Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Bolsonaro: Is it all over for the 'Trump of the Tropics'?
Sun, 23 Feb 2025
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, barred from running for office until 2030, has been charged with plotting a coup after his 2022 defeat. He remains a strong political force. Can he make a comeback?The Global Story brings you trusted insights from BBC journalists worldwide. We want your ideas, stories and experiences to help us understand and tell #TheGlobalStory. Email us at [email protected] You can also message us or leave a voice note via WhatsApp on +44 330 123 9480. Producers: Alice Aylett Roberts, Laurie Kalus and Beth Timmins Sound engineer: Mike Regaard Assistant editor: Sergi Forcada Freixas Senior news editor: China Collins
Chapter 1: What is the premise of 'Bolsonaro: Is it all over for the Trump of the Tropics'?
Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Oliver Conway with your weekly bonus from The Global Story, which brings you a single story with depth and insight from the BBC's best journalists. There's a new episode every weekday, just search for The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode.
Here's my colleague, Johnny Diamond.
He inspires passion and loathing in equal measure. He rose to the presidency as an outsider, dominating social media and railing against progressive elites. And when he lost power in the election, he refused to concede. Instead, his supporters stormed the Capitol, falsely claiming the election had been stolen. But he is not Donald Trump. He is Jair Bolsonaro, until 2022, the President of Brazil.
The similarities led to the nickname Trump of the Tropics. The relationship between the two men is so strong that Bolsonaro was invited to Trump's inauguration. He said he was so excited that he'd stop taking Viagra. So, with Trump back in office, is Bolsonaro on his way back? His supporters, and he has lots, would love that.
But he's been barred from running for election by the courts, and now he's been accused of planning a coup. Is this the end for Jair Bolsonaro? With me today is the BBC South America correspondent, Ione Wells. She's in Sao Paulo. Hi, Ione. Hi, Jonny. Jair Bolsonaro is a curiosity because he has a very high name recognition for the president or the former president of a South American nation.
People know who he is in a way that they don't know the names of other former presidents. How is it that he made his name in Brazilian politics?
In Brazilian politics, he rose up before he was elected, he was in the army, he was in Congress, and then eventually, of course, won Brazil's presidency in 2018.
President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro.
I think one of the reasons, though, he became very well known across the world was really the platform and the rhetoric that he stood on.
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Chapter 2: Why is Jair Bolsonaro compared to Donald Trump?
Yeah, I think he was always a real, as we say in the UK, a Marmite figure. People love him or hate him. As president, he did do lots of things. He slashed environmental protections in the Amazon, which his critics hated because it fuelled deforestation. But his supporters loved it because it promoted farming, mining, business in the area.
He still actually got quite a lot of support in that sort of Amazon region where... People that are working in agriculture, for example, want more development in the area, want less environmental protections. He did things like raise the minimum wage, relaxed gun ownership laws. He was very opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage.
He also oversaw the country's COVID response, which again was quite divisive because... Brazil had one of the worst death tolls in the world. Brazil has now surpassed China's official death toll from the coronavirus, but the country's president continues to downplay the threat from the virus.
His supporters praised him for some of what he did, including, you know, big, big cash handout programs for some of the poorest in the country. But... His critics accused him of really downplaying the virus. There was a famous viral clip of him where he essentially just sort of dismissed it as a little flu, you know, was accused of not taking it very seriously.
And I think that period, especially, you know, I think actually we did see this a bit around the world everywhere, that no matter what the policy of the person in charge during Covid, you know, the response to it could really energise people.
the leaders supporters, but it could also really turn people against them because of, you know, some of the struggles that people were going through at the time. So he definitely did face a sort of big backlash, you know, by his critics, but I think he has still managed to maintain a very strong base, even to this day now in Brazil.
And that was reflected in the 2022 presidential election, which, though he lost, it was more fingernail loss than landslide, wasn't it?
That's right. President Lula da Silva, now President Lula da Silva, who he was running against, ran again in 2022, which did give the left a big boost because he's a big name, a well-known figure, had been president before. Lula won the first round of that election in 2022, but not quite by enough to secure it for him. In the second round, Lula only received 50.9% of the vote. Bolsonaro got 49.1%.
So this was the closest presidential election result in Brazil to date. which I think really laid the ground for a very, very controversial result either way. When that result happened, Bolsonaro neither conceded defeat nor really challenged the results that divided the nation. There was a lot of kind of uncertainty as to why he wasn't really saying much at the time.
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