Trump will be 'very unhappy' over the election in Brazil

Brazil's presidential election has been important for the entire world. Why? Biggest country in South America, most people, future of the Amazon rainforest, biodiversity, food superpower, and rare in being connected to both the United States and to China. And in all of that, this was a fight between an aging leftist, Lula da Silva, and the son of the previous president, Jair Bolsonaro, who had in many ways modelled himself on Donald Trump. Let's talk now to John Lee Anderson of The New Yorker, who interviewed Da Silva last year. John, this was a bit of a surprise, I suspect, even to Da Silva. Yes, it was. He was becoming increasingly concerned and anxious since the first round in early October, where he came in a surprise upset behind his challenger, Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president who was under house arrest for assaulting the Congress and attempting to seek to stall Lula's election four years ago in an uncanny, similar fashion to what Trump did against Biden. So, you know, the last month has been one of increasing anxiety. Yesterday, pretty much everybody on the Lula side was ready to weep. And and lo and behold, he came in nearly four million votes ahead of Flavio and they spent the night dancing and weeping. But I was very surprised. As four years ago, the Bolsonaro family are crying foul and a bit, I guess, like Donald Trump back in the day. They're not going to accept this, are they? Well, that's the default position of the extreme right. It seems to be, you know, again, there's a kind of playbook that Trump has has trotted out there that others have tried. and especially the Bolsonaro family, but the response by a lot of the institutions of the region, including major banks like the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, most of the members of the Supreme Court today said that they believed that Lula had won fair and square. So this is pretty big. And John, I guess the other question is whether Lula has much power, given that the right have control of so much of the parliamentary side of Brazilian politics. They do. But the way it works in the legislative branch in Brazil, it's it's it's a bit of a mafia, frankly. And whoever takes power in the executive has to go in and do deals. Lula is a great horse trader. He's always been one of these one of these politicians who can cross the aisle, you know, and he has they recognize that he's one. Of course, he is 81 years old. And by the time he leaves, he will be a very old man. But he's fit. He's very canny. And I think he knows how to play his cards, to paraphrase Donald Trump. John, this is a very, very wide question for which I apologize. But can you just explain to people listening in Britain who might be confused about why they should care about the Brazilian election, why this matters so much? Well, I think you, you know, you named a few of the reasons why at the very beginning, one of the biggest economies in the world, a true leader of the global south, a member of the BRICS that includes Iran, South Africa, Russia. Lula is someone who can talk and is spoken to as a world leader by all of the other world leaders. He can speak on a first name basis with Xi, with Putin, with anybody else. And he is the last man standing in Latin America on the left or really on the Democratic side. Most of the other countries have in the past year and a half with Trump in office fallen in line with Trump's MAGA, you know, his his extreme right diatribes. They've subscribed to this idea that the U.S. is the new hegemon, the so-called Monroe doctrine in which in which the United States insists on being the hegemon from Greenland to Patagonia. And you've had the tariff wars. You've had a recent shield of the Americas in which Trump has wanted to reinsert American troops on the ground in a number of Latin American countries under the rubric of fighting narco-terrorism. And so there's great fear on the Democratic side, not to say even the left side. And I think Lula represents that now. A major country that has basically put his finger in the dike. And so there's huge, I think, this is rich, huge hope for similar experiences to come. So a genuine blow for Donald Trump. But for those people who are really interested in the Amazon rainforest and wonder about its future, is it going to be important there too? It's very important. Look, Lula was not a green guy. He was not a green politician, but he's become one. You know, he comes out, he comes, he's a bit like a Lech Walesa. You know, he worked in an auto parts factory when he was young. It took him a while to realize that the forest was important. But over the last four or five years, he's learned that. The Bolsonaros essentially wanted to pave it over. And that's the difference. So how will the results in Serbia and Brazil go down in the White House? Let's put that question to our man in Washington, Simon Marks. Well, Andrew, the answer to that question is not well, of course, because Donald Trump at the moment is all about legacy. Everything that he's doing is trying to build a legacy for himself here at home in the United States. That includes all the renovation projects that we're seeing here in Washington, D.C. But on the world stage, he would like to leave as many countries in the control of far-right and hard-right figures as possible. And while he did not openly endorse Flavio Bolsonaro, it's perfectly possible that at the White House today he wishes that he had. He might think that he should have gone further in openly supporting the now defeated Brazilian candidate. In Serbia, of course, those demonstrations against the government were fuelled by concerns regarding proposed business ties between the Trump family's businesses and the now ousted Serbian leader. And if you look further afield, you know, in France, He wants Marine Le Pen to take over next year. In Germany, he wants Alice Weidel of the AfD to take over. In our own country, he's got an abiding friendship with Nigel Farage. So to see Serbia and Brazil over the same weekend rejecting figures that are allied with him, that's a big problem for him. And he just can't resist kind of drive-by shootings of other countries. I'm referring to what he said about the people and the state of Norway with that Nobel Prize decision. I just couldn't believe, again, again, another day, another week, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Utterly extraordinary. And, you know, those comments didn't attract very much attention here, compared, of course, to the comments that he's been making about Nicki Minaj and her appearance alongside him on the campaign trail. But to describe Norway in the manner in which he did, to say that Norwegian immigrants are not welcome, on American shores any longer, and to root it all in his completely failed understanding, his willful misunderstanding of the process of selecting the Nobel Peace Prize winner, again, underscores that for him at the moment, it's all about legacy. And so all of these events over the last few days, I think, have shaken him a bit at the White House, as here at home, he's into the last full week of campaigning in midterm elections that may themselves deliver victories we don't yet know of what magnitude for his Democratic Party opponents and that too is going to start impacting his potential legacy here in the United States it's going to be a very wild ride ahead next week Simon, enjoy every minute of it thank you very much indeed