
the time. He was in the United States
and we had this kind of odd situation
where he was there and we sort of got a
lot of footage of him in his shorts and
flip-flops at supermarkets in Florida
taking pictures with fans and taking
picture with Trump supporters who
admired him and he didn't actually
re-enter Brazil for a while and so two
months after Brazil's Congress was
stormed he it coincided with uh a
conference that takes place every year
called CPAC which is basically a
gathering of the biggest figures of the
American and world rights and Bossard
was one of the keynote speakers there.
So I went down to try and doorstep him.
A doorstep is obviously when you kind of
get surprised. Exactly. You can't get a
pre-arranged interview, so you go and
try your luck.
>> Okay. Well, I think we can we can hear a
snippet of that. And just to be clear,
it's in Brazilian Portuguese. You
studied that in in Brazil, and we can
get a translation from you afterwards.
But let's have a look.
So essentially I asked him, "Are you
going to run again in 2026? Bear in mind
that was filmed in 2023." And he replied
to me, "That's a long way away." When he
answered that, that was before Brazil's
courts banned him from running again due
to the charges he's facing. So again, I
know we keep talking about the Trump
Boss sort of parallels here. This is
kind of yeah, as I said, a parallel
universe where, you know, Trump
successfully managed to win re-election
and squash all those criminal charges he
was facing. Boss hasn't managed to do
that, which, you know, some people say
goes to show the strength of Brazil's
institutions. They've managed to
successfully, well, it seems like
everyone's expecting him to be convicted
in the coming weeks. Seems like Brazil
has actually managed to successfully try
a former leader which for a country you
know they were under military
dictatorship until 1985 it's quite a
fractious uh fragile and new in many
ways democracy. So that that's quite
remarkable when you think you know
America likes to call itself the the
leader of the free world. Um, you know,
some people say that Trump's re-election
and the fact that he's managed to squash
his charges shows maybe that's not the
most sort of democratic of processes
perhaps. Uh, Brazil is managing to hold
their former leader to account. Shortly
after that question, I hung around Mary
for a few hours to try and get another
bite at the um, ath. And I asked him, do
you accept you lost the election?
Because he never conceded his election
defeat. I asked him, uh, do you accept
you lost the election? Do you accept it
was a fair election? and he didn't reply
to me and his his bodyguard pushed me
away.
>> Oh, really? There's there's your answer
then. I think um there is elections next
year in Brazil. That's right.
>> What will what impact do you think the
the verdict in this trial will have on
that?
>> Yeah, it's a really interesting
question. As I said, we're not seeing a
massive sort of fundraising or polling
bounce in favor of Bolsinardo. He's
still, as it stands, banned from running
in that election. He's trying to fight
that ban. um if he gets convicted, it'll
be very complicated for him to challenge
that. But, you know, he's got three sons
who are very politically prominent. One
of them, Eduardo, his youngest son, uh
was just on Steve Bannon, you know,
Trump's former chief strategist. He was
on Steve Bannon's podcast this week. Um
he's quite a high-profile figure, so who
knows? It's quite likely that one of his
sons may run in his place as a kind of
proxy. Um or, you know, there's some
other sort of hardright figures in
Brazil like the governor of S. Paulo who
who could run. The other thing is we've
got Lula, the current president who's
kind of a very old establishment left
figure in Brazil. As I said, he's seen a
little bit of a polling bounce in the
face of those US tariffs. But, you know,
he's he's approaching around I think 80
years old. A lot of people in Brazil,
you know, a lot of Brazilian friends
I've been speaking to, while they
respect the work that Lula has done,
they a lot of them want sort of think
it's time for change and time for a
younger person with fresh ideas. is and
if we're going to make US parallels
again, maybe we can look back to that,
you know, Joe Biden when he was running
for re-election. A lot of people said he
was too old and it was time for new
ideas in America. So, it'll be very
interesting to see what happens. And the
other thing we need to bear in mind as
well is if convicted, as he's expected
to be, will Donald Trump impose higher
tariffs? Will we see Elon Musk get
involved and throw his financial weights
behind one of Bolson's sons or one of
the hardright candidates? So, we've got
to sort of be prepared for the political
and financial might of the Make America
Great Again movement uh in Brazil's
election in 2026.
>> Yeah. Amazing. So, so much is is yet to
to be played out in it. Will, thank you
very much. And uh for more global
analysis from our team, head to
it.com/news.
Until our next quick briefing, thanks
for joining us.