Bolsonaro Follows Trump's Script
SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
BY CESAR CHELALA
Image by Matheus Câmara da Silva.
Brazil’s upcoming presidential elections in October signal a momentous event in the country, one that will have long-lasting consequences. Throughout the campaign, Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has suggested that, like the U.S. former president, he intends to ignore the results of the election. This would be only one more instance where the Brazilian president has closely followed Donald Trump’s script.
It is remarkable how both presidents have reacted in similar way to different events. During the COVID-19 pandemic, both Bolsonaro and Trump minimized the seriousness of the pandemic, which may have contributed to the catastrophic results it had in both countries. In addition, both presidents promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat COVID-19. By the end of May 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) had suspended an international trial of hydroxychloroquine because of concern that it causes a “significantly higher risk of death” compared to patients who didn’t receive the drug, according to a study published in the Lancet.
Because of Bolsonaro’s cavalier attitude to the pandemic, it spread to the indigenous communities living in remote areas of the Amazon Forest and to Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, home of millions of people living in extreme poverty and without the protection of good public health services. An editorial in the Lancet stated, “Yet, perhaps the biggest threat to Brazil’s COVID-19 response is its president, Jair Bolsonaro.” The bottom line: Bolsonaro and Trump’s policies towards the pandemic have caused the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Both presidents have shown a complete disregard for the environment and the dire consequences of climate change. During an interview in 2022 on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company, Trump told host Stuart Varney that climate change is a “hoax.” He explained, “In my opinion, you have a thing called weather, and you go up, and you go down. If you look into the 1920s, they were talking about a global freezing, okay? In other words, the globe was going to freeze. And then they go global warming. Then they couldn’t use that because the temperatures were actually quite cool. And many different things. So now they just talk about climate change. The climate’s always been changing.” Irrefutable.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/13/bolsonaro-follows-trumps-script/
