498. Is Brazil on Path to Become Cuba? | Eduardo Bolsonaro
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So Brazil has been on people's minds more in the United States and perhaps in the world as of late.

Not least because Elon Musk has had a very public dispute with, what would you say, a renowned member of the Brazilian Supreme Court. And that has a multitude of implications.

for the battle between free speech and government regulation and ideological control across the world. Now, I had the opportunity today to speak with Mr. Eduardo Bolsonaro, who's a congressman in Brazil and who's also the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who was the president of Brazil, who's ran an unorthodox campaign, mostly on social media, and became president for a four-year term. And so...

We had a chance today to talk about the culture war in Brazil, which is very similar to the culture war that's running rampant in the United States and in Canada and in Europe and in New Zealand and Australia, all across the Western world and all across the world.

as a whole to a lesser degree, although that will mount. And we delved into, well, the political structure of Brazil, the political landscape there and how it's shifting as a consequence of the social media revolution. We spoke a fair bit about the background to the dispute that Musk is having with the Brazilian Supreme Court. And we outlined the implications of that dispute for the battle between free speech and government regulation and ideology, as I said, across the world.

It's been my experience that getting to know the political landscape on the various countries that I visited and have been able to familiarize myself with to some degree helps me deepen my understanding of what's relevant and important more locally, say in the United States, in Canada. And I think the discussion that I had today with Mr. Bolsonaro with regard to Brazil has exactly the same consequence.

There's something deep at work in the world at the moment, and you can see it reflected everywhere. And the more places you analyze it, the more positions you can analyze it from, the more the contours become clear. And so you can walk through this discussion with us. You'll learn more about South America and Central America. You'll learn more about Brazil. You'll learn more about the political landscape in general and about the culture war. Specifically, you'll

Have some new light shed on the battle between Musk and X and the Brazilian Supreme Court, and you'll walk away smarter and more informed. So that's a good deal. So join us for that. Well, Mr. Bolsonaro, thank you very much for coming in today. I was recently in South America. I spent a few days in Brazil. That was extremely interesting. And one of the things that

dawned on me when I was there, although I knew it a bit before, was that many of the issues that are relevant on the culture war front in North America and in Europe are equally relevant in South America and perhaps particularly in Brazil. And so I guess we should, and so that's why I thought at least in part that a podcast like this would be useful and interesting. Also,

There isn't a tremendous amount of attention paid to South American issues in the North American press, or in the European press for that matter, and that's probably not how it should be, all things considered. And I thought, well, because of that, it would also be useful to bring people some more information about South

South America, the political situation there, and again more specifically Brazil. So, but I think we'll start with a bit of a personal discussion. Let everybody know, well, who you are and what you're doing in Brazil and talk about your family and recent Brazilian history and then we'll expand out from there, I think. Sure, sure. Francis, great honor to be here with you, Professor.

Sure, after your trip to Brazil, you know that Brazilians usually love you because your courage and your background, the issues about Canada, even that made you to move yourself to US. We have the same problem in Brazil. But starting from your question before we go deep in all of this culture war and culture issues, my name is Eduardo Bolsonaro. I'm 40 years old.

I have two kids, one of four, my daughter, she has four years old and I have a boy of one. I'm very well married with Eloisa who led me to be here. And I'm the third son of the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. Before I talk about the recent political scenario, it's very important to remark that Brazil will leave from '64 until 1985 a military regime.

that started avoiding Brazil

to turn itself as Cuba because we had at that time a communist president that was trying to bring Brazil to the same situation of Cuba. So people on the street with the support of the Catholic Church and some other sectors of our society approved to the Congress to impeach this president. And then we start to have a period of time from '64 until '85 electing

Indirectly, because in these elections, the senators and the congressmen voted for president only, not the popular vote, only the Congress voting. But every five years, a new president, a military general president during this period of time. So after '85, we get back again with the democracy that we have nowadays and start to elect new presidents, as pretty much as like in United States.

And during this period of time, my father, in the end of the 80s, he was an army captain. So I was born in 1984. My father was an army captain and two older brothers than me.

And in the end of the '80s, my father had some problems inside of the army because he was complaining about the salary of the militaries, and he did not have the permission of his superiors to do interviews.

So he did an interview for a famous magazine in Brazil and he became very famous. But because of that, as he didn't have the permission of the superiors, he went 15 days in jail, in the military jail. And to calm down the situation, he ran for city council in Rio de Janeiro in 1988. Because when you do that, you receive three months off in the army,

And I'm not sure if he did expect to get elected, but he did get elected city council of Rio de Janeiro in 1988. And then 1990, he run for congressman, so federal representative, got elected. And every four years, he stayed 28 years inside of the Congress getting reelected, mainly through the votes of the militaries and their families.

So, in this situation, there is a very key point around 2010, I can tell you, where the politically correct in Brazil starts to increase a lot. Around 2010? Yeah, around this year.

And my father, he did an interview and it got, I think it was his first viral interview on internet where he's talking about a situation in a jail in Brazil. There was a jail in Brazil. The name of the jail is Pedrinhas Jail. In this jail, criminals start to kill each other. And my father was running to be the chairman of the Human Rights Committee in the Congress, in the House.

and a lot of microphones around him, and journalists start to do some dumb questions and trying to say, "Oh, don't you care about the life of the prisoners? They are prisoners. It's a human life." And he said, "Come on, you don't want to go to the jail? It's just so you do not rob, do not murder, do not kidnap anyone else." And started to say some bad words because it was very explosive. And this interview came very viral.

And at that time, I was in the federal police. I'm a lawyer. And I was in the federal police. My first service was on the border between Brazil and Bolivia. And then I moved myself. I was transferred to Sao Paulo. But during that time, in 2014, I asked my father, "Hey, father, I see you most, like, almost alone in some of the debates that you face inside of the Congress. Would you support me to run for the Congress? So maybe instead of only one congressman, we could be two."

And he supported me. I ran from the state of Sao Paulo. I received a little bit more than 82,000 votes because in Brazil, when you vote for someone, you vote in the state and actually go to the house. So in the state of Sao Paulo, I received 82,000 votes and we spent a little bit less than around $10,000 in my campaign. So he financed my campaign too.

And I became a congressman. And so he was still a congressman at that time? Yes. So let me get the timeline right before we go on. I just want to make sure. So you mentioned a regime in Brazil that was similar to the regime in Cuba. Tell me the dates for that. All right. So before 1964... It was before 64. Yes. We had a president called Jânio Quadros.

After seven months in the presidency in our White House, he resigned. And there is no reason for that. It's a very funny chapter of our story because when he resigned, he said that forces outside of the earth, like kind of aliens, there was a kind of a threat against him. And that's why he resigned. Well, that'll do it, you know. But then his vice president was a huge communist guy.

And he was starting to talk to end with the private property, get the farms and get the land of the farmers and send it to the people. You know, this kind of issue, very strong at that time. Regarding that in Cuba, the revolution is 1959. Right. So we are talking five years after that. And so he was thinking the way it should turn Brazil into a communist country. And the major part of our society didn't want that.

So the National Association of the Press, Catholic Church, farmers, militaries for sure. So we start to have a lot of huge protests, more than one million people in Rio de Janeiro, for example, on the streets asking that the militaries should not let the Brazil turn itself as a Cuba.

And so the Congress on April 1st of 1964, the Congress said, if the president do not come to the capital in Brasilia, he was in a trip in China. If he not come back to Brasilia, to the capital,

we are going to declare that the presidential chair is vacancy. There is no one in the presidential chair. And we will open for a new election. So this was after the gentleman that you described had resigned because of this interference from external forces. Yes.

Yes. And the Congress elected, a couple of days later of that, the Congress elected the first general of this period of time, in 64. The military said that they would give back the power to the civil society very quick. But after almost two years, we start to have radical left groups coming.

bombing airports, kidnapping airplanes, and even the US ambassador was kidnapped during the '70s in Brazil. So with this atmosphere, the military said, "All right, we cannot give you back the power because you have a lot of instability, so we are going to rule the country from now on." And they stayed there for 20 years.

Okay, and that was the time during when the president was nominated by the Congress and the court and not the people. Yeah, only the Congress. The senators and the federal representatives vote for president. And how did Brazilians generally react to that form of government from 64 to 85?

It's half and a half, I can tell you. Some of the people, they miss this period of time because it's a period of time that, for example, the murder rates of Brazil, it was almost the same level of United States. We developed a lot our economy. We became number 44 economy of the world to top 10 economy of the world. It's a period of time that we have the

the huge infrastructure buildings as the nuclear using of Angra dos Reis, the hydroelectric using of Itaipu that it was the hugest, the number one, the biggest of the world. Now China, they had one bigger than ours. Roads all over the country. So they really reduce the corruption, invest a lot in the infrastructure of the country,

And during a period of time, we had a lot of prosperity. But in the 80s, the economic rise mainly coming from the oil crisis from the Middle East and the increase of the prices and some other issues, Brazil stopped, stagnated in the economy. And the political pressure to give back the opportunity to the people to vote, it was increasing.

