Latest / John’s Newsletter / After its car-crash election, where is Brazil headed?
Transcript
- 0:00[music]
- 0:16SPEAKER_00: Good morning,
- 0:16SPEAKER_00: everyone,
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: and welcome to Around the world in 20 minutes,
- 0:19SPEAKER_00: where we try to make sense of the beguiling new planet we find ourselves on.
- 0:24SPEAKER_00: And I'm just about to set sail.
- 0:26SPEAKER_00: I start packing for tomorrow, the staves in both Milan and Wallachia.
- 0:31SPEAKER_00: Washington are on the alert for me coming and going.
- 0:34SPEAKER_00: And of course, we have a few things in the way ahead of that.
- 0:37SPEAKER_00: We have finished the Brazilian election today, the car crash that it was.
- 0:42SPEAKER_00: We move on to the Israeli election, which is taking place today.
- 0:46SPEAKER_00: Then I get everything over,
- 0:47SPEAKER_00: hit the new apartment,
- 0:48SPEAKER_00: get ready for John's wedding and see Captain Cy where we're going to be live
- 0:53SPEAKER_00: for Foreign Affairs 15 next week, which is exciting.
- 0:56SPEAKER_00: And we have this little thing called the midterms.
- 1:00SPEAKER_00: So it's busy, but it's never boring.
- 1:03SPEAKER_00: And it's thrilling to be here with you.
- 1:05SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that we get to spend this time together.
- 1:08SPEAKER_00: But please do give.
- 1:10SPEAKER_00: We're running around the clock for you saying things nobody else,
- 1:14SPEAKER_00: ironically,
- 1:14SPEAKER_00: except The New York Times is saying,
- 1:16SPEAKER_00: which is the resilient election was well and truly stolen.
- 1:20SPEAKER_00: Even the New York Times, bless their heart, said there were voting irregularities.
- 1:25SPEAKER_00: But we're the ones who dug down and explained the mystery as to how the anatomy of esteem was.
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: And for that information...
- 1:45SPEAKER_00: We do that in Around the world in 20 minutes,
- 1:48SPEAKER_00: the Patrick Henry podcast,
- 1:49SPEAKER_00: the Trump revolution, the founders briefing, our deep dives.
- 1:52SPEAKER_00: And, uh,
- 2:07SPEAKER_00: Also, the Dead Realist Society,
- 2:09SPEAKER_00: John and I are about to head toward America and start with Ernest Hemingway's,
- 2:13SPEAKER_00: I think the most underrated novel of the last 100 years,
- 2:17SPEAKER_00: Fiesta, or also known as The Sun Also Rises.
- 2:21SPEAKER_00: John did one on these.
- 2:22SPEAKER_00: And again,
- 2:23SPEAKER_00: if you're a member,
- 2:23SPEAKER_00: you can go back and find me talking about why Ernest Hemingway matters.
- 2:27SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was a rather good one done on Fiesta.
- 2:30SPEAKER_00: But with John's expert help,
- 2:32SPEAKER_00: the two of us together will navigate Fiesta and then two of the great short stories.
- 2:40SPEAKER_00: We're going to move on to Larry McMurtry and Lonesome Dove.
- 2:43SPEAKER_00: John has a unique connection to that.
- 2:45SPEAKER_00: That's going to be fun.
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- 2:51SPEAKER_00: He did so by making some of the greatest detective stories ever made.
- 2:53SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at The Big Sleep.
- 3:07SPEAKER_00: Farewell,
- 3:08SPEAKER_00: My Lovely,
- 3:10SPEAKER_00: and The Long Goodbye, I think, are probably the three we're going to look at.
- 3:13SPEAKER_00: They're all great, though.
- 3:14SPEAKER_00: Lady in the Lake's great as well.
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- 3:42SPEAKER_00: If you really believe in what we're doing, and you should, give us the full 210 WAC.
- 3:48SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, where does Brazil go after its car crash election?
- 3:54SPEAKER_00: And the answer is simply down.
- 3:56SPEAKER_00: Brazil is one of those countries that absolutely should make it.
- 4:00SPEAKER_00: I remember reading at one point a Times literary supplement from 1900 talking
- 4:06SPEAKER_00: about emerging markets worth investing in.
