Chair attack on Marçal during debate provides ammunition to right-wing opponents – 09/16/2024 – Power

If Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro orchestrated attacks that nearly cost them their lives to extract political dividends, why not him?

It is possible that Pablo Marçal (PRTB) tried to ride this same wave after being attacked with a chair by José Luiz Datena (PSDB) in the debate between candidates for mayor of São Paulo. But there is a good chance that he will be hit with an electoral box if he persists with this narrative.

Of course, caution is always a good thing when assessing a scenario that is prone to a thousand twists and turns. Just remember that almost no one considered Marçal to be competitive just a few weeks ago, and suddenly he was competing for the leadership with Ricardo Nunes (MDB) and Guilherme Boulos (PSOL). The impact on the public of the chair in the TV Cultura debate should become clearer throughout the week, with a new round of voting intention surveys.

But it is already clear that, at least among some on the right, Marçal’s version did not stick. Important figures for this electorate agree that Datena went too far, but they also portray the PRTB as a Neymar on the field, forcing falls to play the victim.

And they try to stick to him the image of a bully who thought he could do anything, but went ahead and got beaten up by the target of his bullying. It feels like he kicked a dead horse by targeting a Datena who was already struggling in his electoral career. It’s not easy to sympathize with this guy.

Congressman Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) was one of those who shared memes mocking Marçal, such as the reconstruction of Sunday’s (15) attack, now with a sound effect from Ratinho’s program.

There is also a video circulating of comedian Marcelo Marrom asking for his money back after feeling cheated by his self-proclaimed former coach. It’s pure mockery: the same salesman of courses that teach you how to get the best out of physical fights with sharks and jaguars was beaten by “a chubby old man with white hair,” he jokes.

There was already, it is true, a group looking for reasons to mock the PRTB candidate, who arrived like a typhoon in the conservative camp. Marçal advanced on Bolsonaro voters and, without asking permission from those in charge, acted as if the game was already won. He mocked pastor Silas Malafaia, insulted Bolsonaro’s son and suggested that the former president who so questioned the so-called “system” had now bowed to it.

He left several leaders, including the Bolsonaro clan, in awe when he launched his campaign without the support of the Bolsonaro leadership. Few dared to criticize him openly, for fear of reprisals from the base. The willingness to pick a fight increased after the somewhat messianic bravado on September 7, when Marçal made it clear that the people were with him.

Afterwards, surveys revealed that he had stagnated or, worse, fallen back in the favor of the people of São Paulo — possibly a reflection of Nunes’s large amount of time in electoral propaganda, but also of the confrontation with characters whose firepower he underestimated, such as Malafaia (who called him a “psychopath”) and Bolsonaro himself (“a jerk”).

The beating on TV Cultura, and how he handled it, gave ammunition to people who already had the so-called former coach stuck in their throats. “We repudiate Datena’s actions,” says Malafaia. But let’s face it: “Marçal is a sealer, he constantly tries to attack his opponents’ weaknesses to cause emotional imbalance. […] And then he’s going to use that. How does he immediately put it on social media comparing himself to the attempted assassination of Trump and Bolsonaro? That’s something that mentally ill people do.”

On the same night of the attack, his team published a montage showing the shot that nearly killed the American, the stabbing the former president received in 2018, and the chair that hit the mayoral candidate. The most liked comment on another post, which shows him wearing an oxygen mask in the ambulance: “It looks like I’m pretending to my mom just to skip school.” It was made by a pastor, by the way.

Not that Marçal’s henchmen are sleeping on the job. When journalist Paulo Figueiredo, grandson of the last president of the Brazilian military dictatorship, said that he dodged Datena with the “skill of a sloth”, followers criticized him for the “unrelated comment” of someone who was supposedly validating “physical aggression” towards a “political enemy”.

For Renato Meirelles, from Instituto Locomotiva, the next few days will determine whether Marçal will be hit with a chair like the ball of paper was hit with by José Serra in 2010 — the then PSDB presidential candidate treated as an anvil what his opponents claimed was just a pile of cellulose thrown in his direction. “It will be a war of narratives. He managed to get attention again and be the subject of the election, but it’s hard to believe that a guy who fights sharks got beaten up by an old man.”