So there are two generals that were president in the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. What they did is, first, in 79, they give amnesty to all of the radical left-wing groups, you know, that kidnapped the U.S. ambassador, that killed some militaries, even foreign militaries in Brazil, you know.

to everybody go back again to the country and trying to pacificate the country and give it back. It wasn't necessary, you know, shooting or killing other peoples. The military said, "Okay." The president at that time, João Figueiredo, it was a military general. He said, "Okay, we are going to give back the permission of people to vote. Is that what you want? I will give you back this permission." But he warned, "You are going to feel to miss the time that we were here in the capital

Because we care about people. This radical left, they are going to take power. They are going to make you suffer. And I hope, God, on the day that you are going to ask the militaries again to take the power again, let's see what happens. We say that this is the prophecy of the President Figueiredo. And after, I don't know,

30 years after that, we are in this situation that we have nowadays. So a lot of the Brazilians who lived that time, not the Brazilians who know about

press articles or left-wing professor that they have in the university or in the college. So part of the Brazilians, they miss this period of time. Some others think that it was very bad because you have censorship, you have the state killing people and people who were exilated outside of Brazil. So I could say it's 50/50.

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The political spectrum in Brazil for many, many decades has been much more polarized, right and left, than is typical in the United States, Canada, in Europe. That there's more activity on the radical left and more activity on the right. Is that a reasonable way of looking at it as far as you're concerned? The left, they have, they are a minority that speak louder. Why do they speak louder? Because they control the press.

They control the unions. They control part of the politics. And on the right side, on the side that I consider myself, and the conservative are better, on the non-left side, we don't have even a political party. We don't have...

a university or college, you don't have union, you don't have a think tank. If you look to the US, for example, since the 70s, you have Heritage Foundation think tank, you have CIPAC, you had Ronald Reagan, you have some leaderships that are very known and conservative sides. So in Brazil, we are starting to build that. What about the military in Brazil? Like, is it right wing fundamentally?

Most of them I say yes. Yes. So is it reasonable to say that the right in Brazil has the military and the left has the institutions that you, the other institutions that you described? So-so in their particular opinion, but the military, they do not go to politics. After '85, what happened is the left, as they control the media, mainly the media,

they start to demonize the militaries. So during the 80s and 90s, you don't have a politician say, "I'm a right-wing politician." This was almost forbidden. The sense of democracy in Brazil that we had, it was the PT, the Liberal Party, which is extreme left, communist, like I can tell you, AOC, Bernie Sanders, is the same kind of people that have a relationship with Lula da Silva and people from their party in Brazil. And the Social Democrats, which is center-left,

This, we thought it was democracy. I see, I see. But then when my father started to appear in the national scenario, they say, oh, wait a minute, this is not right. Right is Jair Bolsonaro or more to the right here. So we changed the spectrum of Brazil. And it's that sense, it's so true what I'm talking because in the previous election, you had the social democrat, Geraldo Alckmin, running for president. Yes.

He was calling Lula da Silva from the Labor Party as a thief, as a criminal. Now, guess what? The vice president of Lula da Silva is this guy, Gerald Walkme. And they don't even have a shame because of that. So my father, it was disruptive.

It's like, you know, the king is naked. My father was the one saying, oh, the king is naked. And everybody starts to pay attention about what is going on, mainly because now, after 2010, you have a new content in this political scenario, which it is internet.

With the internet, we break the monopoly of the mainstream media and we start to bring in more information. As you know, that's why they are trying to regulate and democratize the internet and social media. But at the end of the day, we all know that they want to control the narrative because they lost that. Yes, and of course, Elon Musk's battle with Brazil has been with the Brazilian political leadership. This is a deep story, professor, that we can talk. Yeah, yeah, well, I think we should get into that. Okay, so that...

so your father was a city councillor in 1988 and a congressman in 1990 and then he spent 28 years in Congress and the story that you're telling now is that he shifted the the

spectrum of political discourse in Brazil from center-left, radical-left to radical-left, center-left, and what would you describe him? Where would you put him on the political spectrum? You described yourself as center-right. Yes, I'll put right. Why not? People sometimes say, oh, far, far, far right. Far right for me is another thing because what Lula and the communists, they want? They want to control the economy 100%.

We want to, we want, what is the opposite of control the economy 100%? Is when you do not have any kind of administration. It's anarcho-capitalist. We are not anarcho-capitalist. We believe in a minimum size of the administration. We don't want to destroy the administration. We need the government to rule some things and I have to be, you have to be very sensitive when I talk about that to do not go far away. What is rule something? For example,

you have the right to go and back to your home to the work. All right, you drive your car, but you cannot drive your car on the wrong way because you are going to put in risk other people's life, crashing other people's car. So to somehow rule these kind of situations and the situations where the

individual cannot do, for example, everybody knows that, have the sense that kill each other is a wrong thing. All right? Everybody believe in that. We should not be a society where everybody's killing everybody. So we need police. We need somehow defend our territory from other countries because maybe you have in our neighborhood a dictatorship that want to invade your country.

If you look nowadays to Ukraine and Russia, to Venezuela and Guyana, Maduro saying that he wants to get the territory of Ezequiel and some other partiers of the world, makes sense that you need an army. So to defend your country, preserve your culture, to have a civilization on the streets, police, and one or two points,

You need the state, you need the administration. So it's a limited government vision. Would you regard your view... Now, first of all, I guess I'd like to know, are your father and yourself relatively united in your political views? So, yes, okay, so we can just discuss that, the two of you, as a unit in some way. Yeah, I do not talk in his name, but... Right, okay, I got the picture. And so the way that you laid out the Brazilian political landscape from...

over since 1985 is basically an argument between two parties on the left. And so I'm still trying to place the Brazilian political spectrum because in Canada, say, and also in the United States, you have

the socialist types, let's say, and then you have the classic liberals who are more in the middle. And in Canada, traditionally, that was the liberal party. Classical liberal in Brazil would be on the right. Yeah, yeah. And so, and the right wing that you're talking about in Brazil, would you describe that, could you characterize it as more libertarian? Would you call it more classic liberal? Or would you call it more classic conservative? We, I consider myself classical conservative. Okay. But I'm very friend, for example, of the

classical liberal when you talk about economy. Because if you go to Brazil and you say, I'm a liberal, they are not going to link you with the left. They're going to link you with the right. Okay, that's what I was wondering. Liberal here is people who want to

control your life, control the free speech on social media, want a huge administration, increase the taxes. Right. Liberal here increasingly means progressive, right? And that means left. Liberal in Brazil is less taxes, free market. Yeah, okay. And the difference between our liberals and me, who are in the position of conservative, it would be about maybe drugs. They want to have more flexible rules about drugs.

I'm against to open, you know, to have more flexibility on the drug law, for example, the regulations. But you have some, as in Brazil, we are deep in a moral crisis. This is not a priority. The priority is to rescue our country, to people believe again that we can have an administration that take care of the people, take care not look to the people.

Because the current president, what he's doing, he's increasing the taxes, travel all around the world. Like the first year of Lula da Silva as president of Brazil, he spent more than two months outside of Brazil, spending a little bit more than $200,000 daily when he's traveling outside of Brazil. He's staying in the most expensive hotels, you know, and traveling.

When he comes back to Brazil, he starts to tax people. We have, for example, usually people in Brazil, when you buy something, mainly from China, and it's less than $50, the product that you are buying, you do not pay any kind of tax. And usually poor people or medium class, they do that. Lula is taxing even this kind of situation.

And he spent more money than my father, Jair Bolsonaro, when he was president during the pandemic. Imagine, how can someone spend more money than the other president during the pandemic? So that's why the price of the American dollars in Brazil is exploding and the numbers of the economy are not that good. Still, Lula da Silva, he had...

a situation where he's receiving a lot of benefit from the previous administration because he privatized a lot, we reduced a lot of taxes, we became the number four in the world when you talk about receiving foreign investments. We're doing...

Very good. It was the first time in history that Brazil, we had less inflation than United States. Because we had a liberal, classical liberal economy ministry called Paulo Guedes, who received 100% of autonomy from the president, from my father, to do his work. Because my father, he knows his place. He said, I'm not an economist. Right. But I will appoint someone that can do the homework. Right.

as never seen in Brazil. It was the first time since 1985 that we had a liberal, a Chicago boy in the Ministry of Economy

like with the possibility to do his work. - Okay, so let's build up to that again. So let's go back to when you ran for Congress. So now at that point, your father is still a Congressman. - Yes. - Okay, so take us through the story from there. - All right, so keeping this story, in 2014, I was elected, 82,224 votes. And in my first term, I was looking to my father, increasing his popularity,

going every place in Brazil. Usually on Thursday he traveled to a different state, coming back to the capital in Brasilia on Friday. So traveling every week, almost every week, all around Brazil. - Still as a congressman? - Yeah, still as a congressman. - What's making him popular? Why is he popular? Because he's a congressman. He's obviously distinguishing himself from other congressmen. What's he doing differently that's attractive to people? - Stepping outside of the politically correct.

Oh yes, okay. So when someone says that you are racist, so okay, why am I racist? I do not support affirmative action for black people because in Brazil, since when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in the year 1500, they start to mix with the Indians. Then the blacks and we are all mixed. You didn't go to Brazil. You can look to someone and say, oh, you look European, you look Latin, you look Indian, you look black.

We don't have this issue as strong as you have here in the United States. So if you consider, if you vote against affirmative action for black people in Brazil, because we will have black people very rich in Brazil, they say that you label you as a racist. For example, there was a bill in Brazil that if you look for the bill, you can clearly see that pastors could go to jail if they read part of the Bible.

