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Kids, it's time to party with.. Jair Bolsonaro!!
The former Brazilian president now sells Bolsonaro-themed birthday party packs -- in real life! But what happens when Puppet Regime invites him to host an ACTUAL party?
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Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei attends a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 11, 2023.
Who the heck is Javier Milei?
Perhaps you’ve heard about Argentina’s new presidential frontrunner. His name is Javier Milei, and his raucous political rallies feature him as a ranting, raving, rock star who wants to “blow up” the country’s political lethargy.
His charisma approaches the level of Donald Trump, a leader he says he admires. He wants to make the US dollar Argentina’s legal currency, close down the country’s central bank, and legalize the sale of human organs without government interference. He has argued that sex education in Argentina’s schools is part of an elite plot to destroy the traditional family.
Milei’s campaign style suggests he’s usually the last to leave the karaoke bar.
And it’s precisely because of his libertarian – some would say anarchic – views and his open hatred for a political class that has failed to pull Argentina from a chronic economic crisis that his star is on the rise.
We know he’s a leading contender because Argentina has a political process that asks voters to indicate their preference for president two months before the election. In August, Milei won a jaw-dropping 30% plus of the vote in a race that included 22 candidates. The main center-right opposition bloc won 28%. The ruling leftist Peronist coalition took 27%.
The election will be held on Sunday, and with an inflation rate of 116% that keeps 40% of the country in poverty, it’s not hard to see why many voters might turn to a self-proclaimed political arsonist.
If this political dynamic sounds familiar, it’s because anti-politician politicians have become a phenomenon in recent years. Trump represented a complete break with the American political class, personified perfectly by Hillary Clinton. In 2018, exhausted by the scandals and stagnating economy under left-wing governments, Brazilian voters turned to profane former paratrooper Jair Bolsonaro.
But this isn’t just a right-wing phenomenon. French voters chose Emmanuel Macron in 2017 in part because he challenged both the center-right and center-left establishment parties that dominated France for decades. Like Macron, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador created his own political party and drove it to power in 2018 by challenging a political class perceived as hopelessly corrupt. On the left, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro represented a similar let’s-just-start-over approach to political problem-solving.
It should be noted, however, that Trump was impeached twice, indicted four times, lost his bid for reelection, and is now running again with a national approval rating of 40%. Bolsonaro lost his bid for reelection too, and he’s now banned from running for office for eight years. Macron and Petro have become deeply unpopular. Only López Obrador has managed to defy political gravity while governing as a political outsider.
Argentina’s voters will decide on Sunday just how serious they are about a Javier Milei presidency. The most recent polls say the vote might be close, but Milei remains the favorite.
Bolsonaro banned from flying too!
The Brazilian president gets some bad news at the airport, and can't understand why.
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Israel/Palestine one of the few Middle East areas getting less stable
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Israel launched its biggest military operation in the West Bank since 2002. How will it impact Israeli-Palestinian stability?
Well, I mean, pretty badly. The problem is that Israel has no interest in reopening talks with the Palestinians on a potential two-state solution. The country has moved towards the Right on that issue, and the Palestinians don't have effective governance, for the Palestinian authority in the West Bank is increasingly weakened and in Gaza, it's really a matter of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. So, there's no movement towards talking. Instead, it's the Israelis taking more territory, building more settlements, and the Palestinians getting angrier and more desperate. And no surprise that you're going to see more military confrontation on the back of that. Having said that, it's one of the few areas where things aren't getting more stable in the Middle East, almost everywhere else, the Gulf, Iran's relations with the GCC, Qatar and the GCC, Assad getting normalized, Yemen with a ceasefire, most of the Middle East actually looks more stable.
Is Bolsonaro's political career over?
Well, they say he can't run, the judiciary has said, now he can't, he's out of politics till 2030. I mean, you know, if you look at the United States, he'd still have a couple of decades going, right? You look at Biden and Trump, you just never retire if you're an American political leader. You get to govern forever or at least keep running. But Bolsonaro will still be by far the most popular leader on the Right and therefore has kingmaker status. I think, you know, who he decides he'd like to see as running for the presidency in the next electoral cycle will have a significant leg up. And by the way, he increasingly talks about his wife in that role. So, I mean, keep it in the family. Why not?
Okay, with student loan forgiveness struck down, does it hurt Biden's reelection efforts?
