Dem
52
Ties
3
GOP
45
Donald Trump loves him some strongman. He appears to have an affinity for a strong man, as well, but that is not what this item is about. The President was a big fan of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who modeled himself on Trump in nearly every way. That includes committing lots of potentially criminal acts. Bolsonaro's problem was that Brazil, in contrast to some countries, will actually prosecute crooked former presidents. He is currently serving a long sentence—at home, at the moment, but he's supposed to return to the hoosegow once his health improves.
No matter. There's more than one Bolsonaro out there. And so, in this weekend's presidential runoff election in Brazil, the voters had a choice between giving President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, aka Lula, another term or replacing him with Flávio Bolsonaro, son of Jair. It was close, but despite the generally rightward trend in Latin America, and the fact that most polls gave the challenger a slight lead, Lula won a fourth term, 51.8% to 48.2%.
The loser quickly demonstrated that he has his old man's copy of the Trump playbook (and we don't mean The Art of the Deal). He has vowed to file a lawsuit challenging the results, and to take it all the way to Brazil's Supreme Court. We are not particularly knowledgeable about how the Brazilian political system works, but we suspect that courts there are reluctant to wade into elections like that. And it's not like this is a Florida 2000 situation. The result was close but it wasn't that close. In the end, Bolsonaro lost by nearly 4.5 million votes of nearly 130 million cast.
Meanwhile, Trump did not get the candidate he wanted and, in Lula, he is left with a left winger who has been highly critical of the administration and who does not have any interest in partnering with Trump. Oh well, at least Trump still has Javier Milei in Argentina, through at least October of next year. (Z)