Is it fair? No, this is unfair. So when he positioned against this kind of bill, people say you are homophobic.

But at the end of the day, going to... Why was it so important he travel all around Brazil? Because when you go to some states, they have a local press and they do not receive public money. So when you talk on the radio, you're talking with a maid, with a trucker driver, with, you know, regular common people. Or directly. And they're listening to Jerry Bolsonaro. They say, this guy is not crazy.

He's not the crazy guy that CNN tells me that is crazy. This guy, I agree with him. So when the election came in 2018, aside of this work, also with the increase of internet, smartphones, social media, my father became a phenomenon.

It was fashion, you know, support him. And thanks God, the left, the establishment, they were all the time saying that he was so ridiculous that he would never be the president. But he became elected in 2018. And at that time, I run for my first election. - Did he know when he was starting to speak more broadly across Brazil,

early on, do you think he had visions of the presidency at that point? Like, was this a... Yes, yes. I do. So that was an ambition. And when... The right feeling is he was fed up with the Congress. Like, you are only one in the middle of 513...

federal representatives, you don't have the power to do whatever you want. You can do bills, but to approve a bill is very different. He was looking at a radical left-wing administration ruling the country, deeply into corruption scandals all the time. And he started to think, if Dilma Rousseff gets elected, re-elected, Dilma Rousseff is a former president of Brazil, same party of Lula da Silva, the current president, Labor's party. If Dilma Rousseff

who cannot connect one phrase with other phrase, pretty much the same opinion that people have from Kamala Harris here, why not me? And my father, he's really hardworking, really hardworking. Still nowadays, he's almost 70 years old and he's every time traveling, every time. I really admire him because I don't know if I, I'm 40, if I could have the same energy of my father to do all of the work that he does. So he starts to think, if Dilma Rousseff did that, why not me?

Why I can't be the president? So he start to go for that. He had a plan, all right? He has a project. He start to go around, not saying that he's going to be the president, but saying,

After this work, people start to realize that he could be a president. Okay, now explain to us how the president is elected in Brazil. The prime minister in Canada is the leader of the party with the most seats, and the president of the United States is elected directly. What's the situation in Brazil? How is the president elected, and how is he...

How is that position related to the other major branches of government in Brazil? Just lay out the structure. - Yeah, Brazil is a little bit different from Canada because it's presidentialism, not parliamentarism. And different from US because here who win in the state get all the votes of the delegates. In Brazil, every vote counts. Every voter, every people count.

If you have more than 18 years old, you vote. From 18 until 70 years old is mandatory. You have to vote. If you do not vote, you pay a fee. You are fined in $1. It's not a big deal, but it still is mandatory. And every country votes. So we are 210 million people living in Brazil. I guess around nowadays 130, 140 million people in Brazil, they are able to vote.

So you have to go all over the country. Here, I know the presidential candidates, they usually look, their focus is on the swing states, not in Brazil. In Brazil, you have to be everywhere, everywhere, which makes a little bit harder. You need more energy to do your campaign. And in 2018, my father did his campaign basically with a cell phone.

I can tell you, my father didn't spend, to be very conservative in my accounts, he didn't even spend $1 million in his campaign. This is how powerful was the support in favor of Jair Bolsonaro. He, his flags...

Defend the family, get back again the patronies, reduce the size of the administration, respect the kids, no gender ideology in the schools, support the law enforcement, get the criminals to the jail, like as much time as you can send them to the jail. So it's the opposite of the left. When you say that...

All of these flags, the left, they say, no, no, no, we need gender ideology. We need to respect everybody. And all of this narrative that they start to build.

But the mainstream media all the time was labeling my father, like racist, xenophobic. You don't like poor people. You don't like women. You don't like black. You don't like no one. It's even funny because at the end of the day, I don't even know if someone like that exists. And people through mainly by internet, the social media of my father was controlled by my brother, Carlos. Mm-hmm.

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The message that we gave to the people is this message of Patrick. So how did you guys use social media? Like you said, it was a very low cost campaign, which is extraordinarily interesting. I mean, one of the things the Internet is going to do is to knock the prices of campaigns down dramatically because, well, Trump went on Rogan.

week ago 44 million views like there's just and those are voluntary views obviously people are doing that on purpose right rather than having their tv accidentally on to listen to a sound bite and the barrier to entry on youtube and on the social media platforms is basically zero we've seen this with pierre pauliev in canada so he'll be the next prime minister by all by all accounts and the

Media in Canada, the legacy media, is increasingly state-controlled because it's subsidized. And so it's very pro-Trudeau. It also happens in Brazil. It also happens in Brazil. Yeah, I'm sure it's the same thing. And Polyev just walked around them. He set up his own...

social media channels, his own YouTube site. He built his own ads. He made micro documentaries that were 10 minutes long. And some of his micro documentaries were getting like 400,000 views, which in Canada is a lot of views. You know, I'd be equivalent to about 4 million, at least in the United States. And so he just walked around them completely. And you could see with Rogan interviewing

Trump and Vance this week. I think the Vance interview already has like six million views. There's just no need for the legacy media. And so you guys were early adopters of that new technology. Like a million dollars for a campaign, that's nothing. And so...

Did you use all the main social media platforms? Like, were you guys... I don't know what's active in Brazil. Like, it would be Facebook and Instagram and X and YouTube, primarily TikTok in the United States. Is it the same in Brazil? It's the same situation. But I have to go back in 2018, we had way more freedom. Like, no one... Nowadays, I can guarantee to you that sometimes people think, maybe even right on X...

But they do not post that to not have problems with the Supreme Court. Right, right. We'll get into that. And I'll tell you how I can make you believe that my father didn't spend even $1 million and almost all of the campaign we did through the social media is because he got elected in 2018 and he took office on January of 2019. Since 2019, the Supreme Court of Brazil, they opened it.

an investigation called the Fake News Investigation. - Oh yeah. - Trying to prove that Jair Bolsonaro, he had kind of AI or an office fitted with public money to destroy the reputation of the journalists and the reputation of the communists and all the other players in the election.

since 2019, we are in 2024, this investigation is still open. They just turned our life towards, they just did everything that I can do in terms of investigation against my family, against my father, the federal police, went to my father's house to take his vaccine card. It's funny, this is other things that we have to talk about. The accusations that they say, the accusations against us,

And still, they cannot prove... So they were, were they shocked? Okay, so two things could be happening there. I mean, one, and maybe both are happening. One could be that it's merely an organized harassment campaign. But the other thing is, is that perhaps they're also completely stunned at how successful that campaign

tactic was and couldn't believe that it could possibly be managed with no budget whatsoever and merely by communicating. See, one of the things... We did not believe all could build a narrative to destroy us. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, nowadays the reality is just a piece of something. Yeah. Reality doesn't matter. Yeah. The matter is the narrative that they build inside of the mind of the people.

Because in the end of the day, the elite, the radical left, they are smart enough. They knew that we won the elections doing everything that we did in social media, traveling all over the country, because the majority part of Brazil, they're conservative. Well, it's funny though, you know, in the U.S., recently, I think it was within the last six months,

Gavin Newsom, who's the governor of California, made some denigrating comments about Joe Rogan, calling him, his son watches Joe Rogan and me, which I'm quite happy about. And he described Joe Rogan as a fringe figure. And I thought, see, that's really relevant because...

Gavin Newsom is a fringe figure compared to Joe Rogan. Joe, I think Joe's podcast is number one in 192 countries. I'm not sure it's 192, it might be 92, but it doesn't matter. It's a lot of countries. And so he's definitely the most powerful journalist who's ever lived by a large margin. And CNN is a fringe organization compared to Rogan. But the left in particular,

And I would say even the liberals in the more classic sense, they don't understand this at all. They still think that

CNN and MSNBC and the Washington Post for that matter matter and they do to some limited degree But that time is seriously over and so I'm wondering even in Brazil it could be that like you guys were seriously on the cutting edge of the Communication revolution and the people that are watching you just have absolutely no idea how powerful it is because that isn't their territory Yes. Yes, and the thing that makes us

kind of special is because my father, he has authenticity. He is original. He's pretty much like Trump. He first, he do not stop to think, oh, I'm going to speak that. Is it good or bad? Let me do it this way. No, no, no. They think they talk. You know, it doesn't matter if it's, is it going to hurt you? It's your problem. Sorry if you are so sensitive. So people start to trust you. You open a live streaming, like,

I remember that when a new scandal against my father, oh, he's a racist, oh, he's this and that. When something show up, the first thing that he does is open a live streaming and start to talk about that openly. That's why people trust on him. You know, all the other politicians before a speaker do an interview, the first thing that they do, they go to someone in there or one of the assistants, oh, you

You are from the market. Should I say that? Am I going to earn more votes saying this or that? And then they call the press for a conference and do a beautiful speech. So we are on the other way. If you look for the social media of my father, you are going to see that most part of the videos are low-cost videos. You don't need a cell phone to do that. It's not something beautiful with content and edited, you know.

So these things makes you connect with the people. Right. For example, one of the things they always try to say is that, oh, J.B. Wilson, he's not Rumble. Like he wear soccer team jerseys to pretend to be someone popular. But my father is the same in front of the cameras and behind of the cameras. And in the end of the day, people realize that.