- 4:09SPEAKER_00: And they listed Argentina and Brazil as having all these resources.
- 4:13SPEAKER_00: All they need is a modicum of stable government, a lack of lunacy, and they would do well.
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: And that's true.
- 4:19SPEAKER_00: That remains the frustrating reality of Brazil.
- 4:24SPEAKER_00: Argentina, for that matter, though, under Malay, happier days are ahead.
- 4:28SPEAKER_00: And they mentioned South Africa, which also is horribly governed.
- 4:32SPEAKER_00: The ANC is reverting to the mean in Africa,
- 4:35SPEAKER_00: unfortunately, rather than following the example of Mandela.
- 4:39SPEAKER_00: Under Ramaphosa, we're finding money stuffed in couches, and I'm not even making that up.
- 4:44SPEAKER_00: But for Brazil, where does it go after this car crash of an election?
- 4:48SPEAKER_00: The answer is simply down.
- 4:51SPEAKER_00: Because I could write that same editorial that appeared in the Times in 1900 now.
- 4:56SPEAKER_00: 125 years later,
- 4:57SPEAKER_00: it has everything it ought to make it, and yet it constantly gets in its own way.
- 5:01SPEAKER_00: And Brazil certainly got in its own way yesterday with the car crash of a vote.
- 5:08SPEAKER_00: One last comment on what was obviously a stolen election.
- 5:12SPEAKER_00: Well, two comments.
- 5:14SPEAKER_00: I think if anything,
- 5:15SPEAKER_00: I underestimate and I find that hard to believe given that I deal
- 5:18SPEAKER_00: with this every day, introduce you guys to this, talk about this all the time.
- 5:23SPEAKER_00: But if anything, we're underestimating the cynicism of our left wing globalist establishment.
- 5:29SPEAKER_00: I've gotten done reading The Guardian, seeing that the EU immediately...
- 5:44SPEAKER_00: Immediately said,
- 5:45SPEAKER_00: this is a triumph with Lula's win for multilateralism,
- 5:48SPEAKER_00: ignoring all the election stealing and irregularities and downright fraud.
- 5:53SPEAKER_00: Ignoring all this and saying,
- 5:54SPEAKER_00: isn't this wonderful,
- 5:55SPEAKER_00: Pedro Sanchez, the soon to be ex-premier The mayor of Spain congratulated Lula.
- 6:01SPEAKER_00: The usual pathetic suspects all thought this was great.
- 6:04SPEAKER_00: Alex Soros, the son of the devil himself.
- 6:08SPEAKER_00: George Soros, of course, thinks this is wonderful and is a fight against authoritarianism.
- 6:14SPEAKER_00: On the very day that Lula when he won after cheating
- 6:17SPEAKER_00: to win said you know I might censor
- 6:19SPEAKER_00: the internet Alex Soros thinks this is just wonderful.
- 6:23SPEAKER_00: You know you can hear Hillary Clinton hysterically screeching in the background.
- 6:29SPEAKER_00: Judge a man by his enemies and populism judged by its enemies is looking pretty good.
- 6:35SPEAKER_00: But this is appalling.
- 6:37SPEAKER_00: Not a shred of interest, not a shred of curiosity in the steel.
- 6:41SPEAKER_00: The one exception, and it's only half-hearted, Oh, two exceptions.
- 6:45SPEAKER_00: There's a Spectator article worth reading in Real Clear World,
- 6:49SPEAKER_00: I believe,
- 6:49SPEAKER_00: today about the fact that this is all very irregular,
- 6:52SPEAKER_00: but hey,
- 6:53SPEAKER_00: it didn't really matter anyway, but Brazil's in for a hard time is the basic theme.
- 6:58SPEAKER_00: Probably worth And then the New York Times did mention their irregularities,
- 7:02SPEAKER_00: which might lead to some sort of challenge.
- 7:04SPEAKER_00: But the argument is that they won by such an amount,
- 7:08SPEAKER_00: 52 to 48, that even if there were irregularities, they were outside the realm of...
- 7:15SPEAKER_00: So we don't need to worry about this at all.