Yeah, I think it does, on balance. I mean, the fact that the executive increasingly is showing that it is on the back foot vis-à-vis not just a legislature that's very polarized, though they have had some wins there, but also a 6-3 Conservative Supreme Court, and that that has struck down a number of issues that is hurting them, I think that does matter. I think a promise to forgive student loans and not being able to get that done quickly or as big is a promise that Biden, you know, he can say, I'm still working for you, but if he can't get it done, people aren't benefiting. On affirmative action, it's more in between. I mean, then it depends on how the question is phrased, whether or not it's actually popular, unpopular. On balance, I would say striking it down as more with the population as opposed to the abortion issue, where clearly the population is on the side of Roe and against today's Supreme Court. So still very, very polarized, the US. Not surprised, that's sort of the theme of the day. I hope everyone is well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Israel launches new operation in Jenin ›
- The latest from Israel and Gaza ›
- Bolsonaro gets benched ›
- Bolsonaro goes on trial ›
- Supreme Court rejects Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan ›
- 3 key Supreme Court decisions expected in June 2023 ›
- Is the Middle East becoming the "new Europe”? - GZERO Media ›
- Hamas attacks in Israel ignite war - GZERO Media ›
Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro talks with media
Bolsonaro gets benched
Brazil’s electoral court has forbidden former President Jair Bolsonaro from running for public office until 2030. The decision takes a top contender out of the 2026 presidential race after finding Bolsonaro guilty of violating election laws and undermining trust in the country’s electoral system.
Wait, what happened again? Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, rose to power in 2018 by harnessing a conservative “beef, bible, and bullets” voting base. In 2022, he narrowly lost to his left-wing rival, “Lula” da Silva, but not before he had spread baseless claims about problems with Brazil’s voting systems. After he lost, these claims spurred his supporters to storm government offices, hoping to induce a military takeover that would restore Bolsonaro to power.
What does this mean? Depends on whose side you're on. While Lula and the political establishment see the ruling as just punishment for Bolsonaro nearly inciting a coup, Bolsonaro’s followers will perceive it as further evidence that Brazil’s institutions are hopelessly rigged against them. Protests are possible in the coming days.
Making kings from the sidelines. Bolsonaro, who lost to Lula by less than two points, remains the country’s most prominent opposition figure, and his party and its allies have a commanding presence in Brazil’s fractious congress.
While he is likely to appeal the ruling, he has announced that he “won’t push it,” knowing that even if he’s stuck on the bench, he’ll still be able to play a kingmaker role in the upcoming local and presidential elections.
This isn’t Bolsonaro’s only legal headache. He is facing another 15 charges in the electoral court and several criminal investigations related to alleged incitement of his supporters’ riots after the election. Those charges all carry a penalty of disqualification from holding public office as well.
PUPPET REGIME: the Really Bad People song
Exciting update - GZERO has won the Gold Telly Award for this Puppet Regime episode in the category of “Craft-Use of Comedy.” Thanks to all of our viewers!
With everyone focusing on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, bad people in other parts of the world are having a moment, as Mohammad Bin Salman, Modi, Bolsonaro, and others are here to explain.
Did you miss the performances from the PUPPET REGIME's MBS? Well, he's back. Sing along, and add it to your playlist: you too can #BeBadPeople!!
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- MBS wants to know: Where is the line? - GZERO Media ›
- Putin signs up for MBS' Masterclass - GZERO Media ›
- Zelensky and Boris Johnson hit the beach - GZERO Media ›
- World High - GZERO Media ›
- Vladimir Putin sings one for his "friends" (90s video mix) - GZERO Media ›
- World leaders with rhythm: South Korea's President Yoon chimes in - GZERO Media ›
- What's Vladimir Putin reading these days? - GZERO Media ›
- Vladimir Putin, film critic: PUPPET REGIME - GZERO Media ›
- Who the hell was that world leader? - GZERO Media ›
- Kids, it's time to party with.. Jair Bolsonaro!! - GZERO Media ›
Tucker Carlson out at Fox News
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hey everybody. Ian Bremmer here, a Quick Take to kick off your week and well, you know what the hell? I'll respond to the Tucker Carlson news since it's pretty significant. He's out all of a sudden, a very sudden and very terse statement being made by Fox. They have agreed to part ways. Kind of statement that usually makes you think that there is more news that is going to be coming out relatively soon that they wanted to get ahead of. But let's leave that aside. This is the guy that was driving an extraordinary amount of revenue, most popular show on cable, and also now is driving a lot of losses because of the Dominion settlement, which Tucker Carlson played a significant role in being responsible for promoting a lot of fake news while also being caught in text messages saying that the election grievances and being stolen, "Stop the Steal" was all a lot of BS.
