Former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro told attendees at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC, he believed he still had work to do as head of his country, teasing a re-election bid, and thanking former American President Donald Trump for an “exceptional” relationship.
Bolsonaro boasted he was the “last president” to recognize current President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election and emphasized his ideological kinship with American conservatives, opposing “gender ideology,” firearm rights limitations, coronavirus vaccine mandates, and free speech restrictions.
The former president often mentioned God and his relationship with Christianity, including a candid moment where he admitted he had questioned why God had made his 2018 presidential campaign, in which he was nearly killed by a socialist in an assassination attempt, so difficult.
Bolsonaro has been in the United States since late December and culminated his presidential term here. He has reportedly applied for a tourist visa and has repeatedly promised to return to his country following a brief post-mandate respite visiting friends and family in the country.
His stay – mostly in a suburb of Orlando, Florida – has been anything but peaceful, as leftists at home threaten to find legal means to imprison him upon his return and he continues to face health problems associated with the 2018 stabbing, which left his digestive tract significantly scarred.
Bolsonaro was narrowly defeated in a dirty election in which opponent, current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called him a “pedophile” and aired attacks accusing him of cannibalism, but the Bolsonaro campaign and independent journalists were banned from referring to the fact that Lula is a convicted felon.
Lula, a hardline socialist who served as president between 2003 and 2011, was found guilty on multiple appeals in Brazilian courts of taking bribes and using the money to buy a luxury property while president. The Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the nation’s top court, overturned the conviction on a technicality in 2021, allowing him to run for president.
“I had way more support in 2022 than in 2018. I don’t know why the numbers said the opposite,” Bolsonaro shrugged on Saturday.
The Brazilian Defense Ministry revealed in November it could not “exclude the possibility of the existence of fraud or inconsistency in the electronic voting machines or in the 2022 electoral process.”
“There was a possible security risk in the generation of programs in electronic voting machines due to the occurrence of computers accessing the TSE network during the compilation of the source code,” a Defense Ministry statement published following a review of the elections read.
“It isn’t easy to be a politician, but it’s even harder for those who want to honor their word,” Bolsonaro told the CPAC audience, shortly before former President Trump’s address. “In this moment I thank God for my second life and to him also for the mission of being the president of the republic for one term. But I feel deeply that this mission is not over.”
Bolsonaro listed issues on which he opposed the Lula government and leftists in general.
Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro delivers remarks as he attends the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland, United States on March 4, 2023. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“All power comes from the people, but the people need leaders. Here there are many. and we cannot bring happiness to people if we are not loyal to them,” he said, complimenting attendees of the conference.
“When you speak of conservatism, what we fight for are basic things: family,” he continued. “We don’t want gender ideology. We want boys to grow with the teachings of the father and daughters, of their mother. In Brazil, private property finds itself threatened. Private property is one of the pillars of democracy. Life from its conception was always defended by us against abortion.”
“Also in my government, I freed to the maximum that the law allows the ownership and carrying of firearms,” Bolsonaro said, to enthusiastic applause. “In four years, we diminished by a third the number of gun deaths in Brazil.”
“The first measure of the old-new government was to take away these decrees,” he noted. One of the first measures Lula took after his inauguration on January 1 was to restrict Brazilians’ gun rights.
“An armed people will never be enslaved. An armed country will never be subjugated,” Bolsonaro affirmed on Saturday.
Bolsonaro also emphasized his opposition to forcing citizens to take experimental coronavirus treatments.
“I always defended freedom. I did not force anyone to be vaccinated in Brazil,” Bolsonaro asserted. “They keep saying, ‘science, science, science’ – what I say is ‘freedom, freedom, freedom.’”
File/U.S. President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during a diner at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 7, 2020. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty)
The former president declared his commitment to the principle by opposing both censorship of civilians by large tech corporations online and censorship of corporate media outlets by governments.
“Certainly, I was the most attacked politician by big media in our country. But at the same time, I never took a single measure against the press,” Bolsonaro recalled. “I understand that an erring press is better than a silenced press.”
Bolsonaro concluded by expressing excitement to hear Trump’s remarks and asserting he was the “last president” to accept Biden as president-elect. The former Brazilian president stated elsewhere in his speech, “It is indispensable for me to say that my relationship with President Donald Trump was simply exceptional.”