- 7:17SPEAKER_00: Let's just move on.
- 7:20SPEAKER_00: Bolsonaro, Flavio refuses to accept it.
- 7:23SPEAKER_00: And in return,
- 7:24SPEAKER_00: the ever mighty Supreme Court said,
- 7:26SPEAKER_00: I'd like your passport, please, so you can't flee the country.
- 7:29SPEAKER_00: The country on the day that Lula said,
- 7:31SPEAKER_00: well, we're thinking about censoring Brazilian social media.
- 7:35SPEAKER_00: Alex Soros is an example of everything to despise about the modern world
- 7:40SPEAKER_00: and Nepo Baby, who my firm wouldn't hire to get a coffee.
- 7:44SPEAKER_00: The arrogant little moron cheering and changing what words mean.
- 7:49SPEAKER_00: The idea that somehow this is anti-authoritarian behavior beggars description.
- 7:55SPEAKER_00: We cannot despise these people enough.
- 7:58SPEAKER_00: They don't despise.
- 7:59SPEAKER_00: They don't care about democracy.
- 8:00SPEAKER_00: They'd rather win unfairly than lose fairly.
- 8:03SPEAKER_00: And the minute that happens, you have a fraying of an electoral system or indeed worldviews.
- 8:09SPEAKER_00: If I can't count on you to keep faith with the result, look at Al Gore in 2000.
- 8:14SPEAKER_00: Very close selection.
- 8:15SPEAKER_00: Came down to a few hanging chads in Florida.
- 8:18SPEAKER_00: But in the end,
- 8:19SPEAKER_00: for all that I'm absolutely no friend of Al Gore and the grifting he did on
- 8:23SPEAKER_00: the green stuff after, but he said, now it's time for me to go.
- 8:27SPEAKER_00: He knew when to get out of the way.
- 8:29SPEAKER_00: Richard Nixon in 1960.
- 8:31SPEAKER_00: A lot of dead people voted in Illinois,
- 8:34SPEAKER_00: and LBJ rounded up an awful lot of votes in various precincts he controlled
- 8:38SPEAKER_00: in Texas.
- 8:40SPEAKER_00: Nixon was urged to challenge it.
- 8:41SPEAKER_00: He refused to do so.
- 8:43SPEAKER_00: So there are examples in both the Democratic Party in Gore and the Republican Party
- 8:48SPEAKER_00: in Nixon where you don't challenge the election result,
- 8:51SPEAKER_00: murky though it was, for the greater good.
- 8:56SPEAKER_00: But let's flip that around now in Brazil.
- 9:00SPEAKER_00: And look at what's happening.
- 9:01SPEAKER_00: If Bolsonaro,
- 9:03SPEAKER_00: either of them,
- 9:03SPEAKER_00: Jaira or Flavio, had done what Lula just did, we'd never hear the end of it.
- 9:09SPEAKER_00: They'd be screeching from the rooftops, right-wing fascism, blah, blah, blah.
- 9:15SPEAKER_00: Without a loyal opposition,
- 9:17SPEAKER_00: which we don't have anymore given their behavior,
- 9:19SPEAKER_00: all you have to do is play that mind game, flip positions.
- 9:23SPEAKER_00: They'd be screeching from the rooftops while now they're studiously looking
- 9:27SPEAKER_00: at their fingernails, the differences that they won.
- 9:31SPEAKER_00: It's just straight out power.
- 9:33SPEAKER_00: This is realism.
- 9:34SPEAKER_00: This is not complicated at all.
- 9:37SPEAKER_00: Occam's razor explains more and Hamlet explains more than my favorite play Macbeth.
- 9:42SPEAKER_00: People just aren't that Byzantine in their thinking.
- 9:46SPEAKER_00: They really They want to win.
- 9:48SPEAKER_00: They don't care how they win.
- 9:49SPEAKER_00: But without a loyal opposition, as Nixon and Gore both showed, you're in trouble.
- 9:55SPEAKER_00: And we're reaching that point across the board.
- 9:57SPEAKER_00: And Brazil is just,
- 9:59SPEAKER_00: to quote Roger, the egregious Roger Waters, it's just another brick in the wall.
