Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro his country is at a crossroads in the upcoming election, and faces the danger of falling into the same pattern of socialist corruption that engulfs many South and Central American nations.
The conservative former army captain, who is often likened to former U.S. President Donald Trump, battled his way into an Oct. 30 runoff against ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a socialist who only recently was released from prison where he was serving time for corruption. Neither got the necessary majority of the vote in the Oct. 2 election, even though polls had predicted Lula, who was president from 2003-11, would win.
“He’s a corrupt politician who has left a huge trail of corruption in Brazil,” Bolsonaro, 67, told Shapiro in a Daily Wire Sunday Special that aired Oct. 23. “That’s his legacy.”
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BEN SHAPIRO’S INTERVIEW WITH BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO
The 76-year-old Lula was convicted in 2017 of corruption and sentenced to 12 years in prison in the sprawling case known as Operation Car Wash, a scandal that brought down dozens of politician and business leaders. He appealed his conviction, and ran against Bolsonaro in 2018, but was ousted from the race when the conviction was upheld. But now, a Supreme Court justice has ruled that the trial judge lacked jurisdiction, and annulled the conviction. That cleared the way for Lula to run again, although he could still be retried and convicted on the original charges.
Bolsonaro told Shapiro his nemesis and the Workers Party he heads looted pension funds, embezzled public funds, and gave out crooked contracts that cost Brazilian taxpayers billions of dollars while in power.
– Conversei, na última quinta-feira, com o jornalista e escritor americano @benshapiro , dono de um dos maiores podcasts dos EUA. Mostramos a verdade sobre o Brasil e sobre o que está em jogo nestas eleições. Assistam, com legenda em português, no YouTube: https://t.co/hwTlCIqfg8 pic.twitter.com/y1rrXwQB4M
— Jair M. Bolsonaro 2️⃣2️⃣ (@jairbolsonaro) October 25, 2022
Bolsonaro echoed the complaints of Trump, saying the media is sympathetic to Lula and helps amplify false accusations against him.
“They accuse me of being a dictator, or being a homophobic man, or being a racist person,” Bolsonaro said. “They say I don’t like black people.”
“They’ve accused me of being a cannibal and a beast and a pedophile and a fascist, and anything goes for them, basically,” he said.
Brazil can be a bulwark against the corrupt socialism that has pervaded South and Central America, he said. But not if Lula emerges victorious.
“We in Brazil cannot possibly join the Venezuela Team of countries, which now includes Argentina, Chile, [and] Nicaragua,” he said. “Brazil is the most important country in South America. So if Brazil succumbs to the Left wing, that’s the end of South America.”
Bolsonaro questioned the Supreme Court justice’s decision that Lula could only be tried in the state of Brasilia, where his alleged crimes occurred, and acknowledged concerns that a fair election could be held given the high court’s influence over the process.
“What makes us more confident about the ongoing elections is the fact that the armed forces in Brazil have been invited to join in electoral transparency,” he said. “But the armed forces have told me that it is impossible to grant a seal of credibility or reliability to the voting system, given the very many vulnerabilities or weaknesses that the system still features.”
If voters make their choice based on Brazil’s economic progress, Bolsonaro is confident he will win another term.
“We have posted the third month in a row of negative inflation,” he said. “Of course, foodstuffs and other prices are going down. The labor market is doing pretty well. And 8%, a little more than 8% is our current unemployment rate or joblessness rate in Brazil, a good rate as compared to previous administrations.”
Bolsonaro said he has cut red tape to enable entrepreneurs, lowered taxes and fought to keep the economy open during the COVID pandemic, when he said Brazil’s GDP dipped a relatively small 4%.
“At the end of the Lula da Silva administration back in 2010, it would take you as a businessperson, an average of about four months to open a company,” Bolsonaro said. “Under my administration, it takes no more than a day to open a business, a new business.”
Bolsonaro said he will stand with Christians in his majority Catholic nation against abortion and the same radical gender theory now roiling the U.S., which he said leftists seek to promulgate in schools.
“They are also for liberalizing abortion and also the so-called gender ideology,” he said. “Even children now very few, but children age seven, eight, nine. Children think not to know whether they’re girls or boys and vice versa. Or boys don’t know whether they’re boys anymore.
“For a substantial part of the Brazilian schooling system, they are all about ideology. They are trying to train activists and militants in the school setting,” he said, adding that “the legacy left by the Workers Party and the educational system is really catastrophic.”
Shapiro asked the Brazilian leader about dealing with the two U.S. administrations his own term has spanned.
“You know, for us we kept on doing business with Trump,” Bolsonaro said. “We had, of course, closer ties. We worked closely or more closely together.”
“All of that came to a halt once Biden was elected,” he continued. “We do, of course, look forward and expect that we will be able to resume our dialogue with the incumbent U.S. president. But of course, that means we must be reelected first.”