Tucker Carlson - Ep. 78 The Biden administration helped install a pro-Chinese government in Brazil, which immediately shut down opposition media and began arresting dissidents. Here are two of its victims.
Tucker Carlson examines how Lula da Silva’s 2022 election victory—backed by the Biden administration—sparked Brazil’s authoritarian shift, with journalists like Paulo Figueiredo exiled and Congressman Daniel Silveira jailed for dissent. Eduardo Bolsonaro and Figueiredo allege U.S. complicity in ignoring Lula’s China-aligned crackdowns, including passport revocations and asset seizures, while the State Department stays silent. With Brazil’s resources now leveraged by Beijing, they warn of a "juristocracy" eroding democracy, mirroring globalist power grabs. [Automatically generated summary]
For less than two years ago, we went to Brazil to cover the presidential election.
Then in progress, the incumbent, President Bolsonaro, was running against a former president, a convicted felon, very close to the government of China, called Lula.
And as you wandered around the country, went to its biggest cities, you 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.
Democracy is going to end.
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's got a well-educated population.
There's a lot in Brazil.
And so if it descends into darkness, that's a problem not just for Brazil, but for every country in this hemisphere.
So the question is, two and a half years later, a year and a half later, rather, what happened in Brazil?
Lula won in an election that was very obviously rigged.
And what happened to the country?
So we thought we would get an update now with Eduardo Bolsonaro.
He's the son of the former president.
He's a very well-known legislator in Brazil, and he joins us on set now.
Okay, so the Biden administration is a great protector of democracy and human rights around the world.
They tell us that every day.
And yet their close ally, the Lula government, is shutting down press freedom and forcing journalists into exile.
Have they said anything about this?
Has the State Department complained about any of this?
unidentified
I never listened to something about that.
What we are doing, we are receiving some support from our other congressmen from the Republican Party.
For example, Marjorie Greener, Chris Smith, among others.
We had some conversations last year, and we're expecting to this year come back to the Congress in a bigger delegation of Brazilian congressmen to have a hearing in a commission inside of the Congress to at least tell all around the world what is going on in Brazil.
Because in Brazil, it's not worth anymore.
You appeal.
You don't have for who appeal.
It's the Supreme Court suing people.
They say that they are the victims.
They accuse and they judge everybody.
This is not a democracy anymore.
I cannot say that, unfortunately.
And you don't have where to appeal or who asks for help.
You're allowed to talk shit to people in power in a free country, aren't you?
unidentified
Yes, yes.
Where you have the First Amendment respected, yes.
But in Brazil, we have some articles inside of the Constitution that guarantee for senators and congressmen like me.
That you not receive any kind of punishment about what you speak.
It's even, say, like, we have a freedom of speech in Brazil, at least in the Constitution, and the congressman is one step ahead because we cannot receive punishment about our words, votes, or whatever we say.
But as this congressman is in jail now, and the things are getting worse.
Okay, I'm sorry, and I keep talking over your story.
I'm just amazed that...
I know that's in jail for criticizing the government.
It's obviously not a free country, just on the basis of that.
But I said it was very obvious from our perspective, from the US perspective, that your election was rigged with the help of the CIA. That was my conclusion.
unidentified
There is a very good article in Financial Times talking about the help of US to guarantee democracy in Brazil.
And by guaranteeing democracy, that would be guaranteeing the election of the left-wing candidate.
unidentified
Yes, yes.
And the thing is, there is so much power that the establishment did, for example, to avoid the printed vote amendment that we tried to approve in 2021. Why someone from the Electoral Court, the Electoral Court, they organize and they judge everything about elections in Brazil.
Why someone from the Electoral Court, the Superior Electoral Court, as the president, Justice Barroso, came to the Congress and talked with 11 presidents of political parties telling them to do not approve the printed vote amendment.
Why someone works to do not have more transparency in the election?
It's strange.