- 10:05SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly where we are, the great Pink Floyd.
- 10:09SPEAKER_00: That this is obviously unfair.
- 10:11SPEAKER_00: He's trying to challenge it.
- 10:12SPEAKER_00: But as the courts are run entirely by Lula jackals, I don't think we're going to get very far.
- 10:18SPEAKER_00: They'll say, look, it didn't matter.
- 10:20SPEAKER_00: Even though that's nonsense.
- 10:22SPEAKER_00: One last comment then beyond the studious incuriosity of the mainstream media.
- 10:28SPEAKER_00: Handmaiden and propagandists now, not news source people for the world.
- 10:32SPEAKER_00: They're not interested in the news story here.
- 10:34SPEAKER_00: They're interested in the globalist center-left establishment winning.
- 10:39SPEAKER_00: That's what they're interested in, leftist winning.
- 10:42SPEAKER_00: Cristiano Zanin,
- 10:44SPEAKER_00: the lackey judge who was Bolsonaro's personal lawyer,
- 10:47SPEAKER_00: who issued the decree that let voting stations stay open,
- 10:51SPEAKER_00: just one final thought that the staff came up with yesterday,
- 10:54SPEAKER_00: in addition to the anatomy of a steal.
- 10:59SPEAKER_00: Zanin said the extension applied only to those polling stations that had not yet closed.
- 11:10SPEAKER_00: He said this at 5.02, two minutes after the election had come to a result.
- 11:14SPEAKER_00: So the extension for two hours applies only to those stations still open two minutes
- 11:20SPEAKER_00: after polling was supposed to have closed.
- 11:23SPEAKER_00: But why were some polling stations still open?
- 11:27SPEAKER_00: At 502.
- 11:29SPEAKER_00: This is the heart of the matter.
- 11:31SPEAKER_00: This is the Sherlockian argument.
- 11:34SPEAKER_00: He said, only polling stations still open at 5.02 when they're supposed to close at 5.
- 11:39SPEAKER_00: Only they should continue counting votes.
- 11:42SPEAKER_00: All the other ones, the software is locked down to protect the integrity of that system.
- 11:47SPEAKER_00: So, indeed, which polling stations were still open after the vote was supposed to have stopped?
- 11:54SPEAKER_00: We have two secret powers here at our firm.
- 11:59SPEAKER_00: We don't play the ball.
- 12:01SPEAKER_00: We don't play the man, pardon me.
- 12:02SPEAKER_00: We play the ball.
- 12:03SPEAKER_00: We use logic to get our results.
- 12:05SPEAKER_00: And if you're still open after you're supposed to be closed, you know something is coming.
- 12:10SPEAKER_00: You're a precinct captain who's been alerted by Bolsonaro that something is coming
- 12:15SPEAKER_00: in the term of your lackey, Cristiano Zanin, doing this.
- 12:19SPEAKER_00: Why were there still polling stations open after they were supposed
- 12:23SPEAKER_00: to have been closed by two minutes?
- 12:26SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
- 12:28SPEAKER_00: Second point,
- 12:29SPEAKER_00: beyond the incuriosity of the media about this and Zanin doing this,
- 12:36SPEAKER_00: is that getting away with this kind of thing just emboldens more of it in
- 12:40SPEAKER_00: a Jeffersonian way.
- 12:42SPEAKER_00: This is an eternal battle.
- 12:43SPEAKER_00: This will go on forever, but we need to be made clear that our enemies are even more rude.
- 12:59SPEAKER_00: Cynical and determined to save themselves the worst that they do
- 13:03SPEAKER_00: when it's now apparent to everybody how badly they're doing.
- 13:06SPEAKER_00: Why does Lula want to censor social media?
- 13:09SPEAKER_00: Because it's going to mention what I just said over and over and over again.
- 13:13SPEAKER_00: And he just can't drown out that cacophony as he goes on stealing the election.
- 13:19SPEAKER_00: The cacophony will get the better of him.
- 13:21SPEAKER_00: The sound will get louder and louder and louder.
- 13:25SPEAKER_00: And that's where we are at the moment.
- 13:28SPEAKER_00: So where does Brazil go from here after the steal?
