FACING THE MUSIC

Brazil’s Bolsonaro Sounds Especially Trumpy in New Interview

Jair Bolsonaro confirmed that he plans leave Florida soon, where he has been living since losing his country’s presidential election last year.

Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro says he intends to leave his adopted home of Florida and return to the country that ousted him as its leader. In what is believed to be his first U.S. television interview since his ousting in December of last year, Bolsonaro also told NBC News while at CPAC that he had nothing to do with the subsequent Jan. 8 riots in Brazil, where Bolsonaro supporters raided government offices and stormed its Supreme Court. The confirmation of his return plans echoed an earlier Wall Street Journal interview. Despite the fact that Bolsonaro was in Florida at the time, the country’s Supreme Court has confirmed it will investigate his role in the riots nonetheless. “All the right rallies of the last four years were peaceful and we don’t have anything to do with that,” Bolsonaro said, hitting many of the same notes as his ally, former U.S. President Donald Trump, to whom he is often compared. “Our people would never do what the people did on Jan. 8. So we are more and more certain that it was people from the left that planned all of that.” He added: “I had more support in 2022 than I did in 2018.” He also did not concede defeat.