Inside ex-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's fight to stay out of prison

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0:32Just a few years ago, a national political leader lost a very close election. A violent insurrection followed on an early January day. There were questions about this leader's alleged involvement. A high-stakes legal drama followed. I am not talking about the United States, or January 6, 2021, or Donald Trump. I'm talking about Brazil, Latin America's largest democracy, what happened there in January 2023, and the actions of its former president. Jair Bolsonaro is, I think without doubt, the most divisive politician that Brazil has seen since it became a democracy again in 1985. Bolsonaro is the kind of politician who finds power being around people, being around supporters.

1:31This is Terry McCoy and Marina Diaz. They're reporters for The Post in Brazil, and they've covered Bolsonaro for years. Bolsonaro is a former military officer. He rose to popularity on a wave of populist rhetoric and machismo. He was elected Brazil's president in 2018. Jair Bolsonaro. But then he lost re-election in 2022 to Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva. Now Bolsonaro is bracing for one of the most pivotal moments in his life and for democracy in Latin America.

2:10Jair Bolsonaro:Former President Jair Bolsonaro will be standing trial for attempting a coup following the last election. He's under trial on the charges of staging a coup. The former president is accused of plotting a coup to stay in power after losing the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is facing allegations that he plotted to assassinate his rivals and stay in power. Bolsonaro has denied the accusations. He's expected to stand trial in Brazil's Supreme Court this fall. If convicted, Bolsonaro, who is now 70, could be locked up for decades. So now he is in this moment trying to figure out how to not go to jail.

2:56There's a moment when this figure who has historically been, or in recent years has been, Latin America's most powerful politician is now reckoning with his downfall. U.S. President Donald Trump, who's supported Bolsonaro in the past, weighed in on all this last week. He called Bolsonaro's trial a witch hunt when he announced a 50 % tariff on Brazil. But before that happened, Terry and Marina got a rare and exclusive window into the former Brazilian president's thinking and his desire for a Trump intervention.

3:37Bolsonaro met with them one morning this spring at the Liberal Party headquarters in Brasilia. They spoke over coffee.

3:45Jair Bolsonaro:How are you? Ready? From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Elahe Izadi. It's Monday, July 14th. Today, Terry and Marina take us into the revealing morning they had with former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. We learn why. Despite some of the similarities between Bolsonaro and Trump, the two men are in very different situations right now. And we explore what Bolsonaro's case can tell us about democracy in the U.S.

4:25Terry, Marina, thank you both so much for joining me today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. First, let me ask you both if you can just give me quick background on who Jair Bolsonaro is. So Jair Bolsonaro is a figure that rose from the fringes of Brazilian politics and was widely known for someone who made a lot of offensive comments and incendiary comments that were misogynistic, racist. But he wasn't really known for any sort of legislative successes, any sort of real power that he held. The other major thing he was known for was the fact that he has been a longtime admirer of the Brazilian dictatorship.

5:04and the Brazilian dictatorship ruled the country for 20 years from 1964 to 1985. And during that time, a lot of people were disappeared, a lot of people were tortured and Jair Bolsonaro was somebody who was an admirer of that. And he ultimately rose as sort of being this sort of outsider type political identity to power. And I understand both of you met with him in person. First of all, how big of a deal is it to have a sit-down meeting with Jair Bolsonaro right now in this moment? This is a figure that has been polarized and divided Brazil like no other in recent years. And in this moment right now, he's now potentially going to jail.

5:44So this is a crucial moment in Brazilian politics and also just in Latin American politics in this tug of war between the authoritarian right and democratic forces across the world. To sit down and have that moment with him, I felt, was a really important opportunity. And Marina, what about for you? You're a reporter with The Post, but you're also a Brazilian journalist. How did you feel going into this interview? I met Bolsonaro before a few times, so I've seen him a few times before that. But it was the first time that I got to sit with him for an exclusive interview with another journalist with me.

