Bad news for mini-Trump

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus

Yeah, but he was almost trying to get it.

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has announced live on television he has tested positive for coronavirus.

“It came back positive,” a mask-wearing Bolsonaro told a hand-picked group of reporters on Tuesday lunchtime outside his official residence.

“There’s no reason for fear. That’s life,” the president added. 

“Life goes on. I thank God for my life and the role I’ve been given to decide the future of this great nation that is called Brazil.”

Bolsonaro, 65, has repeatedly trivialized the pandemic and flouted social distancing, even as Brazil became the second-worst-hit country after the United States, with more than 65,000 deaths and 1.6m confirmed cases.

Better than even he'll get the bug, I say

Trump's personal valet tests positive for coronavirus

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have since tested negative for the virus, the White House said Thursday.

One of President Donald Trump's personal valets, who works in the West Wing serving the president his meals among other duties, has tested positive for the coronavirus, the closest the virus is known to have come to the president, a White House official said.

Since the White House medical unit was made aware of the case, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have both tested negative for the virus, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Thursday.

The White House did not say when the person developed symptoms or when the president was last exposed to the individual, whom Gidley described as a military official. 

It can sometimes take several days for the virus to appear on a test once a person has been infected.

Him, too, at a guess.

And he is so like Trump, wouldn't you say?

Brazil: largest rise in Covid-19 deaths follows Bolsonaro 'worst is over' claim

Brazil has seen its largest ever daily increase in its coronavirus death toll, despite erroneous suggestions from President Jair Bolsonaro that the worst of the crisis was over.

Brazil – which is now considered a major global centre of the pandemic – reported 633 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, taking its total to nearly 8,000.

Three of Brazil’s 27 states this week announced the country’s first official lockdown measures to try to slow the spread of the disease.

But speaking to reporters outside his presidential palace on Tuesday afternoon, Bolsonaro suggested his country was passing its Covid-19 peak.

“I don’t know yet if the number of deaths is less than yesterday. But if it is, if I’m not mistaken, it’ll be the sixth consecutive day in which the number of deaths has fallen,” Bolsonaro said.

“That’s a sign that the worst is over, and I ask God for this to be true,” Bolsonaro added.

It was not true. Just a few hours later, Brazil’s health ministry announced that the number of reported deaths had in fact risen. 

Under-reporting and a lack of testing also means the true numbers are almost certainly much higher.

So, who doesn't think he's got it? Bolsonaro coughing his head off at a rally against anti-virus measures

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro denounced for joining pro-dictatorship rally

Not exaggeration, not hyperbole, not figurative rather than literal language.

They mean it outright, and it's true.

Former presidents, politicians and newspaper editorial boards have lined up to denounce the “moronic” and “anti-democratic” behaviour of Brazil’s far-right leader after he hit the streets to egg on protesters demanding a return to military dictatorship.

As the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 rose to nearly 2,500 on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro left his presidential palace in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, to fraternize with flag-waving radicals.

Among the demands their banners listed were an end to the social distancing measures opposed by Bolsonaro, the closure of Brazil’s congress and supreme court, and a re-run of a dictatorship-era decree used by military rulers in the late 1960s to suffocate their political opponents.

. . . .

“The era of roguery is over. Now it’s the people who are in power,” Bolsonaro proclaimed outside the Brazilian army headquarters, coughing repeatedly as he spoke.

“Everyone in Brazil must understand that they must yield to the will of the Brazilian people.”

. . . .

On Monday morning Bolsonaro denied he had been attacking Brazilian democracy but told reporters: “I am actually the Constitution”.

Bolsonaro is a longstanding fan of the military men who ruled Brazil from 1964 until 1985, and autocrats including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.

Brazil: Two weeks ahead of us

Virus has Brazil’s Bolsonaro facing governor ‘insurrection’

Brazil’s governors on Wednesday rebelled against President Jair Bolsonaro’s call for life to return to pre-coronavirus normalcy, saying his proposal to reopen schools and businesses runs counter to recommendations from health experts and endangers Latin America’s largest population.

State governors, many of whom have adopted strict measures to limit gatherings in their regions, defied the president’s instructions in a nationwide address Tuesday evening that they lift the restrictions and limit isolation only to the elderly and those with longstanding health problems.

The governors weren’t the only defiant ones. 

Virus plans challenged by Bolsonaro were upheld by the Supreme Court. 

The heads of both congressional houses criticized his televised speech. Companies donated supplies to state anti-virus efforts. 

And even some of his staunch supporters joined his detractors.

The worst thing he is doing is accelerate the destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

Brazil: Bolsonaro in homophobic outburst as corruption scandal swirls

So like Trump it's scary

Brazil’s president claims DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires

Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest.

Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money for the Amazon to be torched.”

The spurious accusation – for which Brazil’s president offered no proof – came 24 hours after Bolsonaro made a similarly unsubstantiated claim in a Facebook live broadcast.

“Leonardo DiCaprio, dammit, you’re collaborating with the burning of the Amazon,” Bolsonaro declared, accusing the actor of being part of an international “campaign against Brazil”.

Bolsonaro’s unsubstantiated allegations relate to the controversial arrest on Tuesday of four volunteer firefighters whom local police accused – also apparently without evidence – of setting fire to the forest in order to boost fundraising efforts for an international NGO.

The firefighters were released on Thursday amid widespread public outrage at their treatment and questions over the police investigation.

On Thursday Bolsonaro’s politician son Eduardo claimed on Twitter that DiCaprio had donated $300,000 (£230,000) to “the NGO that set fire to the Amazon” and accused the conservation group WWF of paying the NGO about £13,000 for photographs of the burning forest.