There was a very special case when he was president right in the beginning of the pandemic, where you had people on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro getting arrested because the whole city was in a lockdown, very strong lockdown. So it was forbidden to you, get out of your house, basically like that, like in Canada. And you have some videos of one or two ladies on the beach and the cops going there to arrest people

And in a meeting of the president, my father, Jair Bolsonaro, with his ministries, he's talking like using very bad and very strong words. Why is not the justice ministry talking about this kind of issue? Drug dealers cannot be arrested like that. Why ladies on the beach getting D-vitamin are going to be in jail because of that? And at this meeting,

he with his ministers, it was recorded, but not for the public. How people watched that? Because the Supreme Court, I think one year after all of that, God gave an order to the president. "Hey, President Bolsonaro, we want the video of your meetings with the ministries." And he gave. For the lucky of my father,

expecting to give in the first hand the breaking news to the people. Oh, look, President Bolsonaro talking bad words. Look how bad he is behind the scenes. This is Bolsonaro. CNN broadcast the video live before see that. And in fact, you have my father talking bad words for the justice ministry to some of the people like around him in our White House. You know what? People loved it.

People just loved. People said, Bolsonaro just got reelected because of this video. Because people see that this is the president that I voted for, defending people. Come on, who judges think they are? Who you think the cops think they are to arrest some ladies on the beach? I remember, I remind that that day, I was in Sao Paulo and I do surf. I went to the sea to surf.

And people came to me, other surfers came to me, "Oh, Bolsonaro," because I'm also a federal congressman, "Bolsonaro, your father, he's the best." People start to accomplish me on the water. This is not common. Usually surfers, when they go to the water, maybe you can talk with one or other, but it's not common you gather in the water with others. So it was proven that Bolsonaro is the same one in front of the cameras and behind of the cameras.

That's another thing that's very interesting about the social media landscape. I mean, I know a lot of the main players, obviously, who are pioneers, particularly in YouTube, particularly in the podcast domain. And all the ones that I know are the same in front of the camera as they are off. Rogan, he's a classic example of that. I mean,

You see he's the same or he's not the same? He's exactly the same. All of the people that are hyper popular as podcasters that I know are exactly the same on their podcasts as they are off. There's no persona. And part of that is that lack of professionalism. And it isn't exactly lack of professionalism. What's happened is that as people have become more

more and more able to do video editing themselves, for example. They're much more video literate than they were 10 years ago. Nowadays you hide that. Yeah, well, yeah. People on YouTube, for example, nobody trusts edited YouTube videos because they don't trust editing. And so you want to see the conversation unfold as it does unfold. And I've talked with Rogan about this to some degree.

decent degree about interviewing people. And his experience too is that

You can tell who's an empty suit after about 20 minutes, right? Because we're having an unstructured conversation and we both have to be able to track it and it has to go where it's going to go, but it has to stay coherent and it has to stay interesting and we both have to be engaged. And there's really just no way of staging that. And if you try to stage it, it just falls flat. The other thing that happens too, we experienced this at the ARC conference in London, is that

If it's politicized in a way that's ego-driven, it also fails. So at ARC, the...

the discussions that were more political were much less successful on YouTube and at the conference than the ones that were more philosophical and that were more direct. So the new media landscape, I think it's partly a consequence of bandwidth. There's no bandwidth restriction, right? So, I mean, 20 years ago, a minute on network television was extremely expensive.

And so everything had to be crafted and edited and produced. And now there's no bandwidth limitation whatsoever. So none of that's necessary. And it's also the case that people have a much longer span of attention for listening than the TV types presume. Now, they presume that partly because they were concerned with sound.

bandwidth and trying to conserve time. But then they kind of thought that, well, people only had a 30 second attention span. It's like, no, it turns out that people have a three hour attention span, no problem. And of course, Rogan above all demonstrated that. And so, okay. And so your dad-

And they did the same thing that Polyev did, essentially. And maybe earlier, about the same time, really, because Polyev was starting to work directly to social media at that time as well. OK, now the leader of the Conservative Party in Canada. All right. Because he's the other one I know who's used social media so effectively. And I really think that's what's going to happen. This is a shift in the way politics is going to be conducted. There's absolutely no reason that

political leaders can't take their message directly to people with no intermediaries. And I think that's going to be extremely beneficial. And so while it worked very well for you folks. Okay, so your father was elected president 2018? Yep. And how long was he president?

Four years. Four years. So he was... If I may, professor, excuse me. I want to open a parenthesis. One month before the election, he also got stabbed in the belly during the campaign. This is very important to say because he was almost killed by a former member of the Socialist and Liberty Party, PSOL. This party in Brazil is radical left.

They are connected. They have a lot of pictures and trips here to the U.S. to have meetings with AOC, Bernie Sanders, and this kind of people, who is the left, radical left part of the Democratic Party. The name of the guy who stabbed my father, his name is Adelio Bispo. My father was on the streets campaigning with a crowd of 20 or 30,000 people around him in the city of Juiz de Fora. One of the securities of my father put a hand on his shoulders.

So you have videos on YouTube everywhere. And the guy came with a knife, jumped and stabbed my father, twisted a little bit, and the knife got into the belly of my father, 15 centimeters, and cut some parts of his intestine. At that time, in the moment that it happened, you could not see too much blood. You can see that there was a cut,

And their security ran into a hospital with him. In the hospital, the doctors identified that he was with internal hemorrhage. He lost about 2.5 liters of blood. He died twice. And he went to the surgery. And you have a lot of these, more than two liters of blood together with hemorrhage.

how can I say that politely in English, with shit. Which makes you think, oh, so for sure he had an infection after that. Like, it's a miracle he survived. The doctor said two more minutes on the way to the hospital, two more minutes delay, he's done. He would be out of blood to the heart to bomb.

When he arrived in the hospital in the emergency, he had exactly the specialist, medical specialist required for this kind of situation, which is very rare in Brazil. He has a gastro medical doctor for that part. The securities of my father,

Also, they know exactly the way to the closest hospital. So the driver was a local that knew the fastest way to arrive in the hospital. And one day before, my father, he had a problem in the throat.

And a friend, Gilson Machado, which is our former tourism minister, he gave a medicine to my father, an antibiotic to my father. Bolsonaro, you are feeling sick a little bit on the throat. Yeah, but you're campaigning, you know, you cannot wait. It becomes worse.

to receive an antibiotic. Take this pill with the antibiotic. So my father started to have antibiotic. So this is, I think, what prevented to get infection because there's a lot of blood with feces inside of his body. So he survived that, but more than 70% of the time of the campaign, in Brazil, we have 45 days that you can campaign. More than 70% of this period of time, my father was in a hospital.

So he could not go to the streets, running all over the country, delivering his message to run, to do a presidential campaign. And still, he got elected. This is very important. This is also very important to say because people do a lot of, they compare with the Trump situation after the shooting case.

right next to his head. And it's one more thing that Trump has in common with my father. So after that, he got elected, and I also became the most voted-ever federal representative, most voted-ever federal representative in the history of Brazil. Now, he did or you did? I did. You did. I did for the Congress. He did as president. I received almost 2 million votes.

In my first campaign, my first election in 2014, 82,000. 2018, almost 2 million. So it was a huge message for all of the country. Our party became very strong. We were in a very small party that we had only three congressmen. After the 2018 election, we became 52. And nowadays, after the 22 elections, we are almost 100.

congressman in my party. So it shows that the wave is still increasing, you know? It's not, oh, Bolsonaro lost the election and okay, the movement is over. No, no, no, the movement is still strong. And the only way that the legacy media, for example, sees to control us is controlling the narrative with the new bills against the free speech. Right, right. Okay, so let's go to the 2022 election. So that was, it was six, you said, just...

a number of days before that election that your father was just about killed. - Yeah, one month before the election of 2018. - One month. And what was the outcome of the election at the presidential level in 2022? - Yeah, 2022, it was the election that my father wanted for reelection, but he lost. - Yeah, right.

And it was a month before that, that he was almost killed. - No, in 2018. - Oh, that was in, okay, sorry, it was 2018. Forgive my ignorance, so. - No, no, no, that's okay. - Yeah, so, okay, so what happened in 2022? Why did he lose the election? - Then I have to take care about my words because in Brazil, depending on what you talk, you can be considered anti-democratic.

to talk to the Americans here that are watching us. Remember that Trump in Georgia, he was the mugshot

because he was talking about the election process. But you have a bunch of videos of Hillary Clinton and some other people from the Democratic Party saying that they do not trust in the election. Maybe the 2016 election wasn't 100% trustable. But with Trump, things change. So with us, things change in Brazil too. And we have a target...

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Two theories. One theory is the machines that we use to vote, because in Brazil it's fully electronic. You go to a machine developed by the government and you dial the number of your candidate. For example, the number of my father was 22. Our party number is 22. So you want to vote for Bolsonaro, you dial 22 and press the green button. That's it. And then you pray for God that someone in the capital, the bureaucrats, are going to count your vote properly.

But you do not receive, you don't have a way to recount that. You don't have a way to audit that. You know, you just go home and that's it.

Pretty much like in Venezuela. In Venezuela they have a similar system of Brazil. And in 2022 I'm not going to talk about... We also have to be careful about discussing such things here and it's more a consequence of lawsuits. And so I was warned before the interview started to tread very lightly on the territory that we're investigating now. And it seems to me that

independently of the reliability and validity of the electronic voting process, these are problems that you just don't have with paper ballots because there they are and you can recount them. And so, to give the devil his due, you can certainly understand that if electronic voting machines had a track record

that was as solid as paper, they're more efficient and can be tabulated faster. But the truth of the matter is we don't know anything about this new technology, right? And you introduce a radically new technology into the process that determines your political electorate at your peril, right? And so conservatives know such things, unintended consequences. Okay, so...

