With 55% of the vote, Jair Bolsonaro has won the second round of Presidential voting in Brazil and has been elected their 42nd President.
President Donald Trump called to congratulate him, Sarah Sanders confirmed on Sunday night. Per Reuters:
Trump and Bolsonaro agreed to “work side-by-side to improve the lives of the people of the United States and Brazil, and as regional leaders, of the Americas,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
Some of Jair Bolsonaro’s viewpoints have been considered extreme. They have been covered in prior TNB articles. Rather than back away from his positions, he has doubled down.
His democratic credentials are constantly questioned, also a first in presidential elections since Collor. A week ago, he publicly said that his adversaries should be arrested or exiled, while a video where his son Eduardo said it was easy to close the Supreme Court went viral.
Folha de Sao Paolo
As argued by Foreign Policy, it was not simply the nationalists who voted for Jair. A combination of rampant crime, high unemployment and the failure of socialist economic policies, and propaganda spread by social media bolstered him, as did the open corruption of a main opponent, Lula, who ran his campaign from his prison cell.
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