Brazilian President Bolsonaro has live-streamed himself watching a speech by his friend and soulmate, Donald Trump, as the latter bashed his political opponents following a victorious impeachment trial.
Bolsonaro on Thursday sat through the entire hour-long speech by Donald Trump at the White House.
In it, Trump lashed out at “dishonest and corrupt people” who put him “through a terrible ordeal” in an obvious reference to Democrats who sought his removal in the impeachment trial.
He also took a shot at Mitt Romney, the only Republican senator who broke ranks and voted to convict him.
“We’re not the only ones with backstabbers in politics,” jibed Bolsonaro. “They’ve found a Republican rat too.”
During the Facebook broadcast, some commenters accused the Brazilian president of kowtowing to his US counterpart.
Humberto Costa, a senator from the opposition Workers’ Party, tweeted: “It’s not enough to be a doormat. One must show oneself to be a doormat. The shame is on Brazil. The face of the fan Bolsonaro seeing the idol Trump on TV has a high price and the Brazilians will pay it.”
Não basta ser um capacho. É preciso mostrar que é um capacho. A vergonha é por conta do Brasil. A cara do fã Bolsonaro vendo o ídolo Trump na TV tem um preço caro e quem paga a conta são os brasileiros. pic.twitter.com/oO3UY3yUyM
— Humberto Costa (@senadorhumberto) February 6, 2020
But Bolsonaro hit back at the critics, saying that he wasn’t sending a message of friendship to Trump and was simply following the news.
“The [impeachment] process took a long time, and when it disturbs the United States it disturbs us too. Nobody is thinking that I’m here fawning over Donald Trump. The better the United States doing, the fewer problems we have, the easier it is for us to handle our bilateral relations.”
“Some criticise me: ‘He is fawning over Trump,’” he added. “Look, you idiot, when they were sucking up to Maduro, Chávez and Fidel Castro you didn’t say anything, did you? But I’m not worried about this.”
Precisely a month ago, Bolsonaro also broadcast himself live watching Trump’s Iran speech following the assassination of top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani. At the time, he appeared to have taken notes of Trump’s comments, before accusing his predecessor Lula da Silva for his soft stance on uranium enrichment limitations for Iran.
