Preet Bharara:

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned in Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. As you all know, there’s an important election in America tomorrow, and we’ll see what happens there. Meanwhile, last week, voters in Brazil ousted their far right leader Jair Bolsonaro, electing the leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known simply as Lula to replace him. Despite refusing to formally concede, Bolsonaro has begun to transfer power to Lula. That wasn’t always a sure thing. The outgoing president has long attacked Brazil’s election system as rife with fraud, and suggested that the left was trying to rig the vote. Sound familiar? To discuss that election and what it means for the world, I’m joined by my friend Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, and Cafe’s unofficial foreign policy correspondent. Ian, welcome back to the show.

Ian Bremmer:

Dude, good to be with you, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

So I know everyone is thinking about the American election, but it’s sometimes interesting, as we’ve done recently, to talk about other countries and what they portend for this country. I’m not going to spend any time asking about the UK because that’s another whole can of worms that we talked about a little bit.

Ian Bremmer:

It’s not quite an election, right? I mean, they just kind of appointed the person.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Next week I wonder who it’s going to be. So yeah, let’s talk about Brazil, which I know you are very expert on. President Bolsonaro in 90 seconds, tell us about him.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, to connect with your opening, it was several months ago that he said that the only way that this election could resolve would be either if he won, he were arrested, or he were killed. And it turns out that none of those three things have happened, and he backed down. Wouldn’t you believe it? So yeah, conservative, outsider, military background, markets like him, very conservative on social issues, has said a lot of problematic things about women, about gays, and so forth. But I mean, generally speaking, the real issue for the rest of the world, is he damaging institutions? Is he an election denier?

Preet Bharara:

Why did he lose?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, it was close. First of all, it was very close. It was not even two percentage points away. And the polls got it wrong. The polls expected a significantly larger margin. And in Brazil, like in many other democracies, people that don’t trust institutions, people that believe in conspiracy theories, also don’t trust pollsters. So either they don’t respond to pollsters or they lie to pollsters. So you do get this shy, aggressive, anti-establishment vote. Just in the United States, you get in Brazil. So he could have won, first of all.

He lost in part because the economy was not performing well. And Lula, when he was president, was in an extraordinary boom. Commodities were very high price, supercycle they used to call it. And so he benefits from a bit of that. He’s also tacked effectively to the center. They had a harder time portraying him as a strong leftist, given his running mate from a center-left political party, and as well as the way he’s been talking about the economy more recently. So all of those things together, and the general anti-establishment trends, so Macron does really well until he is in power and then everyone’s angry with him. Bolsonaro was an outsider, but after four years of running the country, he’s not anymore. And so he gets the anti-establishment vote going against him.

Preet Bharara:

What’s the electorate like in Brazil? Is it as polarized as it is in the US?

Ian Bremmer:

Almost.

Preet Bharara:

Are there a lot of moderates?

Ian Bremmer:

No. No. I mean, again, social media is playing such a significant role. If it wasn’t for Facebook, I don’t think Bolsonaro becomes president. There’s a lot of fake news disinformation, not just misinformation. There’s active efforts to turn the political opponents as enemies of the people. Bolsonaro is incredibly opposed to the establishment media. Has made them into enemies as well. It’s in many ways, I mean, there are different guardrails protecting democracy in Brazil than there are in the United States, and it might be interesting to talk about that, but the erosion of democracy driven by social media platforms that create incredible incentives for politicians to become further and further extreme and demonize their opponents as other and hateful, that is absolutely a play in Brazil the way it is in the United States.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about what you just mentioned. The guardrails exist in Brazil. Here in the US, I think some of the guardrails have not held. Many of them have. I think the courts have held. I think the system we have of separation of powers and life tenure for federal judges has helped. Is there anything we should learn from in Brazil as far as guardrails go?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. Absolutely. So first of all, the judiciary is not as much of a guardrail in Brazil. It has been co-opted more by the left. It was actually used. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal made a bunch of legal efforts to make life harder for Bolsonaro. They were definitely putting their thumb on the scale. And that’s a problem, right? It’s an erosion of what should be an independent branch of government. On the other hand, the military in Brazil, similarly to the United States, has been very professional and has stayed independent. They remember the days of the coup, of the military control of the country. They didn’t want return to it. And they, in addition to several of Bolsonaro’s allies, very quickly after the election stood up and said this election was fine and we’re accepting the outcome. That was a fairly big deal.

Another thing that really matters in Brazil, and they have an advantage here compared to the United States, is they have a federal election. They don’t have elections state by state. So it’s very hard to overturn or control. So in the United States, you had Trump that was literally calling individual state authorities of his political party saying, “Find me votes.” And they said, “No, we’re not going to.” But who knows what happens in 2024 with a lot of election deniers in power? In Brazil, there’s no one for Bolsonaro to call. So the only thing you could do is question the election overall, the electronic voting, for example, because it’s all done nationally. And that clearly wasn’t going to work.