. . . .

In August – as huge fires swept through the Amazon region sparking an international crisis – DiCaprio pledged $5m to help protect Brazil’s rainforests.

They've got this mainstreamed, now. Globally.

Seems like it's only been a few years since National Review began floating this bullshit.

Brazil's president calls Nazis leftists after Israel Holocaust museum visit

Be glad Reuters isn't playing along.

Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro said “there is no doubt” that Nazism was a leftist movement, just after visiting Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum.

Bolsonaro’s remarks directly contradicted information on the museum’s website saying Germany’s Nazi movement rose out of right-wing radical groups responding to the rise of communism.

In Tuesday’s televised comments, the Brazilian president echoed previous remarks by his country’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo, also claiming the Nazis were leftists.

Asked by reporters if he agreed with Araujo, Bolsonaro said, “There is no doubt, right?”

He went on to say that the Nazi party’s name was the National Socialist Party of Germany, which includes the word “socialist.” The official name was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Despite their name, the Nazis followed a fascist and anti-Semitic - rather than a socialist - ideology.

And is this him cozying up close to Holocaust denial, as close as he so far dares?

Bolsonaro forgives the Nazis for the Holocaust.

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil drew Israel’s ire on Saturday for saying the crimes of the Holocaust are forgivable.

Mr. Bolsonaro made the comments Thursday night at a meeting with evangelical pastors in Rio de Janeiro. 

He was talking about his visit to the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem earlier this month.

“We can forgive. But we cannot forget,” he said of the Holocaust, adding that action was needed to ensure its horrors were not repeated. 

“Those who forget the past are condemned to not have a future,” he added.

Evangelicals are the same everywhere, eh?

They seem everywhere to prefer to support authoritarian wingnuts.

What were they thinking, inviting him? Ah. They didn't.

Gala Honoree Causes Concern at American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History says it is exploring its options after discovering that the honoree at a gala to which it rented space next month will be President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, whose environmental policies have come under fire.

In statements Thursday and Friday, the museum responded to criticism that an institution dedicated to nature and science would serve as a podium to honor someone who has proposed opening up more of the Amazon rain forest to mining and agribusiness.

The event is an annual gala honoring a Person of the Year Award organized by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit that promotes business and cultural ties between the United States and Brazil.

The museum said it had agreed to book the event this year before it learned who the nominee would be, and its remarks suggested it might be considering whether there is any way to back out of hosting the engagement.

So, this happened.

For all I know, he's right.

But the dictatorship was so awful that that benefit seems almost an unintended side-effect brought about by people determined to carry out horrific crimes of their own.

I was fifteen that year.

And he was nine.

Fujimori saved Peru and Pinochet saved Chile, the latter launching a dictatorship that was also an orgy of murder and other crimes.

Brésil : le coup d’État de 1964 a “sauvé” le pays, selon la présidence

Voilà plusieurs jours que l’ordre donné par Jair Bolsonaro au ministère de la Défense d’organiser des fêtes de commémoration dans les casernes, en hommage au coup d’État militaire de 1964, faisait polémique. 

Face aux critiques, le président brésilien, ancien capitaine de réserve, avait même paru faire marche arrière, affirmant jeudi qu’il ne s’agissait pas de fêter mais juste de se souvenir de cet événement, point de départ de deux décennies de dictature (1964-1985). 

Vendredi, une juge fédérale de Brasilia avait ordonné l’interdiction de toute commémoration.

Mais dès le lendemain, une autre magistrate de la cour d’appel brésilienne a annulé cette décision. 

Dimanche 31 mars, jour du 55e anniversaire du coup d’État, le palais présidentiel a ainsi pu diffuser une vidéo “qui évoque [cette date] comme un moment de l’histoire où l’armée ‘a sauvé’ le Brésil” de la menace communiste, relève le journal O Globo.

Brazil military takes up coup commemoration at Bolsonaro's behest

Brazil’s armed forces on Sunday paid tribute to a 1964 coup leading to a two-decade dictatorship, after far-right President Jair Bolsonaro - who argues that military intervention saved the country from communism - reversed an 8-year-ban on celebrations.

. . . .

The move has stirred debate and underscored Bolsonaro’s support for a military government that executed hundreds, tortured thousands, shuttered Congress and left most Brazilians with dark memories of the period.

The military has not been allowed to observe the 1964 coup since 2011, when former President Dilma Rousseff, a one-time leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured under the dictatorship, ordered an end to events marking the date.

Brazil’s Defense Ministry said the armed forces will not hold public commemorations on Sunday. Bolsonaro is traveling abroad, but scheduled an event at the presidential palace on Friday to mark the anniversary with top military brass.

Bolsonaro, a retired Army captain, has long praised the 1964-85 military government and often said its biggest mistake was not killing enough leftists. 

Early in his political career [That would be early in the 1990s. PV] he said on the floor of Congress that he was “in favor of a dictatorship” and that Brazil would “never resolve grave national problems with this irresponsible democracy.”

He's way further out on the right than I thought.

It's one thing to chose a capitalist dictatorship as a lesser evil (if it is a lesser evil) to avoid a Communist takeover.

It's quite another to flat out prefer dictatorship to representative government.

Rather surprising that the US media did not call more attention to just how far right he is when reporting on his White House visit in March.

'Trump of the Tropics': Five things you should know about the Brazilian president's visit with Trump

Not a word about his attitude towards dictatorship and democracy.

Does Trump know any of that?

Would he have been briefed?

Is it part of what he likes?