6:21And this other journalist was a man, Terry. Yeah. So why is that relevant here? Because there is a gender thing like Bolsonaro respects better when he's talking to a man. And I had a history with Bolsonaro. Yeah, like he called me a rule term as a woman once when I asked him a question he didn't like about Brazil's fundings. It was nothing super important. In public? In public, yeah, during like a press conference when he was in Texas in 2019. I was the U.S. correspondent for a Brazilian newspaper and I went to cover this trip. And so I asked him a question and he didn't like it and he yelled at me and etc.

7:08So we have this history. Oh, wow. But I was nervous about how he would react. So let's start there. You both make your way to this meeting in Prasília at the Liberal Party headquarters. Then you arrive. Put me there with you. Terry, how did that meeting start? What happened in the beginning? Well, I just remember going into this meeting and we were just sitting there waiting for him. We turned on our recorders. We just made it inside the headquarters, the Partido Liberal, the PL party in Brazil. And this is where Bolsonaro spends most of his days. And I was just glancing about the room. I was glancing about the Liberal Party headquarters.

7:48And I was just taken aback by the number of images and photos and paintings. And you walk into the headquarters. It's just a giant poster of Bolsonaro in front of thousands of people. Any way you could render Jair Bolsonaro's image was represented in this place. You see on the coffee mugs, there's pictures of him. I mean, his representation was just omnipresent. And then coming into the room was Jair Bolsonaro himself. And in that moment, just seeing him come in... Good morning. Good morning. Surprised by how big he was and physically imposing he was. I'm about six foot one, and he's about my height.

8:34And he was big, gregarious, and really took over that room. I mean, he was in a good mood. Like, I was not expecting that. Like, he knows that he might be convicted. Yeah. So I was expecting that he'd be a little more depressed. Exactly. The imprint of Trump feels pretty distinct here at the office, right here in the meeting room where we're going to meet with Bolsonaro. We walk into the suite where we're going to meet with Bolsonaro, and one of the first things we see when we arrive is on the table there, in the meeting room, there is a book, like a big, thick coffee table book, and it's about Donald Trump.

9:12And on the front page of that book is a handwritten note from Trump to Bolsonaro saying, Jair, you are great.

9:24And he wants to show us, like, how he gets this, how he has a signature from Trump.

9:35And he was like, I didn't pay for it. Everybody needed to buy this book, but he sent it to me. So it was like one of the first things that he wants us to see, like his relationship with Trump. And why do you think he was so insistent on showing you that during this meeting? So he admires Trump. Like he was expecting that Trump could say something about him, supporting him. You mean supporting Bolsonaro as he's fighting this case? Yes, because Brazilian authorities, they are investigating and they say they have proofs that he was in charge of a coup attempt in Brazil. So he is in this moment where he is trying to be in the stage while he fights against to go to jail.

10:30Yeah, I want to ask you more about what Bolsonaro said it would mean to get that support from Trump now. But what was Trump and Bolsonaro's relationship like when Bolsonaro was in power? Well, when he was the president, they were close. I mean, Bolsonaro doesn't speak English, okay? So he needs always a translation to talk to Trump. But of course, they like each other. And literally, Bolsonaro said once, I love you during a meeting to Donald Trump when he was in New York for the UN summit. During his time in the presidency and even the years after the presidency for Trump during his first term, he said a lot of very, very warm things about Bolsonaro, who always, Bolsonaro embraced Trump and Trumpism in a way that few other politicians had.

11:25And Trump became enamored of that and talked about Bolsonaro. You know, he rooted for Bolsonaro during the 2022 election here in Brazil.

11:31Jair Bolsonaro:To the people of Brazil, you have a great opportunity to reelect a fantastic leader, a fantastic man, one of the great presidents of any country in the world, President Bolsonaro. He's done an absolutely incredible job with your economy, with your country. Terry and Marina, I feel like at the center of what Bolsonaro is now facing is what happened on January 8th, 2023 in Brazil. And this is right after Bolsonaro lost his reelection. I know this is a big part of your conversation with him. In the U.S., we talk about January 6, 2021, the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. But January 8, 2023 in Brazil was when many of Bolsonaro's supporters vandalized Brazil's Capitol and presidential palace in response to election results of Bolsonaro losing.