One other thing that’s a big guardrail in Brazil is that, in the United States, you’ve got a strong Republican party, a strong Democratic party, and Trump has managed to co-opt most of the Republican party, at least for the time being. In Brazil, it’s a much more decentralized party system, fragmented party system. So Bolsonaro just doesn’t have a large number of political confederates in office, in Congress. He doesn’t have that party structure that he can use and deploy to his direction.

And so in the same way that, I remember when you and I were doing a pod before January 6th, and at that point it was very clear to me lots of things to worry about, but no chance of a coup because you just didn’t have the ability to overturn those guardrails no matter what Trump tried to do. In Brazil, there was a very significant likelihood that Bolsonaro would come out and say, “I refuse to concede. This election was stolen.” But there was no chance of a coup because those guardrails were too strong.

Preet Bharara:

So two questions. When Bolsonaro was posturing about not accepting the election results in advance and saying it was rigged, was he taking a page from Trump?

Ian Bremmer:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

And two, why did he capitulate?

Ian Bremmer:

He was taking a page from Trump. And I mean not just from Trump, I mean, there are so many anti-establishment populists that are finding that the best way to play to their base and to undermine their opponents is by taking this maximalist the only way the election can possibly be legitimate is if I win. Which is the exact antithesis of democracy. But nonetheless, again, it plays. It plays in this environment.

Why did he capitulate? He capitulated because it was fairly obvious that he did not have a pathway to continue to fight that did not risk him being made uneligible to run again in four years time. Because if he had actively called for violence, and there were a lot of truckers that were out, in fact, at the height, 24 hours after the election. And remember first 24 hours, Bolsonaro says nothing. He’s not in public at all. He’s not made any statements. It’s very clear that Lula has won. There is not a single statement from the outgoing president of Brazil. You have truckers that are literally disrupting highways. 400 different highways across the country. I mean, snarling supply chain, impossible for people to go to work. I know that Brazil traffic is horrible in the best of times. This was the worst of times. And the fact that he wasn’t saying anything was motivating these people to come out and do more.

But after 48 hours, with the Supreme Court saying that you’re going to be penalized, we’re going to have big fines against you if you don’t get out, with the head of the military and the highway police actively starting to break up some of those disruptions from the truckers, Bolsonaro finally comes out. He delivers a non-concession concession speech. He does not concede. He doesn’t say accepts it. But literally right after he gives the speech, his chief of staff stands up, takes the podium from him, and says, “We’re now going to facilitate a legal transition to the next administration.” And Bolsonaro does come out and tells his supporters, the truckers, “Don’t do anything illegal, don’t disrupt traffic.” So I mean, this is as much of a back down as his fragile ego could possibly allow.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Look, and as you pointed out, in more than one social media post, “Americans might take notice.” Is there any evidence that during this period right before and right after the election that Bolsonaro consulted with Trump?

Ian Bremmer:

No. There’s no evidence that he spoke with Trump. There is a lot of evidence that American hard line election deniers were watching Brazil carefully. You had Steve Bannon, for example, who was publicly saying that Bolsonaro shouldn’t concede, implying that the election was stolen. Not very helpful. In the same way that you saw like Tucker Carlson and Bannon working closely with Viktor Orban, an illiberal, would-be authoritarian that runs a country that is kind of a hybrid democracy now because of his efforts in Hungary. You saw some of that in Brazil. But there’s no indication that there’s high level engagement or strategizing between Trump himself and his inner circle and Bolsonaro in the aftermath of this election. No, I haven’t seen that.

Preet Bharara:

Could you put in perspective, if you can, for American listeners, what the delta is, what the swing is between the right wing politics of Bolsonaro as compared to the left wing politics of Lula? What would the equivalent be in the US going from what kind of leader to what kind of leader?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, I mean, you could say it’s going from Trump to Elizabeth Warren. I wouldn’t quite go Bernie Sanders, but Elizabeth Warren. You could make that argument. But let’s keep in mind that in the Trump administration, economic policy didn’t change that much under the various, under Mnuchin, for example, under Lighthizer, his USTR. I mean, these are people that one would consider part of the establishment, part of the elite from the GOP for decades.Now. Former Goldman Sachs markets guy, former Reagan appointee, nothing usually unusual.

And so when you’re talking about what US trade policy, tariff policy, economic policy looked like under Trump, it wasn’t such a dramatic shift. For a guy that was talking about drain the swamp, it looked very swampy. Bolsonaro, a former military guy, who really is incredibly undereducated on the economy, has a super minister of finance in Paulo Guedes, who I personally know quite well.

And Bolsonaro largely deferred economic policy to Guedes. And occasionally when Bolsonaro tried to intervene, the markets would punish them pretty strongly. There were a couple times when Guedes kind of sort of threatened to resign and Bolsonaro backed down. So there is in principle, a big ideological delta between what Bolsonaro represents and the center-right of pro-business elite conservatives in Brazil. But the reality of those policies are not so radically different.