With that said, back to the election. I'll not talk about this theory, all right? Let's say that our machine is 100% fully trustable. But still, in Brazil, who organize the elections, who coordinate the elections, who judge everything about the elections in Brazil is a court called Superior Electoral Court. I will say only Electoral Court, referring myself to this court here.

Who is on the head of this court? Who is the president, the chairman of this electoral court? Is a justice from the Supreme Court. His name is Alexandre de Moraes. On 2022, it was Alexandre de Moraes. This is the name that I would like you to save on your mind. Alexandre de Moraes. This man, he has a personal problem with my father and with our family. He did a lot of interventions in the executive power and sometimes even in the legislative in the Congress.

And he was... - And that was during your father's administration? - Yes. During my father's administration, we had a lot of conflicts with him. So he was on the head of this electoral court. So this electoral court, you had ridiculous decisions such as my father could not open a live streaming from his cell phone at his house

Why do they say that? Because all the other candidates, they do not have a house, a public house, paid with public money. Because when you are president, you live in the White House. Who pays the rent of the White House? Who pays the energy and the water of the White House? It's the taxpayer. So the reason that they found to avoid Jair Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro was forbidden to broadcast from his house. So if he would like to start live streaming from his Facebook,

He would get a car, get out of his house, and start a live streaming. This is a point to understand how ridiculous was the decision during this period of time. And more than that, we could not say some words to define our oppositor, Lula da Silva. There is a...

The number one conservative media in Brazil is called Jovem Pan. Jovem Pan, they received an order saying that they cannot refer, the journalists of Jovem Pan could not say that Lula is a criminal, is a thief, or that he was unconvicted from the convictions that he had in the past. Because Lula da Silva, the current president, he, the Supreme Court, he was convicted for laundering money and corruption in the past.

But two years before the election, they overturned all of that and let Lula da Silva run for president. And all of the establishment was in favor of his election, very clearly. So this is how the election happened in Brazil. So I can tell you, even if you believe that our machines that we use to vote is 100% okay, 100% trustable, it wasn't a fair election. Because basically... How close was the margin?

My father made 49.1 or 2%. Lula made 49.51%. Right, so really split down the middle. Really split. Tight margins. Yeah, well, any election where there's tight margins like that, it's also, you know, you could imagine that even a well-run political system is, what would you say, corrupt 1%.

And if the margin is 1%, that makes things very awkward. Yes, and you have some more other things that I could add. For example, the most left-wing states that we have, they were voting even after 5 p.m. on Sunday. Because in our election, everybody go to vote at the same day. The first Sunday of October, you have to vote.

From 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., all right? After that, it's closed. No one else can vote anymore.

But in the states where they have the majority in favor of the left-wing politicians, the state of Bahia and some other states on the northeast of Brazil, which is the major part of the Brazilians receive assistentialism from the government to survive. In these states, people were voting 6, 7, 8 p.m. And some million more votes were added in the election.

So what I can say, and I cannot prove to be very honest, professor, what I can say is in Brazil, the people who sit on the desks taking the idea of the people and letting them go vote, most part of these people, they know each other because they are the same people election after election.

who are there on the school, the sessions, on the electoral sessions, receiving people to vote. So if everybody's left wing, if you do not have morals, you are not left wing, usually politicians of left wing, they do not care about values or morals. You can say, okay, let's see in the list who did not vote yet and let's go vote in their names. It can happen. So if you stop people to vote after 5 p.m.,

as the electoral law requires us to be, it will be way more transparency, way more trustable our election. I'm telling you that you have a lot of ways to do frauds. All of them were used. - Okay, so let me ask you a question about that too. - I guess, my opinion. - Well, if you looked at your father's administration over that four year period,

And that was the that was his first foray into the presidency certainly Trump has pronounced announced recently that you know like your father had a lot more political experience by the time he took the presidency than Trump had Trump had business experience, but that's not exactly the same thing but

I presume that your family has reviewed the inadequacies, let's say, of your father's first presidency. What mistakes do you think were made under his leadership that might have also compromised the election? The main thing that people comply about my father is that he talks too much. But I mean, it's the opinion of the people. We usually say that, okay, are you voting for president or you want a boyfriend or a girlfriend?

You know, he talks too much, but the economy is going good. The criminals are having a very tough time with my father. You know, regular citizens, they are having a better life. You have less bureaucracy. You can take care of your life. You know, a lot of benefits.

But the press all the time, they are doing some kind of notorious scandal because depending on what my father was using to say, because he has no future. Sometimes getting out of his house, he stop and start to talk with the people, with the press around and use non-politically correct words

And it became a scandal, you know. In the end of the day, you can affect, talking that so much every day, it affects, you know, people. And maybe you change your priorities. Well, certainly his reputation outside of, you know, I got low resolution. The reputation outside of Brazil is bad. If you go to Europe, people will think that my father is the evil. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I would say, like... He's burning Amazon. Right, right. Well, I can't say that...

like my knowledge of brazil is shallow certainly and so what that means is that whatever impressions i picked up about the bolsonaro administration were like second-hand representations from the legacy media right not even necessarily direct and it was certainly the case that the gut sense i would say of the typical north american with regards to

Bolsonaro was, you know, dangerous right winger. So definitely now I'm a lot more skeptical about such terminology, you know, now that I was, let's say, eight years ago or even five years ago. But but those sorts. See, one of the problems is, is that it's very easy to tag people. Right. Because you can think about it psychologically. Right.

in a manner that's appropriate, there's a lot of people that you could listen to. There's 8 billion people you could listen to. And so you need a reason not to listen to most people.

Because there's just too many people. And so if you hear something bad about someone that you don't know, it's easier just to assume, well, you can just write them off. And it doesn't matter because there's 8 billion other people to choose from, right? So my point is it's very easy to smear someone's reputation. It's very easy, especially, I think you can especially do that, you can do that especially with disgust rather than fear. Disgust is even more dangerous.

more effective than fear. And so anyways, I mean, my impression of, for what it's worth, my impression of the Bolsonaro administration was definitely colored by the pronouncements of the legacy media that this was another far right

another far right movement, right? And, I mean, the same thing basically happened to Maloney in Italy and to Orban in Hungary. And so, well, and I do think it's part and parcel of the operation of the legacy media and the sway that the

progressives have over the universities and the legacy media. The same thing in Brazil. It's so interesting to see that exactly the same thing is playing out there, that's playing out in the United States and Canada and all through Europe. And that's why Brazil is important to the United States, because we are the lab. The ideas usually come from here.

and they apply in Brazil. So, why Americans showed penetration in Brazil? Because we have a unique thing when I talk about censorship is because everywhere in the world,

It comes through the hands of the president of the prime minister. For example, you have big issues with Trudeau or with the C-16 law and whatever. But in Brazil, it's the Supreme Court. Yeah, yeah. So we can delve into that. Now, this gentleman that you talked about, the Supreme Court. Alexandre de Moraes. Now, is he the same one? Again, I'm exposing my ignorance here, so forgive me. Is he the same one who's

At odds with Musk? Yes. Okay, so it is this... Okay, that's what I assumed. I just wanted to make sure that that... Okay, so why don't you unravel that story for us? You started going down that road and said that... Yeah. Okay, so what role is the Supreme Court playing in Brazil at the moment? And why is it that Musk got embroiled in a... Well, in this very, very public, internationally public argument with the Brazilian Supreme Court? Explain that...

Alexandre de Moraes, he was the chairman of the Electoral Court and he was too aggressive in the 2022 elections, mainly. In the 2022 elections, what happened? Around 100 conservative profiles on Twitter got blocked. To be blocked in Brazil, our law says that you need to give to the other side, to the users, their right to defend himself. And the platform has 48 hours to block someone.

This is general law in Brazil. What was happening in Brazil is Alexandre de Moraes was ordering Twitter and some other platforms, I guess, because I'm not that dumb to think it was happening only for Twitter. Right, right. So he was addressing orders to Twitter saying, block these and that people in one hour. If you don't do that, I will fine you in...

It was, I can tell you, around $20,000, $30,000 to start. It was a huge fine, you know, daily, daily, if you do not accomplish with his orders. But the main thing is Alexandre de Moraes ordered, according with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist, articles that came up a couple of months ago. Alexandre de Moraes was...

saying to Twitter platform, do not tell the users that are getting blocked that this order is coming from me. Oh, yeah. This is key because during 2022 elections, Brazilians got to piss it off with Twitter.

Because you get your cell phone and then there is a black screen saying you were blocked because you violated one of our internal policies. Sure, sure. And then you say, but what post did I do that makes me be blocked in the platform? You don't know. These are the candidates you're speaking of? No, everybody in general. So this was happening quite broadly? You have candidates, you have regular people, you have influencers, you have YouTubers like...

Luciano Hang, for example, who is a very strong supporter of my father, he's a billionaire, he got blocked in this situation.

So you are getting outside. Imagine in the United States, you are going to run for president and you cannot see what Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, what they are posting or producing on their platforms. This was the situation in Brazil. Right. So I'm adding one more factor. Well, they blocked Trump too when he was president. So that's quite remarkable. Yes. And Elon, he bought Twitter right between the first and the second round of the Brazilian election in October of 2022. Right.