So what do we think about that? Well, I mean, first Fox going forward is likely to set some pretty clear limits so they don't get themselves vulnerable to these kinds of lawsuits going forward. They settled, but that settlement is expensive. It's about 20% of the cash on hand that Fox actually had, and nobody wants to be cutting those sorts of checks. And to the extent that Tucker is an relatively uncontrolled and uncontrollable actor on Fox, getting rid of him no matter how much advertising revenue and eyeballs he drives, as well as Dan Bongino, much smaller, but same sort of actor is a pretty sensible move for Fox to make. It's kind of funny because I remember when the Murdochs wanted to have Tucker in that position, and he was seen at the time as actually very intelligent, very credible, and a bomb thrower and a polemicist, but not about fake news.
Someone who actually was going to be great for Fox, for the Fox family. And of course, when Carlson started seeing just how much he could drive algorithmically by giving the base exactly what it wants and not mattering whether it was provable or not, and playing to some of the worst instincts of fear and anger that his population and the Trump population has, then he was willing to go with it 100%. And some of that has been deeply damaging. He's been the guy that's most clearly publicly aligned with Putin, for example, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine with Viktor Orbán, a clear authoritarian inside the EU, and also the idea that that Canada is increasingly becoming an authoritarian regime and needs support from the US. That's going to be a fun special that a lot of people will be forced to watch.
I will say that I never would go on Tucker Carlson. I refuse. In my view, it's not real information. I make a point when there's major international news on screen, I want to make sure that I appear on CNN, on MSNBC and on Fox. And that is not hard to do, even though very few people do it, if you stick to trying to help people understand what's happening in the world. But you can't do it on a show like Tucker. There's no problem doing it during the day at Fox. The morning show, the midday, afternoon. I mean, whether it's Bret Baier or Dana Perino or a whole bunch of other... I mean, I can think of 10 anchors that I've been on. They're all fine. They may be quite conservative. They may be pro-Trump, even some of them, though very few actually, certainly privately, but they're happy to have you talk about what you think.
Just as most of the vast majority of anchors I work with on CNN and MSNBC are, but Tucker is not. And in that regard, I'm glad he's gone, but I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters for two reasons. First, because his brand is going to go with him. He is a business. He will get that advertising revenue. He will continue to drive massive amounts of support, including through social media. In that regard he'll be one of the most effective in the United States, and I think he'll play a very significant role in 2024. In some ways, he may be more effective in doing that than he is at Fox. Certainly, I don't believe Trump gets elected if it isn't for Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. I don't think that Bolsonaro is elected without those mechanisms and many others populous on the right and on the left anti-establishment voices and forces that we see in Democratic elections around the world.
By the way, I also saw that Don Lemon was just ousted from CNN this morning, very different kind of ouster. I have appeared with Don Lemon a bunch on his show, and then more recently, I think a week or two ago on the morning show, but they clearly wanted to shake that up. It wasn't working internally in terms of bookings and rebookings and the orientation of the different anchors there being very different. And also the blowback he got when he was talking in an insensitive manner about age, which is something that you can get away with if you're Tucker, but you can't get away with if you're Don. And well, we'll see where he ends up next. But having said that, the funny thing is Chris Cuomo, who of course was canceled from CNN because of the inappropriateness of his links to his brother, the former governor who has done lots of bad things.
I actually think Chris Cuomo's a very strong newsman, and I enjoy going on his show and on his podcast. Think he asks tough questions across the political spectrum. And I'm glad he's back and I'm glad he's still there and doing it. I don't know how many people actually watch it, but I'll tell you that if he calls and I'm around, I'll certainly give him the time. So that's how I think about this stuff. And of course on my own GZERO show, which I hope a lot of you watch, I do my damnedest to reach out to everybody, whether it's Dem, Republican, or Independent in the US and there's increasingly a large number of those as well as around the world.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva greets supporters at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia.
Lula and the new Brazil: big plans, short honeymoon
Earlier this week, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva completed his return from the wilderness.
