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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns Brazil, the only country whose flag lets a little circle wear a fancy sash. Isn't that nice? The circle's all dressed up for its big day being on the flag.

Speaker 1

00:16

Brazil is 1 of the largest democracies in the world, with more than 156 million people eligible to vote. And next Sunday, it's having a massive election. We've mentioned Brazil's elections on this show before, partly because campaign ads there can be spectacular. Like this 1 from a man currently running for state deputy.

Speaker 2

00:34

That is a sick samurai. I'm Samurai Taxi Driver. You can find me around Pernambuco.

Speaker 1

00:42

10554.

Speaker 2

00:43

1.

Speaker 1

00:44

♪♪ Excellent. Look, I don't know anything about nunchucks. I don't know if they are historically a part of samurai taxi driver culture, and I don't know if using your armpits so much is usually a part of it, but I will say this, I'm impressed that he spent so much time learning to use them, but seemingly 0 time learning how to edit out the part of the video where he turns his phone off.

Speaker 1

01:15

-... Many elected positions are on the ballot in Brazil next Sunday, from governors to senators, but the key 1 is the office of president, where Jair Bolsonaro is running for re-election. Now, you may remember, 4 years ago, we actually discussed his first presidential run. I assume.

Speaker 1

01:30

I don't watch this show. But if you missed it, a quick recap. Bolsonaro is a right-wing, ex-military populist who, when in Congress, told a female colleague, I wouldn't rape you, you're not worth it, has said, I would prefer my son to die in an accident than to have him be gay, and loves making finger guns all the fucking time. Basically, Bolsonaro campaigned as a misogynistic homophobe who gestures like he runs a tech startup.

Speaker 1

01:56

But now, he's campaigning as an incumbent president. And he's been drawing on all the perks of the office, including recently turning the 200th anniversary of Brazilian independence into what was essentially a campaign rally for himself.

Speaker 3

02:09

His rally in Brazil's capital city, Brasilia, drew tens of thousands of supporters and a military display of planes, parachutists and tanks.

Speaker 1

02:18

-♪♪ -♪♪

Speaker 3

02:20

Even the embalmed heart of monarch Dom Pedro I, who declared Brazil's independence from Portugal 200 years ago, was brought over from Europe to be on display.

Speaker 1

02:31

Wow. First, if you were wondering what Don Pedro I died of, it was probably his heart looking like that. But, it's true. They put a two-century-old heart on an Air Force plane and flew it to Brazil.

Speaker 1

02:45

It is actually the first unnaturally preserved human body part to fly on a military jet since all of Tom Cruise. -♪ ♪ -♪♪ Bolsonaro's main opponent in this election is former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He was incredibly popular while in office, but later got caught up in the international corruption investigation Operation Car Wash, even landing in prison during Brazil's last election so he couldn't run. But, his conviction has since been annulled, and polls now consistently show him leading the race by a wide margin, about 10%.

Speaker 1

03:16

But the concerns in Brazil are that if, as seems likely, Bolsonaro loses, he won't give up his office without a fight, and could even follow Trump's example in encouraging supporters to back a tropical version of the Capitol riot. Which isn't great, although for the record, you really don't have to use the word tropical to describe an insurrection just because you're talking about Latin America. Especially because tropical riot sounds like a Mountain Dew flavor that was recalled for blinding several children. And Bolsonaro's version of January 6th could be a lot more destructive than Trump's, given that he has done a great deal to cultivate support within his military.

Speaker 1

03:55

All of which makes it more than a little concerning when he stands in front of his supporters and says things like this.

Speaker 2

04:02

I've got the best alternatives. There are only 3 alternatives for me. To be arrested, to be killed, or to be victorious.

Speaker 1

04:10

-♪

Speaker 3

04:10

You see how...

Speaker 1

04:10

♪ -♪

Speaker 3

04:12

You see how...

Speaker 1

04:13

♪

Speaker 2

04:13

And I tell those scumbags, I will never go to jail.

Speaker 1

04:16

-♪ Yeah! ♪ -♪ Yeah! ♪ Okay, that is never a good omen, is it?

Speaker 1

04:20

No 1 says that before doing something pleasant. No 1 says their options are victory, prison, or death before they say, march into the great British bake-off tents for biscuit week. Not even the German guy, and honestly, I was half expecting that from him. The first round of the election is next Sunday.

