Bolsonaro says he has a silver bullet for 2026 – 06/26/2023 – Mônica Bergamo

Former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) traveled to São Paulo over the weekend to watch the Palmeiras game at Allianz Parque. After seeing the team defeated, he went to the house of former Communications Secretary Fábio Wajngarten to eat esfiha, hot dogs and pizza with friends.

At a round table attended by two of his lawyers, Paulo Cunha Bueno and Daniel Tesser, as well as councilors and politicians such as the mayor of São Paulo, Ricardo Nunes (MDB), the former president spoke to the column about his judgment in the Superior Court (TSE), which resumes this Tuesday (27).

Restrained by his standards of spontaneity, Bolsonaro admitted the possibility of becoming ineligible and only spoke of his feelings about the situation after some insistence.

He said that, even outside the ballot box, he intends to continue in public life, spoke about possible political successors and admitted that he may spend time outside Brazil. Read below for key excerpts from the conversation.

You spent four intense years in power. [Ligado] On 220, bare.

But now you have lost the election and will probably become ineligible. What’s your feeling? The trend, what everyone says, is that I’m going to become ineligible.

Yes. But I wanted to insist: are you sad? Or excited to fight? I will not despair. What can I do?

But what is your feeling? I’m unbroken until proven otherwise. I will continue to do my part.

Do you think you can reverse the ineligibility in the future? [silêncio por alguns segundos] Look, I know the composition of the superior courts [que mudam com o tempo, e de acordo com os governos, que indicam seus integrantes]. That it is possible, it is.

Now, when we find out that an important authority —using an abusive pleonasm there—beats his chest and says: “We saved democracy last year”… he was saved with interference.

Since January 2019 they said I was going to do the coup: “It’s going to do the coup, it’s going to do the coup”. “Look, put military”. I put people who were from my circle of friends. If I were a PT, I would put thieves there.

You will obviously remain in public life. Look, I stay until… I was at CPAC [evento que reúne as maiores lideranças da direita do mundo] in March, there in the USA.

There were more than a thousand people, Trump was there. Those who were in front even paid US$ 5,000. I didn’t pay shit [risos].

I spoke out of the blue. Then a male there yelled, “I love you.” The third time he screamed, I said: “I’m the most beloved ex in Brazil, you know” [risos].

And the same thing is happening here in Brazil. I have now been in Porto Alegre for two days. It’s a business that I stay until… tears come out of my eyes [de ver] how people like me. Who am I?

My wife [Michelle Bolsonaro] is now doing a fantastic job. She was there in Ji-Paraná, in Rondônia [na semana passada, em evento do PL Mulher].

She learned [a discursar em atos políticos]. I didn’t know that side of her. At the PL convention last year [em que Michelle discursou], everyone got scared. She wasn’t trained, nothing.

MICHELLE CANDIDATE

Can she be a candidate for President of the Republic? If she wants, she can run for office. But what I talk to Michelle about is that she has no experience. To be mayor of small town is no longer easy. Deal with 594 parliamentarians [entre deputados e senadores] it’s not easy either. I believe she lacks the experience for this.

But he is an excellent electoral lead.

I saw in the press that they opened a lawsuit about Michelle’s expense [que eram pagas pelo coronel Mauro Cid, ex-ajudante de ordens de Bolsonaro]. Point me the fuck out an expense.

Did she buy a dress, buy a shoe, some shit? The bridge. It does not have.

If you take my bank statement, my entire balance is greater than our expenses. He took the money out of my account and paid.

And why didn’t you make the payments directly? AND [pagamento para] manicure, it’s I don’t know what, all fresh. So I wasn’t supposed to enter my name there and not use my card all the time. Soon I’m paying something to a guy who has a problem. If I put Pix for a guy who takes care of a dog, for example, but he’s also at the boca de fumo?

TARCÍSIO CANDIDATE

Another possible right-wing candidate, in case you are ineligible, is the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas. He is an excellent manager.

Would you support him? Could it be. I would have to talk to him.

But if not him, who would it be? No, not that. For now… I have the silver bullet, but I won’t tell you, so you don’t get disturbed, in a good way. I have the silver bullet, but I won’t reveal it.

Mr. Got the silver bullet for… For [as eleições de] 2026. What we planted over four years was not blah blah blah. I went into the middle of the crowd, breath in my face, risking being shot, stabbed. We brought people to believe in their country.

What are you going to do immediately after the TSE gives the verdict? Are you going to travel around Brazil? Can you travel outside the country? I will not despair. With a fair trial, I will be unanimously acquitted and remain eligible.

IN THE USA

Are you staying in Brazil anyway? I have an invitation to work in the United States. There live, I estimate, 1.4 million Brazilians. I don’t know the exact number.

But an invitation to do what? I was invited to be a poster boy there.

It is serious? Of what? Real estate sales. Oh, a lot of stuff. When I got there [em janeiro], I would leave the house and take about 400 pictures. I went to a hamburger place and it was full of people. I filled my belly and paid nothing. [risos]. My fee was to eat for free.

