A little less than two years ago, we went to Brazil to cover the presidential election. Then in progress, the incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro, was running against a former president, a convicted felon, very close to the government of China, called Lula. And as we wandered around the country, we really got the feeling, if this election goes to Lula, this place is going to, in very short order, become a police state. People are going to go to jail. The media will no longer be able to report honestly and openly, and the Chinese government will have undue influence over Brazil. And that s a big deal, not just for Brazilians, but for the United States, because Brazil is the most significant country in the Americas after this one. It s huge, it s got enormous natural resources, it has a well educated population. And so if it descends into darkness, that's a problem not just in Brazil but for every country in this hemisphere. So the question is, two and a half years later, what happened in Brazil? And what happened to the country? We thought we would get an update now with Eduardo Bolsonarro, who is the son of the former president. He s a very well known legislator in Brazil, and he joins us on set now. We had some conversations last year, and we expect into this year, a bigger delegation of Brazilian congressmen to have a hearing in a commission inside of the Congress to tell all around the world what is going on in Brazil. Because in Brazil it's not a democracy anymore. It's not worth it anymore. And we don t have where to appeal or ask for help. And you don't have to ask for it, do you agree with me? And you do not have a case to ask me a question or do you have a question about it? And do you want me to be part of the committee? And I don t know what you do you ask me, or you don t ask me? -Tucker and Vanessa ( ) (p. ) ( ) ( ). (c) ( )( ) ( ( ) . ( . , & ( ) ) ( . ) ( ), ( ) , ( ) . ) ) ) . ( , ( ) , ) . ) [ ] ( ) [ ), ). [ ] And ( )
00:08:56.900Their credit card companies are ripping Americans off, and enough is enough.
00:09:01.040This is Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas.
00:09:04.300Our legislation, the Credit Card Competition Act, would help in the grip Visa and MasterCard have on us.
00:09:11.440Every time you use your credit card, they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee,
00:09:16.100and they've been raising it without even telling you.
00:09:19.100This hurts consumers and every small business owner.
00:09:22.440In fact, American families are paying $1,100 in hidden swipe fees each year.
00:09:27.640The fees, Visa, and MasterCard charge Americans are the highest in the world,
00:09:33.260double candidates and eight times more than Europe's.
00:09:36.280That's why I've taken action, but I need your help to help get this passed.
00:09:40.680I'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the Credit Card Competition Act.
00:09:47.540Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition.
00:09:49.340Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.
00:09:51.420Okay, but just to be totally clear, in a free country, you can have any opinion you want about an election because you're a citizen, right?
00:10:05.620Now in Brazil, they consider it a crime.
00:10:07.360So it would be a crime for you to say, yes, I think the election was stolen.
00:10:11.640Yes, I could suffer a lot down there in Brazil if I come back.
00:10:14.600Even though we know for a fact the CIA was tampering in the democratic process in Brazil, was playing a role in the election.
00:10:24.600You know, and one of the things why my father got uneligible in a record time, right after Lula take office, is because he had the meeting.
00:10:48.680But anyway, he was turned uneligible because he had a meeting with ambassadors and talked with them about the electoral system in Brazil, how it works, and criticized some points.
00:10:59.100But before of this meeting of Bolsonaro and the ambassadors, the president of the Superior Electoral Court, he had the same meetings with these ambassadors.
00:11:08.000Wait, so you're saying that your father, who's often been compared to Trump, has been declared ineligible to run again in the next election on the basis of complaints about the electoral system.
00:11:21.740And that you had a protest against a rigged election that was backed by the U.S. government, and that as a result of that, Lula's political opponents wound up in jail.
00:11:33.180I mean, this sounds like exactly what's happening in the United States.
00:11:39.140I usually say that it's the same virus, but in Brazil it has less antibodies.
00:11:44.840Actually, this is a phrase of the journalist Paulo Figueiredo.
00:11:46.920It's a semi-virus here, but imagine that in Brazil, the left wing, or at least the establishment, they fully control the Supreme Court.
00:11:55.620And who could do the check and balances and stop the Supreme Court to do that is the Senate.
00:12:03.060But the Senate, they don't take any kind of action against that.
00:12:09.000They have exactly the same speech of the Supreme Court justices.
00:12:14.320So in the end of the day, Brazilians are losing the hope to get back democracy because if you use machines to vote and you don't have a way to at least recount the votes, you have to trust the system 100%.
00:12:25.900And then they don't let more transparency in the elections.
00:12:31.740How can we elect someone, Bolsonaro, a conservative, a right wing, or someone outside of the establishment?
00:12:39.360This is the feeling that a lot of Brazilians have nowadays, unfortunately, in Brazil.
00:12:45.860I mean, once you have electronic voting machines, you can't be certain that the system is real.
