Perhaps no politician bears a more striking political resemblance to Donald J. Trump than former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
The two built a brash political brand by insulting their rivals, attacking the press, questioning science and vowing to root out political elites. When they were each running for re-election, both warned that only cheating could cause them to lose. And when each lost, they both questioned the outcome and helped spark an attempted insurrection at their respective Capitols.
But since then, their political paths have diverged dramatically.
Trump is scheduled to return to the White House on Monday. Bolsonaro has been invited to attend the inauguration, but will watch from home. That’s because Brazil’s Supreme Court confiscated his passport as part of a major investigation into his alleged efforts to overthrow democracy, which could land him in prison this year.
So why did two political matches meet such different fates for similar acts?
The main reason is that Brazilian institutions have responded to Mr. Bolsonaro very differently than American institutions have responded to Mr. Trump.
Here are three differences that made an impact.
1. Bolsonaro was ruled unfit.
Perhaps the most obvious contrast is that Mr. Trump was able to run for president while prosecutors pursued criminal charges, while Mr. Bolsonaro was ruled ineligible to run for the next election. That’s true.
Six months after Bolsonaro leaves office in 2023, Brazil’s electoral court ruled that he cannot run for office until 2030. A seven-judge panel made up of Supreme Court justices, federal judges, and lawyers based their decision on Bolsonaro’s opinion. Bolsonaro’s attack on Brazil’s voting system during the presidential campaign.
No such federal election court exists in the United States. Voting is controlled by each state, and candidates only need to meet a few basic criteria to appear on the ballot, such as collecting a certain number of signatures and being born in the United States. When Colorado’s highest court blocked Trump from voting in that state because of his efforts to maintain power, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision.
In other words, while Brazil’s system gives federal courts the power to decide who is eligible to be president, the US system leaves that decision primarily to voters.
2. Brazilian courts acted quickly and aggressively
The court’s decision to disqualify Mr. Bolsonaro shows another difference in approach. Brazil’s judiciary has become faster and more aggressive in pursuing Mr. Bolsonaro.
Barely a year after Bolsonaro left office, Brazil’s Federal Police formally filed three separate criminal charges against former President Bolsonaro. Police accused him of overseeing a conspiracy to sell jewelry received as gifts from the state, falsifying coronavirus vaccination records and trying to overturn the results of an election he lost. Bolsonaro denies committing any crimes and claims he is being politically persecuted.
After Trump’s election loss, it took two years for the U.S. attorney general to appoint a special counsel to lead a criminal investigation into the former president. The appointment came days after Trump announced he would run again in 2024.
There is a growing expectation that Bolsonaro will face criminal charges and go to trial within the year. Trump was found guilty on one of the four charges against him, but the sentence was handed down after he was elected and no punishment was given. It appears his other three cases may not go to trial.
The two countries’ highest courts have played very different roles in this process.
In the United States, appeals to the Supreme Court helped delay the case against Trump. The Supreme Court then ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution for acts they commit as president, putting some lawsuits in jeopardy.
In Brazil, the Supreme Court, and indeed one judge, Alexandre de Moraes, is leading the investigation into Mr. Bolsonaro.
Judge Moraes ordered a search of Bolsonaro’s home and jailed some of the former president’s allies, as he single-handedly headed the investigation in a role that resembled both judge and prosecutor in some ways. , we were able to move forward with the investigation much more quickly. But there are also serious concerns that Judge Moraes’ pursuit of protecting democracy may be doing more harm than good to Brazil’s institutions.
“From an American perspective, Brazil seems like a very active judiciary that is comfortable doing things that most Americans find very problematic and that many Brazilians find very problematic. ,” said Scott Mainwaring, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame. answered former leaders. “But on the positive side, democracy has been preserved.”
“Meanwhile, the U.S. judiciary was extremely slow in bringing these four Trump cases to trial,” he added.
3. The Brazilian right offered lukewarm support.
Immediately after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Republicans widely condemned the violence and Trump for sparking the riot.
But three weeks later, Republican Congressional Leader Kevin McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago and posed for a photo with Trump. The Republican Party has followed suit almost entirely, shifting its politics even further to the right to align with Trump.
The riot that took place at Brazil’s National Congress building on January 8, 2023, was met with more explicit condemnation from the Brazilian right. Some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s allies have criticized the multi-year prison sentences for many of those who infiltrated Brazil’s halls of power, while many conservative leaders have criticized the Bolsonaro movement’s response to the election loss. Continuing.
This resistance is partly due to the fact that Brazil’s political landscape is much more fragmented, with 25 political parties holding seats in Congress.
Brazil’s right has not abandoned Bolsonaro, but it is ready to move forward, including pushing several conservative governors as candidates to challenge left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva if he seeks re-election next year. It seems like there is.
The difference in the reactions of right-wing movements in the United States and Brazil is also the result of different judicial approaches in each country, said Mar Gaspar, political columnist for O Globo, one of Brazil’s largest newspapers. “Trump was eligible,” she said. “Mr. Bolsonaro is already disqualified. So when you talk to bankers and politicians, they say, ‘Why rehabilitate Mr. Bolsonaro?'”
Still: Bolsonaro finds hope
Bolsonaro has a different take on the situation. “Don’t count me out yet.”
The former president said in an interview Tuesday that he hopes his disqualification ruling will be overturned, allowing him to make a Trump-like political comeback. “I am confident that, if qualified, he will be re-elected as president,” he said.
His hopes aren’t that far off. Brazil’s current president, Lula, was in prison just three years before he was elected in 2022. He became eligible to run for president again after Supreme Court justices dismissed several criminal cases against him.
And two years after Mr. Trump left office, at a time when he was facing a series of siege criminal investigations, there were low hopes in the United States that Mr. Trump would emerge politically again.
Now, on Monday, Trump will become the first felon to become president of the United States.