Speaker 1

04:38

And if no 1 wins more than 50% of the vote, it will go to a second round on October 30th. Although, worryingly, Bolsonaro has already said that if he doesn't win outright next Sunday, receiving at least 60 percent of the vote, something, quote, abnormal took place. So if 1 of the world's biggest democracies seems like it might be barreling towards a cliff, tonight, let's talk about Jair Bolsonaro, the man with his foot planted firmly on the gas. And let's start with the fact that, unfortunately, he's governed pretty much exactly how he said he was going to.

Speaker 1

05:08

He's followed through on a big campaign promise to make guns more freely available in Brazil, loosening gun laws to the point that, since he took office, the number of guns in private hands has doubled to nearly 2000000, despite polls showing the majority of Brazilians are against making the sale and possession of weapons easier. So, he is giving people something they didn't ask for and don't want, which I believe is also the job description for the head of original programming at Netflix. But... Much more than that, Bolsonaro has been an absolute disaster for the Amazon, a rainforest that is critical for Brazil, and, you know, the planet Earth.

Speaker 1

05:46

He has loosened regulations to expand logging and mining there, and massively scaled back protections and enforcement. And almost immediately after he took office, conditions deteriorated.

Speaker 4

05:58

Under Bolsonaro, deforestation is at its highest point in a decade, with an area 10 times the size of New York City destroyed through October this year. And in August, there was an average of a thousand fires every day.

Speaker 1

06:11

A thousand fires a day? That is so many fires! If you asked me what happens in the Amazon a thousand times a day, my first guess would be capybara's fucking.

Speaker 1

06:22

Self-explanatory. My second would be frog birthday parties. Statistically, there's gotta be at least 5, 000 of them with a birthday every day, and we have to assume that some combine parties for convenience and others just don't want to have a big thing this year. But exactly 0 of my guesses would be fires.

Speaker 1

06:38

These fires are often part of illegal deforestation to clear areas for industrial uses. Deforestation, incidentally, which can encroach on land where indigenous people live. And they have been forced to confront these loggers, ranchers, and miners on their own, which can be both very dangerous and deeply dispiriting.

Speaker 2

06:58

When we confront them, they say, Don't you watch the news? Bolsonaro said that when he won, we could take wood from indigenous land. This is what they say to us.

Speaker 1

07:07

Right. And it has got to be tough to fight someone taking your stuff when they feel they've got permission from the most powerful person in the country. If I stole your wallets, and then played a clip of Biden saying, hey, John, I don't give a shit if TV hosts rob their audience members. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and say 10 wrong or weird things in a row on 60 Minutes.

Speaker 1

07:26

There really wouldn't be much that you could do about it. The point is, the destruction of the Amazon under Bolsonaro has been devastating. In fact, while worldwide greenhouse gas emissions plummeted by almost 7 percent in 2020 due to the pandemic, Brazil's emissions actually grew by nearly 10 percent. And Bolsonaro's added insult to injury, claiming those fires in the Amazon were false flags, accusing outsiders of being part of a nefarious plot to seize Brazil's jungles, and directly accusing Leonardo DiCaprio of funding arson in the Amazon.

Speaker 1

08:00

Which is just absurd. Where would Leo find the time to do that? Between his busy film schedule, his daily yacht fuck, and having a big laugh at every tweet about his May to December love life. Oh, man, the internet got me again.

Speaker 1

08:15

Leo shouts to the richest people on the planet over a bottle of wine that costs more than your rent. But perhaps the defining catastrophe of Bolsonaro's presidency has been his handling of the COVID pandemic. Brazil has suffered massively. Over 34 million cases and over 685, 000 deaths.

Speaker 1

08:33

And right from the start, he refused to take it seriously. Initially, dismissing COVID as a little flu, and then once the death toll started rising, shrugging off responsibility in the most dickish possible way.

Speaker 2

08:46

Tudo agora é pandemia.

Speaker 5

08:48

Everything is about the pandemic nowadays. We have got to stop with this. I'm sorry for the dead, I'm sorry.

Speaker 5

08:54

But we're all gonna die 1 day. Everybody here is going to die. We have to stop being a country of sissies.

Speaker 1

09:01

Wow! That is just monumentally shitty. I've got to say, America's COVID response left a lot to be desired. But at least the CDC slogan was never, what are you complaining about?

Speaker 1

09:12

Death comes for all of us, man up and die in a hole. -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ But Bolsonaro didn't just abdicate responsibility for fighting COVID, he actively made it worse, attacking governors and anyone else who promoted shutdowns or social distancing. In fact, to the extent that lockdown orders were issued at all in Brazilian cities, They sometimes came from very surprising places.