After 12 rocky years out of power – which included the impeachment of his hand-picked successor, jail time for a corruption conviction that was later overturned, and a narrow election win over his nemesis Jair Bolsonaro – the left-wing former union leader was inaugurated for the third time as Brazil’s president.
The last time Lula lived at the Dawn Palace in Brasilia, from 2003-2010, he oversaw a historic transformation of the country, lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty and putting Brazil on the map as an emerging leader of the new Global South. Small wonder that he left office with an approval rating of 80%. US President Barack Obama once called him “the most popular politician on earth.”
Now, at the start of his third presidential term, Lula says he wants to do many of the same things that characterized his first two: lift millions more into the middle class by increasing social spending, raising wages, reducing hunger, and investing in infrastructure.
The timing of his message is spot on. In the wake of the pandemic, local researchers found that more than 30% of Brazilian households experience moderate or severe hunger – three times higher than a decade ago. The World Bank says a fifth of Brazilians are still “chronically poor.”
But Brazil, and the world outside it, have changed dramatically since the early 2000s in ways that could complicate Lula’s plans fast.
“Lula wants to write the last chapter of his own biography,” says Eurasia Group Brazil expert Silvio Cascione. “He wants to go down in history as Brazil's greatest president ever, but he won't have another chance like what he had in the past.”
For one thing, there’s much less money to throw around. In the 2000s, Lula was blessed with a massive commodity boom, as a roaring Chinese economy gobbled up Brazil’s main exports of soybeans, iron ore, and oil. Historically low interest rates in the US, meanwhile, meant that investors were pouring money into fast-growing markets like Brazil. With annual growth figures averaging around 6%, low levels of inflation, and the government awash in cash, o Brasil ‘tava bombando, as they used to say – “Brazil was booming.”
Today, things are bleaker. Brazil’s economy – battered first by mismanagement under Lula’s successors and then by the pandemic – is growing at barely 2% a year. And while commodity prices are high, the IMF warns that as much as a third of the world may slide into recession this year. No one, meanwhile, is quite sure what will come of Xi Jinping’s grand reopening of the Chinese economy, and high interest rates in the US and Europe are choking off investment in Brazil while making its debt burden loom larger.
The politics are no cakewalk either. In both 2002 and 2006, Lula won the presidency by margins of more than 12 points, while his Workers’ Party had a firm grip on Congress. In last year’s election, by contrast, he scraped through with just 51% of the vote and saw his party lose out in Congress to a coalition that backs Bolsonaro.
“Lula’s mandate is much weaker this time around,” says Brian Winter, a long-time Brazil expert who is editor-in-chief of America’s Quarterly. “It's a much more conservative and vastly more polarized country than it was back in 2003 when Lula first took office.”
So times have changed – has Lula? On the one hand, in order to reach out to a broader swathe of the public, he has named a more politically diverse cabinet than ever before, says Cascione.
His vice president, for example, is one-time rival Geraldo Alckmin, a center-right former governor of São Paulo. “For perspective, this would be roughly akin to Obama coming back and appointing Romney as vice president,” says Winter.
He has also become greener with time. Lula has made protecting the Amazon a far more important part of his platform today than it ever was in the 2000s, when his main concern was reducing poverty. With much of the world keenly focused on climate change, Lula is playing one of Brazil’s best cards at the international table.
But at the same time, experts say that since coming out of prison, he is much more insulated and mistrustful than in the past. “This is probably the most important difference between Lula now and 20 years ago,” says Cascione. “Even if his cabinet is more diverse, he’s relying on a smaller group of people to actually make decisions. And that may lead to more inconsistent policies or make him more prone to error.”
An early signpost: the numbers. To better understand how Lula will govern, and what the response will be, all eyes are on how Lula stakes out his spending plans in the next few months. Although the constitution limits what he can spend, Lula has already convinced Congress to allow him to propose new spending rules of his own this year.
In crafting those, Lula and his Finance Minister Fernando Haddad must tread carefully. He has promised a lot to the Brazilian people, but if financial markets get spooked by his spending plans, the currency could falter, driving up inflation and pushing the country into a fresh recession that would anger voters and embolden his opponents in a hurry.
And that is one of the biggest challenges of all, says Cascione.
“The new middle class that emerged during Lula’s first term is now better informed and much more difficult to satisfy,” explains Cascione, “so not only will the opposition to Lula be stronger, his honeymoon period could be shorter too.”