“Lula Will Charm Trump” - Inside Trump & Lula’s Secret Deal To Lift Brazil’s Tariffs
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
202.41884
Summary
On today's show, Alex Blumberg joins us to discuss the latest in the Lula vs. Bolsonaro saga, and how Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the President of the United States, Donald Trump s relationship with each other.
Transcript
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They meet in Malaysia, Trump and Lula, and, you know, Trump was somewhat complimentary
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until one question was asked, and he told that one reporter, none of your business,
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where she said, are you guys going to talk about Maduro, not Maduro, I'm sorry,
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are you guys going to talk about Bolsonaro, previous president?
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I think right there at the bottom, Rob, that's the one.
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Is that the one that, how many days ago is that, October 25th?
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Now, you know, Brazil has a guy that I would say, some may say more powerful than Lula is,
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Alexandre de Moraes, who comes out and kind of figures out who can beat Bolsonaro,
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goes back, Operation Car Wash, you reported on it many times,
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a few hundred million dollars of money that was stolen,
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a couple of guys that were worth 10, 20 billion dollars,
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What do you think about this relationship with Lula and Trump today?
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And they're saying something's going to happen, we're going to get a deal done.
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One thing is, regardless of what you think of Lula's politics,
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he's a generational political talent, kind of like you can say that Obama.
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I mean, he's been around for a long time, he was hated when he first ran,
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I've never met a person with more visceral charisma than Lula.
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The first time I ever interviewed him, after five minutes, I was like,
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in trance, I was like, wait a minute, you can't, that's not your role here,
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He's incredibly personally charming, like insane, you know,
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and he's real, he comes from like a genuine background of poverty,
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he worked in a factory, lost a finger, the whole iconography.
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He's not to be underestimated in terms of his interpersonal skills,
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Trump didn't like Lula because Trump loves Bolsonaro,
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he was, you know, Lula's putting him in prison,
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After one phone call with Lula, Trump totally changed his tune,
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and just saying like, yeah, he's a really nice guy,
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he goes and met with him, and the whole tone changes.
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The thing is, Lula's not in charge of the country.
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There's a center-right faction, kind of like a never-Trump faction.
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It would be like if, you know, it would be like if Kamala won,
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a lot of the people who would be running foreign policy would be neocons.
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You know, it wouldn't be like anything left-wing.
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And you have Alessandro Meraiz, he's a center-right figure,
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got appointed by a center-right president, not by the left,
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who's in charge of the country, censoring people,
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Lula's, you know, acquiescing to it, he's fine with it,
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but that's, Lula's not where the power resides.
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Lula is the only person who, Lula was in prison,
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but the real reason they let him out is because
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They had to invalidate his conviction to do so,
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The thing is, is that Brazil is a very, you know,
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Trump also, as I said, Brazil has moved toward China.
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Brazil is always, you know, it's in our hemisphere,
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of the same kind of lawfare that victimized Trump.
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And they're censoring a lot of people on the right,
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and the Brazilian right, between Bolsonaro and Isha.
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And I think Lula's kind of on this kind of offensive.
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I think they want Brazil to move away from China,
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their democratically elected center-left government
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and imposed a right-wing military dictatorship.