Speaker 3

09:35

The situation has become so serious that the drug gangs that rule this slum and other slums in Rio de Janeiro have decreed a lockdown, and they have forbidden all clandestine parties from happening.

Speaker 1

09:48

It's true. Drug gangs ended up being more responsible when it came to COVID than the Brazilian government. Although, let's not give them too much credit for banning parties.

Speaker 1

09:57

You know what is pretty appealing when you're stuck inside with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Drugs. And what is so frustrating here is that Brazil was better positioned than many other countries to handle COVID. It has a long history of successful inoculation drives, starring their beloved vaccine mascot, Zega Chena, who, at best, looks like a super sperm, and at worst, a Klan member all dressed up for jazzercize.

Speaker 1

10:23

And yet, Bolsonaro not only so doubts about the vaccines, his administration delayed ordering doses for months. In fact, last year, Pfizer apparently reached out to the Brazilian government 81 times, trying to set up a deal to provide doses of vaccines, but most of the time, got no answer. And some of those emails from Pfizer were just sad. 1 read, -"Hope all is well with you." -$HOPE

Speaker 3

10:46

ALL IS WELL WITH YOU

Speaker 1

10:46

I just wanted to confirm that you received yesterday a communication sent on behalf of the president of Pfizer with the updated proposal of a possible supply of COVID-19 vaccines. Will you let me know? And come on, Pfizer, If you're getting ghosted like that, you've just got to be more blunt.

Speaker 1

11:03

Something like, attention dickheads, your country has COVID, we have a vaccine, let's do this thing. Or even, Earth to President bitch, stop subtweeting Leonardo DiCaprio and answer your fucking phone. -... And the thing is, it is not like Brazilians didn't want vaccines, proven by the fact that once they finally became available, virtually 100% of the adult populations in Rio and Sao Paulo got fully vaccinated, a number that no American city has managed to hit.

Speaker 1

11:33

And the COVID debacle would be comfortably enough for people to be done with Bolsonaro, but there is so much more, including the fact that despite running on an anti-corruption platform 4 years ago, Bolsonaro and his inner circle have since become engulfed in a growing number of criminal and legislative investigations. And while he has denied wrongdoing, 1 sign of just how touchy he is about these allegations is that when a journalist asked him about 1 of them, he replied, -"I feel like punching you in your mouth, okay? So it is just no wonder that he is trailing in the polls, which is not to say that Bolsonaro does not have his supporters, because he very much does, and they can be

Speaker 3

12:12

intense. Thousands of supporters lined up in front of this gym, next to Rio de Janeiro's iconic Maracana football stadium. Inside, crowds wearing the colors of the Brazilian flag cheer for President Jair Bolsonaro, calling him the messiah and the myth.

Speaker 1

12:30

-♪

Speaker 2

12:31

Rebecca! Rebecca!

Speaker 1

12:32

♪ -♪

Speaker 3

12:33

The police...

Speaker 2

12:33

The police... The police...

Speaker 1

12:34

♪ Okay, I love that man. I love his outfit, I love his face paint, I love the way he kind of looks like the Hulk losing his shit at a Green Bay Packers game. But what I love most of all is what appears to be a security guard over his shoulder, scanning the crowd for threats while looking everywhere but at the bright green man right in front of him, screaming so hard he might explode.

Speaker 1

12:55

And Bolsonaro seems to be deliberately laying the groundwork with his supporters for an eventual Trump-style refusal to accept the election results, even pointing to our last election as a cautionary tale for Brazilians.

Speaker 2

13:07

MAN TRANSLATING IN PORTUGUESE What happened in the American elections? Basically, the problem, the cause of this crisis, was the lack of trust in the vote. There were people who voted 3, 4 times.

Speaker 2

13:20

Dead people voted. It was a mess.

Speaker 1

13:22

Okay, great. So that is the January 6th op-ed absolutely no 1 needed, from the man no 1 wanted to hear it from, and from the camera angle that absolutely no 1 deserves. He's saying his stupid opinions out loud.

Speaker 1

13:34

You really don't have to go hunting for them right up his nostrils. -$1.5 million. Bolsonaro has been going out of his way to undermine faith in Brazil's election system, suggesting judges and officials are trying to sabotage his re-election and fear mongering about the country's electronic voting machines. Machines, incidentally, which are even the subject of ASMR election PSAs, like this 1.

Speaker 2

13:57

Orna eletrônica, ASMR. Você ainda tem dúvidas sobre as eleições? Estamos aqui pra descomplicar.