That's why we know all of that nowadays. One year ago, we would be still pissed off at Twitter. But why? Elon Musk started a fight, I don't know, months ago with Alexandre de Moraes. Alexandre de Moraes, he has, he's the justice of the Supreme Court. He has a Twitter account. And he was talking about something, posting his opinion or whatever about something. And then Elon come,

and commented, why are you demanding so much censorship in Brazil? Oh, yeah. Boom, then things start. The chairman of the Justice Committee of the House of the U.S. Congress, Mr. Gene Jordan...

He asked Elon Musk to give all the emails changed with the Brazilian authorities during the 2022 election period of time. Oh, yeah. With these emails, now that we know, after reading the report of Jim Jordan in the U.S. Congress, you have around 500 pages in this report, you'll know that Alexandre de Moraes, I mean, the electoral court was sending emails to Twitter saying to block people.

And some of the people, for example, the journalist Paulo Figueiredo, he only knew why he was blocked in 2022 looking to these reports. So this is the level of censorship that we had. And this is the problem because this is not only about Brazil. - Oh, that's for sure. - Europe authorities, Alexandre de Moraes and some other authorities of Brazil, they do speeches in Paris, in London, in New York. They are spreading the virus.

And you have some press articles saying that some of the European authorities, they were looking closely at this fight between Alexandre de Moraes and Elon Musk to copy to Europe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because what happened, now I would talk with the Americans that don't know this story deeply. I'm talking about Twitter, Elon Musk against Alexandre de Moraes, right? Well, there was a top EU official whose name escapes me at the moment, unfortunately, who complained, although apparently not with the full authority of the EU, about the fact that Musk was talking to Trump. Come again? That he complained...

using his EU... A Brazilian one? No, no, an EU representative. Unfortunately, I can't remember his name. We'll put it in the notes. But he complained that Musk was talking to Trump, right? So this... Why is there crime in that? What is the crime? The House of...

representatives in the US actually wrote a response letter and I think it was Jim Jordan who signed it telling him to really mind his own bloody business as he should have and the EU to their credit did separate themselves technically from him although and I don't know the I don't know the entire background of the story but the reason I'm bringing it up is because I I

It lends credence to your claim that the EU bureaucrats who are not the least bit happy with Elon Musk, and the same thing could be said about the UK, especially the Labour Party there, right? They're definitely Musk's enemies and will do whatever they need to to stop him.

And that is being played out in Brazil. That's part of the reason why I think this podcast should be of broad interest to the international community. - Because as Brazil, we have this special case because the censorship is coming through the hands of one of the justice of the Supreme Court. And also Alexandre de Moraes fined Twitter. And the first response of Twitter is that they're not going to pay this fine. But after one month they paid.

to get back again Twitter in Brazil because they were banned. So the Europeans, authorities, like the woke people, the progressive, they were enjoying that. Wait a minute, so...

If we do that through the hands of the courts, maybe we can control Elon Musk and force them to censorship whoever I want. So this is the point. And what I would say that was shocking is that to do that, Alexandre de Moraes not only banned Twitter, he threatened to arrest the Twitter team in Brazil. Right, yes, I remember that. That's why, thanks to the president of Argentina, Javier Millet, he offered asylum to this kind of people. They said...

publicly through Twitter. If the Brazilians want to come to Argentina, they are more than welcome because here we do preserve the freedom and the free speech and all of that. So thank you, Javier Millet, the greatest president of Latin America by far. And the second thing is Alexandre de Moraes freezed

some of the resources of Starlink. - Yes, well- - But Starlink wasn't in the dispute. - So Europeans are toying with that too. I've looked at some of their background legislation and the fine structures, Canada is playing with this too, by the way, under the auspices of a bill called C63, which is the most totalitarian piece of legislation I've ever seen written in the West by a large margin.

way worse than nefarious Bill C-16. That was just the warmup. In any case,

The fines that are being proposed in Bill C-63, which I imagine will be somewhat of a template for the impending war against Musk, involve percentages of company revenue worldwide. Like, I think in the Canadian bill, it's 6% of company revenue worldwide per day. Revenue, not profit, revenue. Well, and then the question is, well,

Is it X revenue or is it X revenue and Starlink revenue and Tesla revenue? And well, you can be certain that that'll be interpreted in the most liberal manner possible. Because Elon is not the owner of Starlink. He has, I guess, 42% of the company, but he's not the owner. You have way other people around in the same company. Details, details, details. And Bill Ackman, some other billionaires, they start to complain, wait, wait, wait.

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You know, it's too much power on only one person's hands. And it can be very dangerous because we know how dictatorship starts. And when they start, usually they have support of part of the people. But on the next day, the supporters will be the target of the dictator. That's for sure. In all the dictatorships, it happens. Yeah. And this is...

one of the things that are happening in this dispute with Twitter. And that's also why the US Congress, they are giving their attention to Brazil. And nowadays, we have a bill from their representative, Maria Ovira Salazar from Florida,

It was approved in the committees of the House and is ready to be voted from the House. We only need that the chairman, Mike Johnson, to put that to be vote. And this bill says that if any foreigner authority do not respect the First Amendment of an American citizen outside of U.S.,

they will lose their visa to come to the US. The country? Yeah, for example, if a Brazilian authority does not respect the free speech of Elon Musk or any other American, he is not able to come into and enter the United States. He will lose his visa. So this bill, we hope that it's going to be approved in the House

Because after that, I'm sure that the U.S. administration, even more with Trump, I'm always supporting Trump, that it can be fully applied. It's a way to avoid this kind of authority because they have too much power. They are doing whatever they want, even with American companies. And come on, Twitter is following all of the American and U.S. law. Why? Why?

Brazilians are, the Brazilian Supreme Court is banning Twitter outside of Brazil. So it's a way to force people to respect the law. If the Brazilian authorities, if they were respecting the law. Right, well, the war, you know, the war is really going to be

So Americans arguably have the most potent protection for free speech rights in the world. I think that's a reasonable thing to say. I mean, countries like Britain, European countries, there's a tradition of free speech, but it's really, our free speech protections in Canada are very weak by comparison, very weak. And that's certainly been demonstrated in recent years. We have a charter of rights, but it's got so many loopholes in it that, and administratively and technically that,

I mean, should I say it's not worth the paper it's written on? I'd probably say that. In any case, that's not the case in the US because the right to free speech is extremely well protected. And so what we're going to see really is like a war in cyberspace between the principles of American law fundamentally and the principles that govern the rest of the world because the American law

Social media companies dominate and they run especially acts on the principle of free speech and so that's another reason why the situation in Brazil and in the European Union is so

incredibly important. Now, this Supreme Court official, how does he derive his power? How long is he in office? Like, where does he get his legitimacy and his authority? And how is he regarded by Brazilians? When they are appointed for the Supreme Court, the president appoints the candidate for the Supreme Court, and the Senate, after a sabbatin, approves the name of the person.

So, in 2017, Alexandre de Moraes took office in the Supreme Court as a Justice of the Supreme Court, and he will stay there until he completes 75 years old. So, by the year of 2040-something, he will retire. I see. So, a long time. Unless he wants to resign. Right. But who can stop him? And under what administration was he appointed?

Before my father. The one immediately before your father. And the curious thing is, it wasn't a radical left president. It was pretty much a central, central right president, Michel Temer, who appointed him. No one would expect Alexandre de Moraes would do things like he's doing nowadays. I see, I see. And how do you explain it? It's establishment.

His mission was take Bolsonaro out of power and end with this spontaneous movement created not only by my father, because my father is the political leader of this right-wing conservative movement, but on the philosophy part, you have other key men that unfortunately last year passed away, Professor Olavo de Carvalho. I don't know if you've ever listened about him. He was used to live in Virginia.

several books, very smart. And he is the one who on the philosophy side was giving the arguments and also forming new leaders

to be on key positions in Brazil, to sustain this right, not right-wing movement, but this movement in favor of the morals, in favor of the honesty and what... Well, we can call it conservative. Yes, yes, you can call him as a conservative. So it was Olavo de Carvalho on the philosophy side and my father on the political side converging to the same target, if I can say that. So the...

The willing of, as I can see, of Alexandre de Moraes is to end with this movement led by my father. Right, right. Now, so is that, do you think that that's partly...

an attack on the social media structures that your family used so effectively in your movement to power? Is it a reaction by the legacy establishment against the emergence of social media dominance? Sure, yes, because if you

If you do not have social media anymore, the monopoly of information will go back against mainstream media. Of course, all the legacy media want that. It's not surprising that the powers that be on the establishment side, so to speak, even for reasons of mere self-preservation, regard Musk as a threat, because he is a threat. I mean, his stated goal for X is to make it the predominant social media.

source of information in the world, right? I mean, he'd like to supplant YouTube. And if YouTube continues to muck about the way they have been, they're so full of snivelly tricks that it's just beyond belief. I mean, they shadow banned the Musk or the Rogan Trump discussion this week because they play around with the search algorithms. They did that to me. Yes. And they're so sneaky about it. For example, they blocked

So there's an autofill that people use to find new videos and for a long time they blocked the autofill on the name Peterson. And we only, it took us like six months to figure that out because my viewership was declining. We couldn't figure out why. It's like,

Oh, they mucked about with the autofill. Isn't that unbelievably devious? And so anyways, Musk obviously wants to make X into a one-stop media platform, and he's pretty blunt and blatant in his ambitions, and it's working. I mean, X is the number one news center in the world now, and it's just getting going because X doesn't do a great job yet of video sharing and that sort of thing. It's not got everything YouTube has yet, but...