- 13:32SPEAKER_00: Well, let's look at what Lula's policies have wrought now.
- 13:35SPEAKER_00: It's been a long time since Bolsa Familia,
- 13:37SPEAKER_00: since Lula used his trade with China, where Brazil became a resource extraordinaire.
- 13:44SPEAKER_00: Well, public security has gone into the toilet and...
- 13:59SPEAKER_00: As it has throughout the region,
- 14:00SPEAKER_00: people don't want grandma beaten up in a favela and there's lax public security
- 14:04SPEAKER_00: across much of Brazil,
- 14:06SPEAKER_00: an increase in gangs to the point the Americans have now put two of the major gangs
- 14:10SPEAKER_00: on the terrorist watch list in the United States.
- 14:14SPEAKER_00: There's been excessive government spending.
- 14:16SPEAKER_00: We'll get back to this in a minute.
- 14:18SPEAKER_00: But certainly that's been the case with Lula's spendthrift,
- 14:21SPEAKER_00: corrupt, and fairly inept government doing that.
- 14:25SPEAKER_00: And there's been virtually unlimited power exercised by Democrats.
- 14:29SPEAKER_00: The idea of this guy is a judge and has to deal with civil liberties makes both me
- 14:32SPEAKER_00: and the ghost of Jefferson physically ill.
- 14:47SPEAKER_00: So you've had lax public security,
- 14:50SPEAKER_00: excessive government spending,
- 14:52SPEAKER_00: and virtually unlimited power exercised by a Lula-packed Brazilian Supreme Court.
- 14:58SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what you're going to get more of, because on those issues...
- 15:02SPEAKER_00: Lula has traction.
- 15:04SPEAKER_00: In theory, he should be in charge of public security.
- 15:07SPEAKER_00: Eventually,
- 15:08SPEAKER_00: he's responsible with the Congress for spending,
- 15:11SPEAKER_00: and he appoints justices to the Supreme Court.
- 15:13SPEAKER_00: So this is all in Lula's ballywick,
- 15:16SPEAKER_00: and it's likely to The problem with democracy,
- 15:18SPEAKER_00: says Aristotle, the founder of Modern Logic, what is, is.
- 15:33SPEAKER_00: The problem
- 15:34SPEAKER_00: with democracy is its people will always vote themselves too many benefits at
- 15:38SPEAKER_00: the expense of the future.
- 15:40SPEAKER_00: This will lead to economic chaos which will lead to political instability
- 15:44SPEAKER_00: which will lead to the rise of a tyrant.
- 15:47SPEAKER_00: Our founders lived in mortal dread of this.
- 15:49SPEAKER_00: If you look at Brazil,
- 15:50SPEAKER_00: if you look at France,
- 15:51SPEAKER_00: if you look at South Africa,
- 15:53SPEAKER_00: this haunting Aristotelian pattern is clearly out there and is
- 15:57SPEAKER_00: a huge political risk, specifically for Brazil, but for the world more generally.
- 16:03SPEAKER_00: So Jefferson founded
- 16:10SPEAKER_00: the University of Virginia.
- 16:11SPEAKER_00: Franklin was involved with the University of Pennsylvania,
- 16:14SPEAKER_00: UPenn, also in the Ivy League, UVA, one of our great schools.
- 16:18SPEAKER_00: Go on the lawn that Jefferson designed and you feel like you're in heaven.
- 16:22SPEAKER_00: And Adams was involved with Harvard.
- 16:24SPEAKER_00: This was a way to deal with Aristotle's curse, but they haven't done so well on that in Brazil.
- 16:30SPEAKER_00: Lula's campaign clearly benefited from last-minute promises of enormous extra-social scrutiny.
- 16:37SPEAKER_00: Basically, in between the two rounds, he bribed the Brazilian electorate.
- 16:42SPEAKER_00: This spending will add up if it's enacted,
- 16:44SPEAKER_00: which it probably won't be,
- 16:45SPEAKER_00: but if it's enacted,
- 16:47SPEAKER_00: it would cost Brazil an extra 40 billion,
- 16:50SPEAKER_00: billion with a B, pounds, not dollars, pounds.
- 16:55SPEAKER_00: So if this last minute bribe...
