00:00Let's move to Brazil because Jair Bolsonaro, the 38th president who ruled from 2019 to 2023,
00:06is under house arrest right now, looking at the prospect of spending the rest of his life beyond
00:10bars. The 70-year-old former army captain turned right-wing politician was convicted yesterday of
00:15plotting a coup and attempting to assassinate the current president, Lula da Silva. It's been a
00:20sensational case with several of his entourage and military officials also in the dock and
00:25predictable too, given the avalanche of evidence against him and key associates turned whistleblower
00:31in the case too. He calls it a witch hunt and significantly so does his friend, President
00:36Trump. The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is also threatening to respond, quote, accordingly
00:41in what he called an unjust political persecution by the Brazilian authorities, including the
00:47Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, who the U.S. accused of being, quote, sanctioned
00:52human rights abuser. The sanctions come from Washington. So some incredible twists and
00:57turns in this affair with profound implications for Brazil. Let's bring in Anthony Pereira in
01:03London, professor specialising in Brazilian politics, democracy, human rights at King's
01:07College and director of King's Brazil Institute. It is great to have you on the programme this
01:12evening, Professor. First of all, you've spent a long time looking at this case. In your view,
01:18how watertight is it? How clear is the evidence against Jair Bolsonaro?
01:25Oh, thanks for introducing me. I should say I'm no longer the director of the Brazil Institute at
01:29King's, but I'm a visiting professor there. Yes, I think the evidence, if you go back to November
01:35of 2024 and read the two federal police reports about the coup plot, there's a lot of very strong
01:44evidence that Jair Bolsonaro was trying to get members of the armed forces to support him in
01:52not handing over power to to President Lula. So that's why I think, as you said, it wasn't that
01:59surprising that the verdict has come in and that he's been found guilty by four of the five judges
02:05in the Supreme Court. So I think that part was sort of expected. I think one of the interesting things
02:10is now what Jair Bolsonaro is going to try to do politically, because he may be ruled out now as
02:19a candidate for the 2026 election, but people are expecting him to endorse a candidate or to take a
02:26position in this upcoming race. And it's not clear exactly which way he's going to go.
02:32It's a very good point, Anthony. And actually, I do wonder what you think this does to the base,
02:36because he has this huge support, doesn't he? You call him Mito, the legend. It's kind of a
02:43worshipful following. But those within, I mean, is across the board, is there a support for him?
02:48Are we starting to see figures coming out, trying to make their own path, kind of distancing
02:52themselves from Bolsonaro on the right? Yeah, that is starting to happen. So an example of that would
02:59be Eduardo Leche, governor of Rio Grande do Sul. He's not a supporter of Lula. He wants Lula to be
03:04defeated in 2026. But he is accepting the verdict, and he's distancing himself from Bolsonaro.
03:10Not all politicians on the sort of right side of the spectrum are doing that. Tarcisio de Freitas in
03:16Sao Paulo is saying that if he were to be elected, he would amnesty Bolsonaro. So I think this issue is
03:22going to carry on into the 2026 election. And it's really a decision, I think, for the opposition
03:28to Lula, is whether they want to embrace this verdict and say that they agree with it and that
03:34they're constitutionalists, or whether they adopt the narrative that President Trump himself is
03:39adopting and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and they say, this is a witch hunt, this was
03:45unconstitutional, this was unfair, and so on.
03:47What strikes me in just listening to the kind of state of the moment in the US, listening to the
03:55governor in Utah talking about this being an absolute pivotal moment in the direction of
03:59the US, and if we reflect on the situation in Brazil right now, I just wonder whether you think
04:05this is a point to which you are worried that it could appear the supporters could flood the streets
04:10of Bolsonaro. How do you see things playing out in the coming days and weeks?
04:16Yeah, I think there are similar risks in the two countries of polarisation spilling over into
04:22violence. I think that's why the upcoming decision, the legal decision, about where Bolsonaro would be,
04:29where he would serve his sentence, is quite consequential. His lawyers will probably ask that
04:36he'd be able to remain in house arrest. And from the point of view of the Lula government,
04:41that might be a better outcome than actually sending him to a prison cell, as was done with
04:47President Lula when he went to prison for about 18 months between 2018 and 2019. The reason that might
04:55be preferable for the Lula government is that it's less likely to bring people onto the streets for his
05:02base to see him as a martyr. And it would be the status quo of what we have now. So, but I think
05:09that is a good point that you're raising. And, you know, the base is going to carry on with this
05:16narrative, I think, that this was an unfair and political and biased judgment.