Speaker 2

14:06

E a pergunta da vez é... O que é voting?

Speaker 1

14:11

Horny. You know, every day, there are millions of people experiencing their own personal sexual awakenings. I'm guessing that today, at least 1 of them discovered that softly fondling Brazilian voting machines is apparently their thing. Welcome to the rest of your life.

Speaker 1

14:28

But Brazil's voting machines aren't just quietly erotic, they're also widely seen as secure. They are not connected to the Internet, which makes them all but impossible to hack. And it's worth knowing that since their introduction in 1996, authorities have never found any evidence of widespread fraud. Yet, Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked the machines as crooked, claiming that his margin of victory in 2018 actually should have been even larger.

Speaker 1

14:53

He even subjected a room full of diplomats to a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation accusing Brazil's elections of being rigged. And that is incredibly dangerous, partly because people will agree to anything if you threaten them with a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation. In our office, we have an email security seminar once a year, and this year, I broke my laptop with a hammer just so I could claim that it did not apply to me. It was the right call, and I will do it again.

Speaker 1

15:20

--LAUGHTER --And look, I don't want to waste too much time knocking down every 1 of Bolsonaro's complaints because it's pretty clear that in raising these objections in the run-up to the election, his intention isn't to maximize the security of the vote, but to maximize the amount of distrust that people have in it. And his supporters have been very much listening to his bullshit.

Speaker 2

15:42

If the elections are fair, he wins in the first round. Only in the first round.

Speaker 1

15:47

He will only lose the election if there is fraud, and the people will take to the streets to stop that from happening. You see, that's interesting, isn't it? Because if you look at that man, you'd think, oh, he loves Brazil.

Speaker 1

15:57

But if you listen to him, you'd learn he's willing to burn his country to the ground based on a flimsily laid conspiracy theory. But I guess that duality is just part of the boundless mystery and contradiction that makes human beings the absolute fucking worst. And given Bolsonaro's rhetoric, it is no wonder that there have already been outbreaks of violence. 1 Lula supporter was killed when a Bolsonaro supporter invaded his Lula-themed birthday party and shot him while shouting that all PT partisans, that is, supporters of Lula's political party, will die.

Speaker 1

16:30

So things are very tense right now in Brazil, and that is before you consider just how close Bolsonaro is to the armed forces there. Not only is he ex-military, and not only has he expressed admiration for the military dictatorship that ran the country until 1985, his government is also heavily stocked with military personnel, and some leaders of Brazil's armed forces have raised similar doubts to Bolsonaro's about the integrity of the elections, all of which has led some in Brazil to understandably worry about what lies ahead.

Speaker 6

17:06

This flirting of President Bolsonaro with the coup is not a recent thing, it's an old thing. The people that support him are willing to do anything, just like the supporters of President Donald Trump when the Capitol was invaded.

Speaker 2

17:22

MAN SPEAKING PORTUGUESE

Speaker 6

17:23

I have no doubt, I've even written about it, that here in Brazil we will have a tragic, dramatic repetition of what happened there.

Speaker 1

17:31

Yeah, except crucially, it could be much worse there. Because luckily for us, Trump's allies were generally limited to a shirtless man in a fur hat, a perpetually horse pillow baron, and some of his dumber children. But Bolsonaro has significant military support, and there is some question of what they might do in the event of an uprising, which raises the stakes significantly.

Speaker 1

17:55

Generally, when someone threatens democracy, it's a lot easier to say, you and what army, when you're absolutely certain that that person doesn't have an actual army behind them. The point is, for Brazil, there is a lot on the line here. And right now, it seems the most likely scenario is that no 1 will win outright next Sunday, meaning that both Bolsonaro and Lula head to a runoff on October 30th. But the weeks ahead could be extremely nerve-wracking.

Speaker 1

18:22

And the fact is, if Bolsonaro eventually loses and chooses to fight the results, it is going to test the strength of Brazil's relatively young democracy. So, to the people there who are worried right now, let me address you in the 2 languages that I know you'll understand. Portuguese, and of course, the language of the Chuck. So, please...

Speaker 1

18:43

-♪♪ And you will bear with me. -♪♪ Hola, Brasil. -♪♪ Sou a apresentador samurai. Sinto muito pelo que vocês estão passando nesse momento.

Speaker 1

18:59

So bear with me. That is our show. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 1

19:09

Good night.

Speaker 2

19:15

I just need to find the button.

Speaker 1

19:21

Is this it?

Speaker 2

19:30

You