Brazilian “witch hunt”

When an ally is trained in justice, the American president is quick to denounce a “witch hunt” and to question the investigation. Even abroad. This is what he did for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, accused of corruption. And for the leader of the national rally in France, Marine Le Pen, found guilty of embezzlement.

But in the case of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, accused of conspired to stay in power after his 2022 defeat, Donald Trump added a layer.

Customs duties

In a letter struck by the seal of the White House and addressed to its current Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, Trump asked last week a judicial process against Bolsonaro, “immediately”. Before continuing on a threat of imposing customs duties of 50 % from 1^is August, justified “partly”, he wrote, by “insidious attacks on free elections” and “censorship” of American social media in Brazil.

The country of South America is one of the few not having a trade deficit with the United States.

“It’s very worrying,” reacted Feliciano Guimarães, university director of the Brazilian Center for International Relations, attached to São Paulo. Not only because the United States is the second business partner in Brazil, but above all, for the reason put forward.

President Lula also denounced “interference” and promised to impose reciprocal rights if the United States went ahead.

Supreme Court

But even if he had been open to Trump’s requests, he would not have had the power to dictate to justice the abandonment of the accusations against his predecessor.

Nor to adopt a new law to bypass the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Brazil to make the online platforms responsible for the content transmitted on their sites. Web giants – Americans – are therefore exposed to costly prosecution if they do not set up better content moderation.

One of the Brazilian judges, Alexandre de Moraes – responsible for the Bolsonaro file – is particularly in the line of Camp Maga, especially for his role against the web giants. In Brazil, it is perceived as a particularly powerful figure. And client.

Trump’s media enterprise filed a pursuit against him in February, accusing him of censor right voices. Elon Musk also had a knit to leave with the judge of the Supreme Court, when X was put out of access after the company’s refusal to suspend accounts threatening democracy in Brazil. The social network then folded to the Brazilian law and was again made accessible.

The Trump camp has often denounced “attacks on freedom of expression”. And, again, in the missive evoking customs duties.

“There are few democratic countries that have such an absolutist vision of freedom of expression as the United States,” said Rafael Ioris, a specialist in Brazil attached to the University of Denver. In Brazil, the law regulates freedom of expression; You can’t just accuse someone without proof, for example. »»

Divisions

Trump did not hide his respect for Bolsonaro, sometimes nicknamed the “Trump of the Tropics”. The current president of Brazil is a bit of antithesis.

With its media outing, the resident of the White House may try to influence the course of the Brazilian election of 2026 by supporting the Bolsonaro family-the sons of the former president being also in politics-or a more aligned candidate with his values, fears Mr. Guimarães.

If many Brazilians have received comments with surprise and indignation, the supporters of the former leader see things from another eye.

So part of the population “applauded, saying that it is a measure to restore democracy,” adds Rafael Ioris.

The Base Maga also perceives Trump as a “knight”, a strong man who is the defense of another leader, advances David Haglund, professor of political studies at the Queen’s University. But it is also in the style of the American president to recall his own experiences by converting to other politicians in the same vein.

“The American president is very sensitive to his own experience: he thinks that he was unjustly treated by American justice and he links his experience to that of Jair Bolsonaro, arguing that he was right to evoke fraud for his electoral defeat of 2022, as he claims for the 2020 American elections,” he said.

The assault on the Brazilian Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidential Palace in Brasília on January 8, 2023 by thousands of defeated presidents of the president was often compared to the same vein in Washington in January 2021.

With the New York Times