05:21And the connection still with his son, Eduardo, that connection with Steve Bannon, the friendship
05:26between them. I also want to talk about the courts in this, because there's been a lot of genuine
05:32concern more generally about the power of Brazil's courts, the way they work, who can bring cases and
05:37whether there is overreach more generally. And I think that takes us to perhaps the bogeyman for
05:41the right alongside the current president is Alexandre de Moraes. Tell us about him. He's faced death
05:47threats. He's the target in an assassination plot that I mentioned, but he also faces US sanctions.
05:53Yeah, I think the country is very split on Alexandre de Moraes, the way it is generally on Lula as
06:03well. I think there's, you know, close to half the population doesn't trust the Supreme Court
06:10and Alexandre de Moraes, about half, little over half does. He probably has overreached in the past.
06:20He was very aggressive at closing down certain social media accounts in Brazil, especially during
06:28the election of 2022. I think what's important to remember, though, is that some of these actions
06:36were not related purely to freedom of speech and people coming up with opinions about politics.
06:43There was this attempt to subvert the elections and to overturn the transition to the elected
06:53government of Lula. So that's something I think is insufficiently appreciated outside of Brazil.
06:59But I think even people who applaud the conviction of Bolsonaro and think that the Supreme Court acted
07:06wisely in this case, some of them would still also prefer to rein the Supreme Court in a bit and have it be less
07:16of a protagonist in Brazilian democracy going forward.
07:19When we look at the situation as to what could happen next with the US, with a response being
07:27threatened from Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, we are yet to see what it is. There's already 50%
07:31tariffs. It's trying to understand what is your view on whether this, what the motives are here and
07:39whether it's simply that it's a right-left issue. There's been previous, clearly, with President
07:44Lula and President Trump and a kind of pivot towards China for many years for Brazil. What do you think
07:50is at the crux of US political positioning right now? I think a lot of it has to do with Donald Trump
07:57seeing in Bolsonaro himself, seeing the travails that he had after the insurrection in 2021 in
08:07Washington, DC. And so he very much identifies with Bolsonaro. I think one interesting question is
08:13how far is Trump going to push his support for Bolsonaro? Because now that Bolsonaro has been
08:19convicted, and this looks like a sort of definitive legal judgment, Trump is famously transactional.
08:26Might he simply think, well, this guy has lost judicially. He's lost politically. He's no use to me
08:35anymore. There's no point in me pushing this. And there's very little area to go once the tariffs are up
08:41to 50%. And the sanctions have been placed on the five Supreme Court justices. So I'm not sure that
08:49Trump has the stamina to continue to support Bolsonaro, although his son, Eduardo Bolsonaro,
08:56certainly hopes he will. And he's saying that there will be further retaliations from the US side. But
09:04it's hard to know what those will be. There's been very few specifics about what the Trump administration
09:10intends to do in reaction to this, what is clearly a domestic judicial case.
09:19It leads me to a brief point about, whilst there's kind of instability diplomatically, given the pressure
09:25from the most powerful country in the world to President Lula, what's the result in terms of his
09:30popularity? Is he seeing a bounce in the polls?
09:32He did see a bounce, yes. A small one, but he saw a bounce in his popularity. I think the fact that
09:41he's defending, he's seen as defending Brazilian national sovereignty has helped him politically.
09:47Equally, on the other side, the fact that Bolsonaro seems to want to damage Brazil's interests,
09:53his economic interests, in order to save his own family and personal political interests,
09:58has hurt him politically. I saw an interview with General Cruz, who had served in the cabinet of
10:04Bolsonaro in his term as presidency. And Cruz was baffled why Eduardo Bolsonaro would be
10:13trying to get the Trump administration to hurt Brazil economically through these tariffs.
10:19And as a nationalist, he thought that was not a good thing to do. So yes, we don't know if this
10:25bounce that Lula has received from this case will carry on into the 2026 election,
10:32because that's a long way away. That's October of 2026. But he has, he seemed to benefit,
10:38at least up to now, from this confrontation.
10:43Great to talk to you this evening. Thank you, Anthony. Anthony Pereira, professor, specialising
10:48in Brazilian politics, visiting professor at King's Colleagues, also director of the
10:52Kimberley Green Latin American and Caribbean Centre in Miami. Thanks for your time.
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