If I had to bet on a company and it was Google versus Musk, I'd bet on Musk, like, no, hands down. Definitely, because Google's tangled themselves up in this corporate idiocracy, and it's been that way for about eight years. But you see, you are right. Sorry, Professor. No, no. You are right. But...

shadow ban would not be a problem if you have other companies on social media, alternative companies. The problem is in Brazil, Rumble is not in Brazil. See? They left Brazil after do not accomplish some of the orders of Alexandre de Moraes. They said, I'm out. I cannot survive in a country where they do not have free speech because free speech is a value that we carry here in Rumble. So they left the country just like X left Brazil.

a little bit after Rumble. And YouTube is the way that you were talking. Shadow ban, doing this, doing that, reducing the voice of the conservatives. And sometimes you watch a Trump video and then the suggested of the next video is a video of Hillary Clinton talking some things. Yeah. But if you have the freedom to have a new social media, it will be okay.

Then I have to talk again. Remember when Trump was kicked out from Twitter in January of 2021? I don't know if it happened here. It also happened in North America. But in Brazil, people start to run to two other platforms, Parler and Getter.

Gator, the CEO of Gator is Mr. Jason Miller, who is together with Trump taking care of the market of his campaign, helping Trump in his campaign. Jason Miller in 2021 went to Brazil to do a speech in the CPEC Brazil. I do organize the CPEC in Brazil. It's the largest gathering of the conservatives all around the world. We have the Brazilian version. Right, right. After doing his speech, he went back to the airport.

And guess what? Alexandre de Moraes ordered the federal police to go there and detain Jason Miller. Jason Miller, an American citizen, stayed almost four hours in a Brazilian airport because the federal police officers wanted him to sign some papers written in Portuguese. He said, "I don't know Portuguese. What is written there?" They called someone from the street to do the translation, and Jason Miller said,

Am I under investigation? Am I a testimony? What is going on here? So after some time, a lawyer come, help Jason Miller. He didn't sign nothing, but it was embarrassing, this situation. So Alexandre de Moraes, he has a personal fight against Elon Musk and against Jason Miller, two people that are pretty close of Trump.

So maybe Alexandre de Moraes is having a conflict with really big guys. Because when you affect a billionaire like Elon Musk, some other billionaires are going to talk about it and have an idea that Alexandre de Moraes is not fighting to preserve democracy,

but truly doing the opposite of that, killing democracy. Because to preserve our constitution, you need to violate the constitution. You're not preserving any constitution anymore. And I think this is getting clearer and clearer to all of the rest of the world. So I expect here, professor, in the great audience that you have in your podcast, to prevent our friends from Europe, Latin America, North America, to do not copy

the model of Brazilian censorship. Well, we're going to see that play out over the next couple of years, that's for sure. Yeah, and it's a tight struggle. I mean, this new Canadian legislation, Bill C-63, it's the most... It's so... It's so devious. How is that? Because the beginning of the legislation and the end are all about protecting children from sexual exploitation online. Right? And so...

And it's a long bill. Well, you're opposed to stopping children from being exploited online? Sure enough. You oppose Bill C-63? It's like, yeah, because I actually read it and I saw exactly what you did. It's like all your lovely moralizing at the beginning and all your lovely moralizing at the end and this unbelievable totalitarian proclivity in the middle. It's just beyond comprehension. And so...

online harms bill. And you can see, like, it's got to be something, because it's happening everywhere, it's got to be something like the reaction of the legacy communication systems against the new technologies. It's something, it's no wonder, right? Because YouTube, free video, universally distributable and permanent, is a technological revolution larger than the Gutenberg printing press, I think. Because

The Gutenberg printing press obviously spread literacy everywhere, that and the Protestants spread literacy everywhere. But even with that, reading was still a minority occupation, right? I think 2% of people buy hardcover books, right? And most hardcover books that are bought, I don't think are read. And so people read, but

A minority of people read most of the books, but way more people can listen. Like it's gotta be. I know with my books, at least half of them now are audio, right? And that's the case across the book market in general. - I prefer to listen than read. - Well, many people do. - It's more practical. - Yeah, well,

One of the advantages is everyone can listen. So that's a big advantage, you know, because you have to be a highly skilled and literate person to really enjoy reading. And, you know, maybe that's 30% of the population, but it's not much more than that, I wouldn't say. But listening, man, everybody can do that. And you can do it when you're doing other things. And so it's made, it's absolutely revolutionary. I knew YouTube was revolutionary back when it first came out, I thought.

Permanent, universally accessible video. Oh!

Oh, this changes, this changes absolutely everything. And that's what's playing out, right? It is, we have this shifting landscape now where the information intermediaries are now obsolete. Well, it's no wonder they're annoyed by that. All the legacy journalists, like, we don't need you. In fact, you're in the way. All the legacy broadcasters, it's like broadcasting technology is 20 years out of date. You know, and Musk recently called for the Americans to...

take, broadcast, so the, like CBS and NBC own, have rights to the electromagnetic spectrum that they use to broadcast their channels. Well, Musk proposed two weeks ago that that just be taken from them because they have, they're not, they have an obligation, a legal obligation to tell both sides of the story, which they certainly aren't doing. And they don't own that

portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. And so he thinks it should just be turned over to the tech companies who would make much more efficient use of it. And the legacy media companies can be cable like everyone else. And that's going to happen because there's no reason for them to have that monopoly anymore. So it's not surprising that there's this immense

reaction, like it's broader than the mere antipathy of the left wing to your family. And that's partly why it's happening everywhere, right? Because it's Brazil, it's the same story in Canada, it's the same story in the US, the same thing is playing out in Europe and in Australia. So you know that there's something really fundamental going on, and part of it is definitely this technological shift.

And then the other thing that's strange about that too, and this is where your family's more integrally involved, is that you guys were early adopters of the new media and that was revolutionary, right? And so there's two reasons to be terrified of it, right? Not only is the legacy media

Are the legacy media purveyors dead and that whole system of influence archaic, but it's also empowering a whole new crop of political types who are speaking directly to the people. Yeah, well, God only knows what that's going to do. I mean, Trump's team figured that out in this election. Trump has been on, I think this is because of the influence of his son, Barron, who from my understanding knows, because he's young enough, he knows the new media landscape. And so I...

I have reason to believe that he's been recommending the podcast hosts that Trump has appeared on, you know, people like Theo Vaughn, for example, and who wouldn't be an obvious for, Vaughn's a great interviewer and I like him and he's super smart, but it's quite surprising that Trump went on Theo Vaughn's show and he did and Rogan as well. And that was another demonstration that legacy media. I think Rogan was almost 50 million people. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, despite the shadow ban. Yeah. Right, I saw it today. Kamala Harris used, Kamala, there's some way you're supposed to say that if you're like an acceptable person, but I'm in Northern Albertan and we can't talk. So her, she did a fairly popular podcast and it's got 745,000 views compared to 50 million. And I think it's also because the people who are following Trump

Don't follow the legacy media. Whereas the people who are supporting Harris do follow the legacy media so of course Trump's views are gonna stack up because all of those people all the Republicans in the United States virtually all of them distrust the legacy media and

And so they're on the cutting edge in that regard. - I think it's for the first time in history here in the US, people trust more in the Congress than the mainstream media. - And you know things are bad when that happens. - I don't know the source. I have a friend, he's a journalist here, and he told me, I do not remember the source, but he said, "This is fantastic."

In Brazil, we have a lot of people that still believe and follow our legacy media over there, but the numbers of this credibility is going down. Yeah, well, and the same thing is happening in Europe. The legacy media is still comparatively dominant in the UK, less in the UK than in Europe, still very dominant in Europe, but that's going to change because...

It has to. You can't compete with free, right? There's just no way that the broadcast networks can survive because their economic model has been demolished. And they don't know how to do it. No. They're used to control the narrative and they don't know how to do it. No, I know. It's so funny. So CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They have a YouTube channel. Well, you can't post comments. So it's like, that's a no-no, guys.

The YouTube ecosystem demands that people post comments. So you've already made a colossal error in your arrogance. I looked recently, CBC posts the programming that it broadcasts also on YouTube. The last 20 posts that they made, each got less than 100 views. 100 views. $1.4 billion in government subsidy a year and another $600 million in advertising. $2 billion a year.

for posts on YouTube that are getting less than 100 views. That means that even all the actors didn't watch it. You have to fire all the crew, all the team. Yeah, well, that's Polyev's plan. He said he's going to stop the government subsidy of media in Canada. God, I hope he does it because it's really quite preposterous. Okay, we should talk about the future.

So tell me about your future and about your father's future, like, and where the political landscape is headed in Brazil and also what's going to happen with the Supreme Court. And, like, are the Supreme Court decisions popular in Brazil? No. No.