But do you accept the possibility of living outside Brazil? Could it be. But I don’t want to leave my country. I have relatives here. I have a daughter here. If I go, the whole family will go. But anyway. I stayed there for three months – and there is no land like ours here. This climate here, when it’s on the cake, talks nonsense, jokes about everything I can imagine. It’s cool. You don’t have that much there.

JUDGMENT AT TSE

What we know about the trial is from the press.

O [ministro] alexander [de Moraes] would have already framed everyone not to ask for a view [quando um ministro requer mais tempo para analisar o processo, protelando a decisão].

Michel Temer, when he was President of the Republic, in 2017, was tried at the TSE and was kept in office, with a casting vote by Minister Gilmar Mendes. Who said, at the time, that the Electoral Justice does not exist to revoke anyone’s mandate. Much less presidents.

But the case law of 2017 is no longer valid, [e o julgamento no TSE] it is according to the face of the customer.

MEETING WITH AMBASSADORS

At the meeting with ambassadors [em que colocou em dúvida a segurança das urnas eletrônicas e a imparcialidade de magistrados do TSE], I did not attack the electoral system. I showed how the electoral system is. I asked “does anyone have this system in your country”? It does not have. Germany has already adopted. And then he saw that he was not to be trusted.

And they also want to punish me for the work as a whole.

It has some absurdities. They put the TSE in action until January 8, which is still under investigation, including a CPI.

Now in Russia there was an uprising, from the Wagner group. There were tens of thousands of armed men on one side and the other, with tanks in the streets.

In Brazil, the coup was from little ladies with a Bible under their arm. Of gentlemen with the Brazilian flag on their backs.

There were scarier things than that, like people knocking buses off a viaduct in Brasília and trying to blow up bombs at airports, as well as asking for military intervention in barracks and invading and destroying the headquarters of powers. that one is an imbecile [referindo-se ao gerente de posto de gasolina preso por ter colocado um artefato explosivo nas imediações do aeroporto da capital federal]. Nobody supports a business like that. No one supports going there [nas sedes dos poderes] to plunder public property.

That image of the guy with my shirt breaking a clock at the Planalto Palace [no 8 de janeiro]for example: the information that came to me is that it was Lula’s nucleus that ordered that scene to be publicized.

Then there were images of General GDias [Gonçalves Dias, ex-ministro do Gabinete de Segurança Institucional, o GSI, de Lula] hanging around people kicking in doors [ele foi posteriormente demitido].

It is more than proven that the break-down was theirs. [apoiadores do atual governo].

The breaker was not made by the people who were camped [no QG do Exército em Brasília]. About a hundred buses arrived in the city in those days, and some came with the intention of breaking the bank.

Now, the left took advantage, right? Posed as Democrats.

COUP, ME?

There has been talk of a coup in Brazil since 1964. It is not new. Someone always says that you have to have a measure of strength, you have to have I don’t know what. But when the elections were over, I took the plunge. if anyone believed [que seria dado um golpe]… Because any measure of strength, you have to think about the “after day” [em como ficaria a situação do país no dia seguinte]. The easiest thing is to take something [o poder] being in government. But what about the “after day”?

The Financial Times newspaper made a long report about a campaign that authorities of the US government of Joe Biden would have done, behind the scenes, in defense of democracy in Brazil. They would be worried about a coup in the country. Did they send you a message? No, not for me. I never got a message. But it is not from now that I spoke about printed votes. Since 2010, I had actions in parliament about this.

When I met with the ambassadors, I said that we should maintain a system [eleitoral] transparent. Because the worst thing that can happen is that an election ends and there is suspicion. No one spoke of fraud.

There’s this article from the Financial Times now [em que autoridades do governo norte-americano de Joe Biden dizem]: “Look, we didn’t have one side or the other [referindo-se às candidaturas de Bolsonaro e Lula]. We seek transparency in Brazil, democracy.” Now, what was the behavior of the Superior Electoral Court during the elections?

Do you still think you won the elections? No, I don’t say anything anymore [sobre isso]. Page turned.

PANDEMIC

Do you regret any attitude in the pandemic? I would speak less with you press

But you didn’t talk to the press. He just talked there in the playpen. Would you speak even less? Less, because everything is distorted. I would say less to have less problems.

FEAR OF TALKING

There are issues in Brazil that even you journalists, if you speak, will go to jail: ballot box, vaccine and the censorship bill [referindo-se ao projeto de combate às fake news]. There are many representatives today who are afraid to occupy the podium.

Until 2001, the Constitution said, in Article 53, that deputies and senators are inviolable by their words. It was still confusing. So Congress passed the inclusion of the pronoun “any” words. What is any? It’s any! You’re fat, ugly, hairy, pretty, I don’t know what else.

I can tell you all this, and you can sue me for libel, libel. But canceling my mandate, no. Arrest me, no. If the deputy wants to defend the end of the Lei Áurea, he can. No one is going to clap for him, “look at the crazy guy over there”. But it is his right. If he wants to speak for or against Russia, he can. If he wants to say “give a blow or don’t give a blow”, I understand that he can. It’s the guy’s freedom. It’s better the crazy talking than conspiring. Now, that pronoun, “any”, is no longer valid.