12:25Terry, tell me more about what happened on January 8th. So January 8th was what can only be considered an insurrection or popular uprising.

12:44Thousands of people descended upon Brasilia. They were joined by something of a radical faction that had been camping out in front of military barracks in Brasilia. calling for the military to subvert democracy and take over the country and install a military control once more. And those people joined this mass of thousands of protesters, and the movement became increasingly unruly as the morning drew on until early afternoon when it was a storming of all three branches of Brazilian democracy, the Supreme Court, the presidential palace, and the congressional buildings. They broke into these buildings and they vandalized them.

13:36And it was stunning to see just such a striking echo of what had happened in Washington on January 6th, but this was in Brazil. And I should also say that Bolsonaro himself set the stage for this violence. He was saying that his election loss in 2022 was false, that the election was rigged against him, that his voters were being cheated without ever providing any evidence. In this interview, how did Bolsonaro recount that day? He denied that he was part of it. He denies that he was the leader of that movement. So he, after losing the election, he flew to the United States. So he was here in the U.S.

14:21while January 8th was happening. And this is his defense now. I have nothing to do with this because I was in the U.S. I was not even in Brazil. Wasn't he like in a Publix, like a grocery store? Is that true? Yeah. Like he was in Florida. Yeah. So like he was like trying to show that he was a simple man trying to live a simple life in the U.S. while everything back there in Brazil was happening. So this is his defense. I am a victim of the system. People are, like, attacking me, but I have nothing to do with this. The major thing he's trying to get across to us in this interview is the fact that the people who were storming the Capitol that day on January 8th, which was a violent assault on the three pillars of Brazilian government, was he's trying to recast that day as something of a protest by very innocent people.

15:18He talked a lot about how it was just popcorn sellers or people who sell simple things in the streets trying to say these were just like regular everyday folk. These are not hardened criminals. And so this was his narrative that day was that this was not the act of a military coup. was not the act of armed men on the streets. It was the act of regular, everyday Brazilians who were led to believe by Bolsonaro's own rhetoric that the election had been stolen from them and stolen from Bolsonaro, a conclusion that he had asserted multiple times. Yeah, and in his telling, you know, it sounds like he's really downplaying the violence.

16:04And Marina, I'm wondering for you, what was going through your mind as he's telling you this? Because as I understand it, you were there on January 8th in Brasilia as this was unfolding. Yeah. So it was a Sunday. Yeah. January 8th that year was a Sunday. So I was not working that day. I was having lunch with my husband at a restaurant. And then I started to see people passing through the restaurant. A lot of people, and they were like wearing a Brazilian jersey, which is like a symbol of Bolsonaro's supporter. Yeah, Brazil's soccer team jersey. And I told my husband, like, look, something is happening here.

16:49So I texted Anthony Faiola, who was working with me. He would be there in Brasilia the next day on Monday. And I said, I think the Brazilian January 6th is happening today. And he was like, are you sure? And I was like, I'm 100 % sure. Wow. And Anthony Viola is a reporter for The Post. Exactly. And he was like, do you feel comfortable to go there? And I was like, yeah, of course. Like, this is happening here. I'm a reporter. I'm going down there. So I went there and I started to cover. Yeah. So I started to interview people. I started to record videos, photos, and I was listening to this woman talking about, oh, in the U.S.

17:35this happened. Do you remember that? So she was talking about January 6th. And this is someone you're just interviewing there. Exactly. So I heard her saying that. And, like, I approached her and I said, hey, I am a journalist from an American outlet. Can I interview you about your views? Yeah. And she was like, yeah, yeah, I can do that. So I started asking a few questions. And at some point, there was this guy behind her who started yelling at me.

