Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro told the United Nations general assembly he had come to showcase “a new Brazil, with its credibility restored before the world.” However, in his 12-minute address this morning, he spouted a succession of outright lies about Brazilian politics and the environment, while preaching unproven COVID-19 remedies.
The Associated Press called his presence before the international body a provocation of sorts, as he flouted the requirement that all attendees be vaccinated against COVID-19. This meant that all dignitaries, when swiping their identification cards on entering the UN building, were on the honor system.
COVID-19 has killed more than 585,000 people in Brazil, and when vaccines were rolled out at the end of last year, Bolsonaro was adamant in his objections to getting vaccinated, according to NBC New York. “I’m not going to take the vaccine, period,” he said in a television interview in December. “You think my life is at risk? That’s my problem. Period.”
“By November, everyone who chooses to be vaccinated in Brazil will be attended to,” Bolsonaro said in his speech today. “We support vaccination. However, our government has opposed vaccine passports or any obligation to get a vaccine.”
Ahead of Bolsonaro’s opening address, some Brazilian diplomats had reportedly hoped their president might show a softer face to the world than during his last in-person appearance at the UN. On that occasion, in September 2019, Bolsonaro struck a defiant tone, railing against socialism, and what he described as media sensationalism regarding fires in the Amazon rainforest.
And much like Trump’s style of sounding like a broken record, Bolsonaro immediately said, he was going “to show a Brazil different to the one you see in newspapers and on TV.”
“We haven’t had a single concrete case of corruption for [the] two years and eight months [of my presidency],” Bolsonaro claimed, incorrectly, neglecting to mention a series of scandals dogging his family and government, including over the purchase of Covid vaccines.
Bolsonaro also trumpeted his country’s support for ineffective Covid remedies or Hydroxychloroquine – known in Brazil as “early treatment” – despite widespread opposition from the global scientific and medical communities.
“We do not understand why many countries – along with a large part of the media – opposed ‘early treatment’,” Bolsonaro told world leaders, announcing that he had taken such drugs himself. This leads me to wonder if he has also used that horse wormer, Ivermectin?
“History and science will know how to hold everyone to account,” the president added – a forecast the growing ranks of Bolsonaro’s political foes hope will prove correct.
But the biggest untruth to come out of Bad-boy Bolsonaro’s mouth was when he asked, “Which other country in the world has a policy of environmental protection like ours?.”
Marcio Astrini, the executive director of the Climate Observatory, an umbrella group of environmental NGOs, said Bolsonaro had distorted statistics in an attempt to defend his indefensible environmental record of destruction and impunity.
“This is simply not true – it’s a lie,” Astrini said of Bolsonaro’s claim that 84 percent of the Amazon rainforest was intact. “Somebody cooks up these numbers and the president repeats them.”
It is easy to understand where Bolsonaro has gotten his data. He has fired anyone and everyone who has not been willing to make him look good, including those who would not fake the numbers in acres burned or trees, cut down for logging.
“At this point, the only thing the world could hear from Bolsonaro and think might lead to an improvement, would be if Bolsonaro announced his resignation … Short of that it’s all empty talk,” Astrini said. “We know he says one thing and in Brazil is doing something totally different.”