Okay. But who could stop the Supreme Court is the Senate. But the chairman of the Senate, he already said, Rodrigo Pacheco, that he will not start an impeachment procediment against any of the justices of the Supreme Court. So the justices of the Supreme Court, they are really comfortable because despite this constitutional tool that we could start an impeachment procediment against one of the justices,

you don't have what to do. That's why we run to United States and are providing information for US authorities trying to help us down there in Brazil. Also mainly because what is happening in the Brazil with the support of Lula da Silva, the president, is an attack not only against Elon Musk, but against American companies and not only Starlink and NX, but also against the constitution of United States, the First Amendment.

And thanks God we are having a good interaction, a good relationship, not only with Gene Jordan, with Mario Villasalazar, Chris Smith, Richard McCormick, and some other players, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott. And for the first time in history, I think we are very well connected with the American politicians. How did that happen? I have to tell you that I come here often.

very often to United States, opening these doors. It's not only because of me, okay? We have more people involved.

But I hard work in that. I do not care. I get a plane, fly economy class, come here to have one meeting and come back to Brazil. I did that several times. And that's how we know one and another. And now they are very polite, very smart. They know the situation of Brazil and they are taking some actions here. We had a hearing in the U.S. Congress in the Human Rights Committee with Chris Smith inviting the president

the owner of Rubble, Mr. Pavlovsky, with Paulo Figueiredo, to debate the censorship in Brazil, trying to prevent the U.S. and trying to help Brazilians that are victims of the censorship. So in the future, I think we can do much more fresh and coming from the international community, not only U.S., because I also talked about how great is the president of Argentina, Javier Millet, who is a libertarian.

And we can help Brazil in this way because with the globalization, everybody's connected. It's not only about Brazil. - Well, as you can tell, because the political issues are the same regardless of the country. The same thing is happening everywhere. And it is certainly in no small part because we're so hyper-connected.

And so, and that also means that warfare is going to change dramatically. And what's happening in Brazil, this dispute between the Supreme Court official and Musk, that's...

That is a reflection of a new kind of information warfare. Right, and it's definitely the First Amendment versus everything else in a very deep way. Right, okay, so you fostered relationships in the US. And so that's so interesting because the case that you're making is that you can understand why the Senate in Brazil would be loath to begin impeachment proceedings against a Supreme Court justice.

When one branch of the government starts to go to war against another branch, there's real trouble there. So I can imagine why they're stepping carefully. I'm not justifying it. I just would say that that is something that you want to do very, very carefully. But it's very interesting that...

the pressure is actually being mounted more effectively through the US and internationally than within Brazil itself? What about the typical Brazilian? I mean, all the people that were supporting your father, for example, what's happening with them now? And that'll be our segue, I guess, into discussion of what you think is going to happen in the future in Brazil. When's the next election? - In 2026. - 26, okay. - We had election this year, but it's municipal election.

where we did great. Like the number of mayors and city councils that we have, like almost half of Brazil in the capital of the states, the most voted city council is from my party, from our party. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a big deal to have control, to have influence at the local level. Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's a big deal. No, we increased a lot. It was great, this election for Brazil. My father, he went for more than 140 cities in Brazil.

And on the other path, Lula da Silva almost didn't go to be part of this election. He was in Mexico, he was traveling and not really campaign for people from his party. And even the mayors, the candidates of the Labour Party, some of them, they didn't want Lula da Silva at the same stage of them. Which means that his credibility is going low, going down. So it was great to us. We will have elections in 2026.

Nowadays, my father cannot run because the electoral court with Mr. Alexandre de Moraes on the head decided that he had a meeting with ambassadors when he was president and he criticized the electoral process of Brazil. This was anti-democratic. So they said that my father is convicted. Eight years without, cannot run with no political rights. So for eight years, my father cannot run. Wow.

How can we have the expectation in the 2026 he can go back and run again? Because this electoral court is made by seven judges, three coming from the Supreme Court. And as I told you, Alexandre de Moraes was on the head. In 2026, Alexandre de Moraes, he will not be in the electoral court anymore. Who will be the chairman of the next election? It will be Cassio Nunes, who is a justice from the Supreme Court appointed by my father.

And the vice chair of the electoral court in 2026 will be Andre Mendonça, who is other justice of the Supreme Court appointed by my father. So we have an expectation, not that they are going to work in favor of my father, but you have a way more balanced court to analyze and judge everything. And they can have the opportunity to really work for more transparency and more integrity election.

Here, do you think there is, I believe you're implying that there is some possibility that your father will be in a position to run again. You're not certain of that, but you think it's a possibility. I think so. Lula was in jail two years before the election. Supreme Court let him go free. So, you know, Lula, they annulled all of his conviction. He was convicted for laundering money and corruption. They said, oh, no, no, no, Lula would never be sued again.

in the city of Curitiba. He would be sued in Sao Paulo or Brasilia. That's why they canceled all the convictions, the condemnation that he had.

So he got it back again. Now he's clean again, and that's how he was able to run on 2022. If it happened with a convicted fellow, convicted criminal, why cannot happen with my father who is guilty because he had a meeting with ambassadors? Are you afraid for your father and for yourself? We think that he can go to jail in this kind of a atmospheric scenario

What about more intense threats? Because he was already, as you pointed out, just about assassinated. So what, like, what... He don't care to be assassinated. Think with our enemy's head. If you send him to jail, they will attract even more attention of the international community. Yeah, yeah, definitely. My father, he probably, he'll write a book about...

He'll have kind of communication outside of the jail, maybe between his lawyers, I don't know. But everybody always, like in a Rocky Balboa movie, everybody cheers for the one who is receiving all of these unfair convictions. You know, we always stay on the side of the victim.

If you kill my father, he's going to become a martyr. And for decades, he is going to be reminded. Right, right. As someone that's like fight for free speech and freedom of the people, you know. Right. It's a problem for the left to do that. And to be very honest, I guess, I guess the establishment of Brazil, they are waiting for the U.S. election. Uh-huh.

- Because... - Right. To see which side the bread is buttered on. Yes, because, for example, when you have a Supreme Court

powerful like that, they're backed by businessmen, billionaires, millionaires, people who for sure have relationship with United States. They have houses here. They have an accountant in Delaware, whatever. They don't want to have problems with the US administration. So all of that is, it's on the table. I don't think, to be very honest, the chances that my father

could go to jail, it was way higher in the past than it is nowadays. This is my feeling.

Because in Brazil, you don't need a reason to go to the jail. You have a congressman like me that is in jail. His name is Daniel Silveira. And I say his name to you, make sure that you can Google it and do your research about who is the guy. He's in the jail because he got his cell phone and said bad words to the Supreme Court. In our constitution, a senator or a congressman like me, we can say whatever we want. We will never be sued in a court because our opinions. But this guy...

is in jail, convicted nine years, almost nine years in jail because he made a video that through the eyes of the Supreme Court, it was considered aggression against the democracy. At that time that this guy was convicted, Jerry Bolsonaro was the president and gave to him the presidential pardon. He got out of jail.

Then my father didn't get reelected. And the Supreme Court analyzed the pardon of the President Bolsonaro and canceled that. They annulled, the first time in the whole history of Brazil, a presidential pardon. And the guy is back now in the prison. That's why I'm telling you I have to take care about my words.

Because I don't know, maybe this crazy, this... Careful. Madness, yeah, yeah. So let's see, let's see, let's see what happens. But we have a hope that with the new configuration of the electoral court, we can overturn the eligibility of my father. And his model, his political capital is huge. If you look to the social media, everywhere he goes, even left-wing cities, it's full of people following him. Full, full of it.

And on the other hand, Lula cannot go to the streets. When is the election in 2026? In October. October 2026.

Okay, well, look, I think we should wrap it up there. That's a good place to end. I think what we'll do on the Daily Wire side, for everybody who's watching and listening, we haven't talked about the broader context of South America. I want to talk to you about what's going on in El Salvador. I know that's Central America, but we'll consider that close enough for the purposes of this argument, and also about Argentina. And so I'd like you to enlighten us more specifically

more profoundly about, yeah, the war, the culture war in Central and South America in general. And, well, I'd like to talk about Malai and...

I read his name all the time. Bukele. - Bukele, Naíbe Bukele. - Good, good, got it, got it. Yeah, so that's what we'll do on the Daily Wire side. If all of you who are watching or some of you who are watching and listening want to join us there, we'll continue this discussion and that'll, what, update your knowledge with regards to your neighbors, likely neighbors to the south. I know there's people in Europe watching as well, so, but... - Naíbe Bukele is great. - Yeah? - I've been there twice last year in El Salvador.

One vacation, surf, because they have great waves in El Salvador. And the other, visiting the jails. Even the famous one that he built, it has capacity for 40,000 people in that jail. They call it a center against terrorism. And what Bukele basically did is he's jailing the criminals and did not let them get outside. So he already arrested more than 70,000 criminals

And he reduced, to have an idea, El Salvador in 2016, the murderous rate, it was 102 murders for each group of 100,000 people. 102 is the most violent country in the world in the year 2016. Now, from 2002, they are around two. Same level of Canada or some of the European countries.

And this is how he did that. Wait, let's do that on the Daily Wire side. All right. We'll continue with that. Yeah, so that's a good teaser. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Professor. Thank you for coming here. My pleasure. Much appreciated. It's very good to bring these issues.

regarding Brazil to broader public knowledge, especially given the, there's all sorts of reasons, but I guess the most compelling at the moment is the connection with Elon Musk and with free speech in general. And so, yeah, so thank you very much for that. And thank you to everybody who's watching and listening and supporting this podcast and to the film crew here in Scottsdale for making this possible.

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