18:13I asked her, like, do you think this was inspired by January 6th? And she would say yes.

18:24And then he started to say, no, there is no inspiration. Here there was fraud, election fraud. Don't answer her, he said. Don't answer her. And I said, I am asking a question. And he was like, no, you are not asking any questions. You are putting some words in her mouth. And he started to run after me. and so I run and at some point someone pulled me on the ground and a lot of people started to beat me to pull my hair they broke my glasses it was a nightmare and was I don't know dozens of people like a lot of people around me beat me beating me and I thought I will die. I'm not exaggerating. Like, it was very, very terrifying.

19:20And at some point, there was this guy that got me out of the... Like, pulled you up. Yes, exactly. And then a military guy, he got me and put me inside a building to protect me. But this group, they stayed out of the building like threw in things and like yelling at me even when I was inside the building they kept trying to cut after you yes it's a lot of anger yeah

19:55so yeah there was violence and there was a lot of violence yeah and then you know as you go to this interview with Bolsonaro and hearing him say that this day was, you know, wasn't so violent and, you know, these are just regular people and giving your own experience. I mean, how was it for you to hear him say that? Yeah, I mean, like as a journalist, like our job is not like debate everything with him, but we need to put in a context. Yeah. And this is what we we did. We write about what he's saying, but we put everything in a context, in a big picture. so we can show people what happened that day.

20:38I was a victim of that violence, but I didn't say anything to him because it was not my role there.

20:51After the break, how a fraudulent COVID vaccine card led investigators to uncover an alleged coup attempt. We'll be right back.

21:34We'll be right back. John Deere certified pre-owned equipment and more options to their lineup can shop at machinefinder.com. Booyah!

21:42Jair Bolsonaro:Did you know you can play the Washington Post's games for free? Find the crossword, keyword, ridges, and on the record in the Washington Post app or at washingtonpost.com slash games. No subscription required.

22:02You know, listening to you both talk about January 8th, it makes me think about January 6th in this country and how this country has over the years responded to that event, the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol in various iterations and forms. And I'm wondering, Terry, how would you describe how Brazil as a country responded to the events of January 8th and made sense of what happened? Yeah, very differently. And I think a lot of this comes back, Alahi, to the different relationships that both countries have had with authoritarianism and with dictatorships. Where in Brazil, this is a country that did live under the shadow of authoritarianism and dictatorship and all that that means for 20 years.

22:48And when it came out of that, when it came out of that shadow in the mid-1980s and finally in 1988 with the passage of a new constitution, it created a framework that analysts here call democracy preservation laws. And that is a legal framework that really enabled the offending politicians or corrupt officials to be held to account. And there are laws that prosecutors can follow and then actually hold these folks to account when something like that happens. So when there was an alleged coup attempt in Brazil in 2022 and 2023, prosecutors and investigators already had that legal framework on which they could lean upon and to be able to prosecute these cases.

23:39And so there's something in Brazil called the TSE, which is the Electoral System Court. This is something that the United States does not have. It's a court through which politicians can be pretty much disqualified from being able to run for court again or be able to run for politics again or a political office. And that is something that Brazil has to be able to hold politicians to account that the United States just doesn't have a system like that. So you saw this system really kicking into gear after January 8th.

24:16So there's this investigation. And what did this investigation turn up? The whole thing started off, actually, because when Jair Bolsonaro went to the United States after losing the election, he went in with a vaccine card, a COVID vaccine card that authorities said was fraudulent. And through the investigation of that fraudulent COVID vaccination card, investigators started looking into a lot more conversations of his top deputies, his top allies. And that ultimately led them to unravel what is alleged to be a operatic drama to subvert Brazilian democracy and to keep Jair Bolsonaro in power. And what that meant was it was something of a longtime concerted effort, they say, by Bolsonaro and his allies to, A, undermine confidence in the Brazilian vote, and then, B, when Lula won to actively try to create an emergency set of powers that would disqualify those election results.