- 16:57SPEAKER_00: of extra social spending to the people of Brazil for 40 billion pounds is enacted,
- 17:03SPEAKER_00: more excessive spending on a country that,
- 17:05SPEAKER_00: as we said, is already in pretty bad economic straits.
- 17:09SPEAKER_00: Growth this year is going to be below 2%, which is ridiculous.
- 17:12SPEAKER_00: This is a bad number for France.
- 17:14SPEAKER_00: Brazil, which is an emerging market, ought to have 5% as its base, and it's nowhere near that.
- 17:27SPEAKER_00: At the same time,
- 17:29SPEAKER_00: inflation has creeped up to 5.2%, likely according to the IMF, by the end of 2026.
- 17:36SPEAKER_00: So high inflation somehow, low growth rates.
- 17:39SPEAKER_00: So what does he do?
- 17:40SPEAKER_00: He throws 40 billion pounds onto the fire of inflation.
- 17:45SPEAKER_00: Fantastic thinking there, Ace.
- 17:47SPEAKER_00: Another man.
- 17:48SPEAKER_00: I want, as we said in Foreign Affairs 15,
- 17:50SPEAKER_00: there should be a table for inept, angry old men to scream at waitresses.
- 17:55SPEAKER_00: You think Lula can be there, say,
- 17:57SPEAKER_00: with Bernie,
- 17:58SPEAKER_00: a few of the other,
- 17:59SPEAKER_00: Melenchon,
- 18:00SPEAKER_00: that extra for Les Miserables,
- 18:02SPEAKER_00: they should all be sitting at a table shrieking at some waitress.
- 18:06SPEAKER_00: I think they'd get along famously, but these old men, as Lawrence said, are ruining the peace.
- 18:12SPEAKER_00: And Lula is part of that.
- 18:13SPEAKER_00: So $40 billion and a bribe, as Aristotle would clearly see.
- 18:17SPEAKER_00: This isn't going to help Brazil in the long run.
- 18:20SPEAKER_00: And then you have the fact that after the election,
- 18:22SPEAKER_00: one forgets that Brazil's Congress is now firmly anti-Lula.
- 18:28SPEAKER_00: Bolsonaro's party and allies picked up the greatest single number of seats.
- 18:32SPEAKER_00: There are many parties in Brazil's House and Senate, the lower and the upper houses.
- 18:37SPEAKER_00: So nobody has a majority.
- 18:39SPEAKER_00: But the greatest single beneficiary of the first round
- 18:43SPEAKER_00: of voting certainly was Bolsonaro's party.
- 18:46SPEAKER_00: So they're now running many cities, many federal states.
- 18:52SPEAKER_00: As well as having a huge,
- 18:54SPEAKER_00: a plurality,
- 18:55SPEAKER_00: though nowhere near a majority in the Congress,
- 18:58SPEAKER_00: but they're certainly not going to be pro-Lula.
- 19:01SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I would hope they begin to impeach a couple of these judges.
- 19:05SPEAKER_00: They may not get demoraes.
- 19:06SPEAKER_00: Who'd be the ultimate kind of hate object to knock down a man who never saw
- 19:11SPEAKER_00: an authoritarian ruling.
- 19:12SPEAKER_00: And he's both arrogant, thuggish, and stupid.
- 19:16SPEAKER_00: I certainly hope they go after him in a Jeffersonian manner.
- 19:21SPEAKER_00: And so don't look for those Brazilian numbers to change.
- 19:24SPEAKER_00: If anything,
- 19:37SPEAKER_00: So the real political risk immediate answer is things are going to go down.
- 19:44SPEAKER_00: Things are going to get worse.
- 19:45SPEAKER_00: For all its resources,
- 19:47SPEAKER_00: Brazil, Phil, is not a place to invest in, not a place to bet on at the moment.
- 19:52SPEAKER_00: While it retains the ability always to do well,
- 19:55SPEAKER_00: and because of it's blessed with these abundant resources and people,
- 20:00SPEAKER_00: it could turn around.
- 20:01SPEAKER_00: And you have to keep your eye on that change in trajectory.
- 20:04SPEAKER_00: That's how a risk analyst would look at this.