00:13:06.320This bill says that it was necessary to have a printer aside of the machine.
00:13:12.600So at least you could recount the vote when you have any kind of suspicion in the election.
00:13:20.060It was approved in 2017, a federal law, all right?
00:13:25.080On the next year, the Supreme Court said that this is unconstitutional.
00:13:29.860That's why in 2019, we started to do not only a bill to change the federal law, but amendment to change the constitution.
00:13:39.560And we would have the votes because this was never an issue of a right wing or a left wing politician.
00:13:48.780It was something that was used to get together all of the Congress.
00:13:53.120But then, as I said, the president of the electoral court came to the Congress, talked with 11 presidents of parties, and changed their minds.
00:14:05.620If you have electronic voting machines with no way to recount and no way to prove what the votes actually were, if you're in favor of that, clearly you're committing fraud.
00:14:13.860I mean, what would be the other reason to be in favor of that?
00:14:16.160They say that it would be an anti-democratic comment of you, and they would shut it down in Brazil.
00:14:21.800So, if I was a Brazilian citizen, and I was in your media, and I said what I just said, electronic-
00:14:28.520No, they would shut down your social media.
00:14:31.080It's exactly what happened with Paulo Figueiredo.
00:14:33.200Paulo Figueiredo is someone like you, Tucker.
00:19:50.940What role has China played, do you think, in what's happening now in Brazil?
00:19:54.660Now they are free to do whatever they want because Lula consider them an ally.
00:20:00.060And they consider U.S. the imperialist of the world.
00:20:04.220You know, Lula is an old-fashioned communist.
00:20:06.720That's not a coincidence that during his second mandate in around 2008 or 2009, China became, for the first time after, I don't know, maybe one century, the number one trade partner of Brazil.
00:20:23.280Because in the whole history of Brazil, it was used to be the United States.
00:20:27.560This is also very weird how U.S. can do a campaign to guarantee the democracy, as the Financial Times told, supporting Lula.
00:20:37.660When we were always open, even during the Biden administration, to be together with them, it's not a problem for us.
00:20:46.280I want you to do trades and business with U.S., way more than with China.
00:20:49.560Because China, you know, do business with U.S. or any other country here in the Western Hemisphere is not the same thing to do business with China.
00:21:21.420Because if you think, really think in the Americans, you should never do that.
00:21:26.920I will tell you, it's here in the United States, sometimes I see debates talking about a possible third world war or a conflict with China, right?
00:21:34.900But Brazil is the number two in the world when you talk about exports of iron, the fourth largest food producers of the world, with more than 200 million people in our population.
00:21:51.380And we have a lot of oil, more than even some of our countries.
00:22:07.740And everything now, if you start a war now, I will tell you, the Brazil administration would be together with China against the United States.
00:22:16.740So this, I think it was a wrong policy, or at least you didn't, as an administration, you didn't pay attention about Brazil.
00:22:23.600And China is doing with South America the same that they did with Africa.
00:22:27.320So, if you keep not looking carefully about what is going on in South America, maybe you are going to have more and more problems, more and more people going to the U.S. borders.
00:22:42.400If you look to Venezuela, about 10 million people from Venezuela running away from the country.
00:22:51.140Some of them, they come from Mexico trying to come here by your borders.
00:22:54.020Brazil is like eight times more bigger than Venezuela.
00:23:02.640I'm telling you that if you do not, if Brazil turns itself a Venezuela, you will serve way more problems here in the United States.
00:23:12.060And for sure, not only the borders, drug dealers, supporting terrorism, it will be a risk for you.
00:24:59.900Well, I didn't even know that was possible because until, I believe, 2020, the only people, the Brazilian government seized the passport was an international drug dealer.
00:25:09.440It was – people were looking for him and they had to seize his passport.
00:25:13.000But then I was working normally on a regular TV station in Brazil, like mainstream media, doing a conservative show on primetime.
00:25:22.740We had millions of people watching it.
00:25:24.720It was the most-watched political show in the country.
00:25:26.520And on December 30th of 2022, I received a call from someone that worked on a big social media company saying, well, we received a court order from the Superior Court, Superior Federal Court, the Supreme Court of Brazil, saying that we have two hours to take down your social media platform.
00:25:47.820And I had, like, I don't know, 1.5 million followers there on that specific one.
00:27:34.180But on January 8th, the revolt happened in Brazil, the protests, the demonstrations.
00:27:40.080And on January 9th, the Department of Justice opened an investigation against the TV station that I worked for.
00:27:46.140And when they did that, the owners panicked and they had to fire all the conservative commentators from – and only the conservative commentators from the station.
00:27:59.640And they used to have – they used to be number one in terms of viewership.
00:28:03.340And, of course, now they're not doing well because they lost – you know what happens with the –