But as, Tucker, in my position I can tell you, I cannot accuse that the election was frauded.
Yes, he is uneligible until 2026. We are trying to overturn it inside of the courts, but as you can imagine, it will be very hard to do that.
I still have a hope.
But 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.
Normal thing.
But before this meeting of Bolsonaro and the ambassadors, the president of the Superior Electoral Court, he had the same meetings with these ambassadors.
Wait, 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 and that you had a protest against a rigged election that was backed by the US government and that as a result of that, Lula's political opponents wound up in jail.
I mean, this sounds like exactly what's happening in the United States.
unidentified
Yes, yes.
Have you noticed that?
Yes.
I usually say that it's the same virus.
But in Brazil, it has less antibodies.
Actually, this is a phrase of the journalist Paulo Figueiredo.
It's a semi-virus here, but imagine that in Brazil, the left wing, or at least the establishment, they fully control the Supreme Court.
And who could do the check and balances and stop the Supreme Court to do that is the Senate.
But the Senate, they don't take any kind of action against that.
They have exactly the same speech of the Supreme Court justices.
So 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%.
And then they don't let more transparency in the elections.
How can we elect someone, Bolsonaro, a conservative, a right-wing, or someone outside of the establishment?
This is the feeling that a lot of Brazilians have nowadays, unfortunately, in Brazil.
So if 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.
I mean, what would be the other reason to be in favor of that?
What Would Happen00:03:14
unidentified
They say that it will be an anti-democratic comment of you and they will shut it down in Brazil.
And if you keep doing this, send the FBI to your house.
And if you keep doing this, they freeze your accounts.
Just what happened with Paulo Figueiredo.
That's why he's living here together with Alan dos Santos and Rodrigo Constantino.
Paulo Figueiredo was used to have daily...
Millions and millions of Brazilians watching him.
Imagine you, Tucker, having like the best moment of your career in Fox News and the Supreme Court Justice says, OK, you cannot say that Lula is convicted.
You cannot say that he has connection with Maduro and Daniel Ortega.
You cannot say that he has ties with the PCC, the largest organized crime in Brazil.
He accomplishing a preventive jail, is what we say before the judgment.
You are in prevent jail.
To guarantee that he's not making confused with the investigations or to guarantee that the law will be applied against him so he can't run away.
I don't know, in fact, what moved Alexandre de Moraes to send him to jail, but as is very usual in dictatorships, they go around the leader of the opposition movement, arresting people, sending the federal police or their We say SS guard, arresting and sending to the house of the other people.
My brother, Carlos, he received the visit of the federal police.
Everybody that's around Jair Bolsonaro are being arrested or receiving the federal police in their houses to do some research orders, warranties from Alexandre de Moraes.
I don't feel that I can say everything that I want.
Even if I'm now a congressman and the most voted congressman in the history of Brazil, former chair of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee and son of the former president.
Because if they sent...
A congressman to jail because he recorded a video.
They can do anything they want.
That's why I'm telling you, I have to make sure about my words before, especially talk about election.
What role has China played, do you think, in what's happening now?
unidentified
Now they are free to do...
Whatever they want because Lula consider them an ally and they consider us the imperialists of the world.
You know, Lula is an old-fashioned communist.
That'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.
Because in the whole history of Brazil, it was used to be United States.
This is also very weird how U.S. can do a campaign to guarantee the democracy, as the Financial Times told, supporting Lula.
When we were always open, even during the Biden administration, to be together with them.
It's not a problem for us.
I want you to do trades and business with U.S. way more than with China.
Because China, you know, Do business with the U.S. or any other country here in the Western Hemisphere is not the same thing to do business with China.
But why would the Biden administration be so supportive of Lula when he's anti-American?
unidentified
I think because they're both left-wing ideology.
This is the connection.
It's a craziness connection, I guess.
Because if you really think the Americans, you should never do that.