- 20:06SPEAKER_00: If they ever get a government that's fiscally responsible,
- 20:09SPEAKER_00: deregulates the place, opens it up, you can see it doing very, very well indeed.
- 20:14SPEAKER_00: But we're not there and we're not going to be there.
- 20:16SPEAKER_00: It's going to have to get worse before it gets better.
- 20:18SPEAKER_00: That old Leninist adage is actually right here.
- 20:22SPEAKER_00: And we do have the idea that Congress is going to block Lula from doing a lot of
- 20:26SPEAKER_00: the crazier things he do.
- 20:28SPEAKER_00: The question now is Lula at 80 after the brain surgery slowing down
- 20:33SPEAKER_00: to Joe Biden levels of decrepitude.
- 20:37SPEAKER_00: What comes next?
- 20:38SPEAKER_00: And that's, can he get a successor in place?
- 20:41SPEAKER_00: Maybe the Vice President Elkman is going to be the successor.
- 20:45SPEAKER_00: Can we, who's more moderate, might do better on the left?
- 20:48SPEAKER_00: Can he get a successor groomed over this next term?
- 20:51SPEAKER_00: And for the Bolsonaro clan, where do they go from here?
- 20:55SPEAKER_00: How do they challenge this election, point out it was wrong, and get ready for the stasis and
- 21:06SPEAKER_00: And the failure to come so next time they can finally get the ball over the line.
- 21:12SPEAKER_00: These are the big outstanding questions.
- 21:14SPEAKER_00: But the short term answer that Brazil after its car crash election is not going
- 21:18SPEAKER_00: to do better is not a place to invest in.
- 21:21SPEAKER_00: And we are downgrading it as a result.
- 21:24SPEAKER_00: That's the gloomy news from here.
- 21:27SPEAKER_00: Please do give again,
- 21:28SPEAKER_00: and I promise you we will be back tomorrow,
- 21:30SPEAKER_00: I'm sure, to talk about did Harry Houdini survive yet again in Israel?
- 21:35SPEAKER_00: The most likely outcome,
- 21:36SPEAKER_00: and I say this ahead of time,
- 21:38SPEAKER_00: I haven't looked at the exit polling yet,
- 21:40SPEAKER_00: that's today's work,
- 21:42SPEAKER_00: the most likely outcome at the moment would be for neither grouping,
- 21:47SPEAKER_00: the Bibi grouping or the grouping around Eisenkot, to get a majority.
- 21:51SPEAKER_00: Ironically, the likely majority will be held by It's a significant minority of the population.
- 22:10SPEAKER_00: So they'd have to informally support a minority government.
- 22:13SPEAKER_00: Nobody's going to get a majority, it looks like.
- 22:15SPEAKER_00: At the moment, Eisencott is just a nose ahead of Bibi, but Harry Houdini has a ways to play.
- 22:22SPEAKER_00: If Eisencott does win, but it's a minority government, that's...
- 22:25SPEAKER_00: That might not be the end of Beebe yet.
- 22:27SPEAKER_00: Only with a majority against him would that be the case.
- 22:30SPEAKER_00: But this minority government,
- 22:32SPEAKER_00: the one thing they all agree on,
- 22:33SPEAKER_00: the Bennets,
- 22:34SPEAKER_00: the Lapides,
- 22:35SPEAKER_00: the Eisencots,
- 22:36SPEAKER_00: actually agree on, is that they would want some sort of formal hearing.
- 22:40SPEAKER_00: But all that is to play for.
- 22:42SPEAKER_00: All of that is ahead, evidently.
- 22:55SPEAKER_00: Bibi's been trying to get the army involved in doing something
- 22:59SPEAKER_00: to increase tensions ahead of the vote.
- 23:01SPEAKER_00: His last campaign message on X wasn't subtle.
- 23:05SPEAKER_00: It was a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.
- 23:08SPEAKER_00: He's not subtle, but he's trying to scare individuals.
- 23:10SPEAKER_00: So that is tomorrow, if not later today.
- 23:12SPEAKER_00: We keep faith with you.
- 23:13SPEAKER_00: Please keep faith with us.
- 23:15SPEAKER_00: See you soon.