Tremble with Trump and Bolsonaro

Until just recently it seemed the Democrats had huge chances to win the majority in the November election, at least in the House of Representatives.

Now it no longer seems that way. “The most recent polls have underscored the real possibility that Republicans will keep control of both the Senate and House,” wrote David Leonhardt, author of the Opinion Today newsletter in The New York Times.

Consequently, at least from his point of view as a permanent critic of Donald Trump, “Trump would feel emboldened to continue his attacks on democratic values.”

Now, exchange Trump for Jair Bolsonaro and the [above] phrase continues to hold perfectly true.

Sure, there are more differences than similarities between Trump and Bolsonaro. However, most of an important part of the international media treats the Brazilian candidate as a tropical Trump. The problem is that the similarities are frightening. Some of them are:

First, women. Trump has already said that women like to be grabbed “by the pussy.” Bolsonaro has already said that Deputy Maria do Rosário (PT-RS), would not merit being raped, perhaps because she is not the type which pleases the retired captain.

By the way, there is a third president of the same strain, Filipino Rodrigo Duterte, who lamented not having been the first to violate a nun.

Second, their team. Last year, Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate trying to win a seat in the Montana congressional election, attacked Guardian journalist Ben Jacobs, and knocked him down with a typical judo blow.

Gianforte wound up being elected, even after having been sentenced to six months in prison (the sentence was suspended), 40 hours of community service and 10 hours of anger management counseling.

Well, at a rally this week, Trump praised Gianforte. “Any guy that can do a body slam … He’s my kind of guy.”

Bolsonaro, by systematically making the gesture of firing a gun, shows, with the greatest possible clarity, what type of person he is: someone who fires first and questions after.

Third, the media. Trump loves saying that everything that is published which he does not like is “fake news.” Bolsonaro’s son, commenting on Folha’s reporting about the cascade of “fake news” propagated by his father’s friends, called the newspaper the “sickle“ of Sao Paolo.

That is a verbal short hand frequently used by the extreme right to imply that Folha is communist.

In a Rio worship service on Thursday, Oct. 18, the Rev. Silas Malafaia, one of Bolsonaro’s angry supporters, told reporter Ana Luiza Albuquerque, “Daughter, excuse me, your newspaper, with all respect, is the most left wing, most lying, most fake news.”

On the subject of hate, Patrícia Campos Mello, a brilliant reporter who reported on the cascade of “fake news,” was victimized by not one, but by countless virtual judo blows, inveighed by militant bolsonaristas on social networks.

Finally, one could substitute Trump with Bolsonaro in the Friday, Oct. 19 column of Edward Luce of the Financial Times, in which he describes the American president as a type of “ugly American,” a type which, among other characteristics, casts out those who do not like the ways of Trump and his team.

If the polls are really right, here or there, the ides of November promise to be dark.