Where you did get a big difference is in the anti-establishment media, the fake news stuff, the social media presence, the identity politics stuff. Which doesn’t change so much how Brazil is seen in the world, but does certainly lead to a lot more dysfunction and institutional erosion inside Brazil. Lula much more of a strong social democrat with some socialist roots, who would be talking about huge redistribution of wealth and massive sort of taxation of corporates, all that sort of thing. But is entering power in a vastly more constrained economic situation with high inflation. 90% of the budget already sort of mandated. So very little room to change funding and expenditure and a fiscal cap law that he would have to go through Congress to change. He might get a little bit in the early days of a honeymoon, but not very much. And so Lula as well, I think is going to end up governing, at least in terms of Brazil’s economy, as much more of a centrist than one would otherwise expect. Big place they are different in policy is on climate and deforestation.

Preet Bharara:

So maybe that explains a tweet you posted a couple of days ago, which was, “There will be more stability in Brazil’s transition from Bolsonaro to new President Lula than you might think.” And I assume that’s because of those constraints.

Ian Bremmer:

Absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

Because you wouldn’t think there would be so much stability if you’re sort of toggling hard right, hard left, hard left, hard right. And I wanted to ask you if you think that this is sort of a new feature of democracies, including liberal democracies, including our democracy. There was a thoughtful listener who I had a conversation with this week who wanted to know about the future of democracy in America, which is on everyone’s mind. And what came to my mind was something that you had said in one of your prior risk reports about what may be a feature of American politics going forward is kind of an instability in so far as it’ll be lurching back and forth. And rather than sort of center-left, center-right people taking the reins of power, you can get a huge switch. Maybe something like a Trump to an Elizabeth Warren, and then back again. Is there anything about the modern world that suggests to you that that’s where we are?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, I think you’re going to see more of that. And I think as that happens, allies of the United States see less consistency from the US, and therefore more willingness to hedge. I think part of the reason why the Saudis, in the person of Mohammed bin Salman, decided to kick Biden pretty hard after the trip and go ahead with this significant reduction of oil production is because MBS’s perspective is, well, Biden’s never going to really trust me and work with me no matter what. And if he’s gone, the Republicans are going to do exactly what they used to do anyway. So what does it really matter how much I’m aligned with this one individual administration? Where when I work with the Chinese, I know that I’m going to be working with them consistently for the next 10, 15, 20 years in the person of Xi Jinping.

I think that there are allies of the United States that were very concerned, the Europeans in particular, about the future of NATO, about the future of transatlantic relations when Trump was in office. They feel better about Biden, but they understand that Biden has constraints, and may not be there for very long. And so they have to do more themselves. So I think that there is more impunity on the part of would be rogues. There’s more hedging on the part of allies. It does actually diminish and undermine the power of the United States on the global stage, even as the US dollar is at 20, 25 year highs. US tech companies have all this power. US energy, US food production. There’s so much raw power the Americans have, but the political dysfunction and the polarization undermines-

Preet Bharara:

Undermines all of it.

Ian Bremmer:

… the ability to leverage some of it. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Two final quick questions. We should point out, because I don’t think we have yet, that among other things, Lula’s background includes a 19 month stint in jail for corruption and convictions, but those were later annulled. Is there a trend going on where leaders of countries who have been accused credibly of corruption make a comeback? Bibi in Israel.

Ian Bremmer:

Yep.

Preet Bharara:

Lula in Brazil.

Ian Bremmer:

Yep. Trump in the US.

Preet Bharara:

We don’t know what’s going to happen with Trump, maybe in 2024. Speak briefly to that.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, definitely. And for two reasons. One, because legitimately, you’re seeing more impunity and willing to break existing norms and laws as anti-establishment populists on the left and the right gets stronger so there is more illegal activity that is going on, or at least activity that would be considered beyond the pale is now considered more acceptable. And also the willingness of opposition parties to go after you really hard. And then when you lose power to say, “That’s it, we’re going to arrest you.” Impeachment is becoming much more frequently used as a political tool in the United States. I don’t know what-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, this is a worry.

Ian Bremmer:

… the Republicans are going to impeach Biden for when they take over the House, but they’re going to, right?

Preet Bharara:

It doesn’t matter. They’re going to.

Ian Bremmer:

Doesn’t matter.

Preet Bharara:

And they’re going to do it three times.

Ian Bremmer:

That’s right.

Preet Bharara:

Because they got to do it two plus one. Ian Bremmer, thanks for joining us.

Ian Bremmer:

Yep.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines become a member of the Cafe Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I co-host with former US attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me #preetbharara with the hashtag AskPreet. Or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The editorial producers are Sam Ozer-Staton and Noah Azulai. The audio producer is Nat Wiener. And the Cafe team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shaw, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.