I'll tell you, here in the United States, sometimes I see debates talking about a possible third world war or a conflict with China, right?
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.
And we have a lot of oil.
More than even some of Arab countries.
Way more.
In a war, what would you like to have?
Energy?
Oil?
Iron?
To do the war machines?
Food?
To feed your soldiers?
And everything now, if you start a war now, I will tell you.
The Brazil administration would be together with China against the United States.
So this, I think it was a wrong policy, or at least you didn't, as an administration, you didn't pay attention about Brazil.
And China is doing with South America the same that they did with Africa.
So, 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...
If you look to Venezuela, about 10 million people from Venezuela run away from the country.
Why Brazil Silenced a Journalist00:05:51
unidentified
Some of them, they come from Mexico trying to come here by your borders.
Brazil is like eight times more bigger than Venezuela.
I'm telling you that if you do not, if Brazil turns itself a Venezuela, you will serve way more problems here in United States.
And for sure, not only the borders, drug dealers, supporting terrorism, it will be a risk for you.
But now you're living in exile in the United States without a Brazilian passport.
What is that?
unidentified
Well, 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.
Yes.
People were looking for him and they had to seize his passport.
But then I was working normally on a regular TV station in Brazil, like mainstream media, doing a conservative show on primetime.
We had millions of people watching it.
It was the most watched political show in the country.
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.
And I had like, I don't know, 1.5 million followers there on that specific one.
And then I was like, wow, I'm not going to say the name because I don't want to expose the person that informed me.
And I was like, wow.
So I went live streaming and I said, look, apparently I'm going to disappear.
But later I found out because I got a call from a federal police officer saying, look, the order against you is broader.
Apparently they ordered to freeze all your assets in the country.
They also ordered that we're going to seize your passport and you can't get in the country.
But on January 8th, the revolt happened in Brazil, the protests, the demonstrations.
And on January 9th, the Department of Justice opened an investigation against the TV station that I worked for.
And when they did that, the owners panicked, and they had to fire all the conservative commentators, and only the conservative commentators, from the station.
And they used to be number one in terms of viewership, and of course now they're not doing well, because you know what happens with the...
So what I think is going on right now for the whole world is the whole world is watching.
If people still matters in any way, Trump will be elected.
If the establishment has all the power and democracy is dead in the Western world, and it was a good run, we had a good run for like a little over 200 years, that's very rare in the history, you study history, you know how rare that is, then democracy is dead.
And I can tell that because this is exactly what happened in Brazil.
And what's going on more and more and more, and you see that, is that the powers are shifting from the people to the courts, what people call juristocracy, not a democracy anymore.
Which is a great thing for globalists, if you think about it.
Well, let's say you want to change something.
In a democratic country, you have to pass a bill in Congress, and then the Senate needs to approve it, and the president needs to sanction it.
And so if you're a billionaire, a progressive billionaire, and you have many here in the United States, and you want to change something in the society, let's say make the society more open, you have two options.
It's very hard to control all that, and I think the Founding Fathers knew that, and that's why they made it this way.
You can do that, or you can, well, let's say you get six Supreme Court Chess V, and then you can, I don't know, make abortion legal all over the country.
It has been done.
It has been done before.
So if you're a globalist, powerful elite...
You can circumvent democracy and go straight to the judiciary.
And that's exactly what happened in Brazil.
And it can't happen here.
I've been living here for 10 years.
The Judicial Pathway00:01:04
unidentified
I can tell.
The reality that we're living in Brazil is not that far away from America, as you think.
You guys think, oh my God, we've been a democracy for hundreds of years.
No.
If you, what, you think if you had like six Supreme Court justices that were progressive appointed by Obama or Michelle Obama or who knows?
What, you think your Supreme Court would be zealous about the Constitution?
Really?
If you told me five years ago that Brazil would be in this situation, I would say get out of here.
No, that's too much.
They're not going to arrest a mainstream media journalist.