USAID Corruption & Brazil's Elections w/ Nikolas Ferreira & Mike Benz | PBD Podcast | Ep. 550

Summary

Podcast Summary: PBD Podcast Ep. 550 – USAID Corruption & Brazil's Elections with Nikolas Ferreira & Mike Benz

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Introduction of Guests

In Episode 550 of the PBD Podcast, host Patrick Bet-David engages in a compelling discussion with two influential guests: Nikolas Ferreira, a Brazilian congressman who gained international attention through his viral activism at the age of 17, and Mike Benz, an outspoken critic of USAID and CIA’s involvement in Brazilian politics. The episode delves deep into the intricate web of political interference, corruption, and the ongoing struggle for democracy in Brazil.

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1. USAID and CIA Involvement in Brazil’s Elections

Patrick Bet-David sets the stage by highlighting the critical nature of the conversation with the introduction of Nikolas Ferreira and Mike Benz. He emphasizes the significance of their perspectives on the current political climate in Brazil.

Mike Benz presents a detailed analysis of the United States' covert operations aimed at influencing Brazil's electoral outcomes. He asserts that the U.S. State Department, CIA, and other agencies orchestrated efforts to undermine former President Jair Bolsonaro in favor of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula). Benz explains:

"The U.S. State Department called in massive favors and leveraged personal connections to build voting machines for Lula-aligned Brazil officials... They are persecuting us for everything we say." [11:06]

He further elaborates on the mechanisms employed, including the diversion of semiconductors needed for secure voting machines and leveraging former U.S. ambassadors to facilitate these interventions.

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2. Censorship, Disinformation, and Media Manipulation

The conversation shifts to the topic of media censorship and disinformation. Mike Benz argues that the U.S. agencies have been exporting censorship models to Brazil, mirroring tactics used to suppress opposition in the United States. He states:

"We exported our censorship models when they started to work against Trump. We exported them to Brazil, we exported them to Europe, we're exporting them to Australia as part of a State Department USAID push to control the information space in every country on earth." [16:33]

Nikolas Ferreira corroborates these claims, sharing personal experiences of being censored and sued for speaking against Lula's administration. He recounts instances where questioning the government led to social media shutdowns and legal threats:

"We couldn't say that Lula was supporting abortion, we couldn't say that... So my social media was down for one month because I just questioned the voting electronic machines." [26:07]

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3. Union Funding and Political Influence

Mike Benz sheds light on the funding channels utilized by U.S. agencies to influence Brazilian unions. He reveals significant financial support directed towards labor organizations aligned with Lula:

"Here you have Brazil and one more over what?... Brazil's unions are still getting paid by you and me. They are taking money from us. We are capacity building." [25:05]

He discusses the role of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its affiliates, such as the Solidarity Center, in orchestrating regime change through targeted funding and organizational support.

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4. Environmental Issues: Amazon Fires

The discussion transitions to the alarming increase in Amazon rainforest fires under Lula's administration. Nikolas Ferreira emphasizes the juxtaposition of environmental degradation against the backdrop of political interference:

"In 2024, the legal Amazon region experienced the highest number of fires in 17 years... This is the kind of propaganda against Bolsonaro." [77:47]

He criticizes international figures and media outlets for misattributing blame to Bolsonaro, asserting that the fires have intensified under Lula's governance despite previous claims of environmental stewardship.

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5. Legal and Judicial Interference

Both guests address the judicial manipulations that have undermined democratic processes in Brazil. Nikolas Ferreira highlights how the Supreme Court and other judicial bodies have been weaponized against Bolsonaro and his supporters, portraying them as threats to democracy:

"The Supreme Court of Brazil is not more a judiciary power, it's a political power... We are facing tyranny in Brazil." [05:32]

Mike Benz further elaborates on the strategic influence exerted over judicial institutions to legitimize the persecution of political opponents.

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6. Nikolas Ferreira’s Political Journey

Nikolas Ferreira shares his personal story of political awakening and activism. From his early days in a poor neighborhood to becoming a law graduate and a viral political figure, Ferreira provides insight into his motivations and the challenges he faces:

"I came from a very poor neighborhood in Brazil called Cabana. I was the first crazy one to enter in politics... This was my first video that went viral because I was only 17, 18 years old." [06:40]

His activism against leftist ideologies and the dominant political left in Brazil has positioned him as a key figure in the conservative movement, despite enduring significant opposition and censorship.

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7. The Role of Social Media

The podcast explores the pivotal role of social media in modern political discourse and its manipulation by foreign agencies. Mike Benz criticizes platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram for implementing censorship measures funded by U.S. taxpayers:

"Rooted in Trust has tracked more than 19,000 rumors about the virus... to basically ban the ability to question." [105:24]

Ferreira adds that such censorship stifles legitimate discourse and marginalizes conservative voices, further entrenching political divisions.

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8. Potential Impacts and Future Outlook

The guests discuss the potential future of Brazilian politics, particularly the prospects of Bolsonaro's return and the mechanisms needed to ensure fair elections:

"If the US is serious about applying diplomatic resources on the issue, there are many ways that that can be done... synchronize all the different facets of U.S. foreign policy." [30:44]

Mike Benz emphasizes the importance of withdrawing financial support to undermine the established networks that benefit the current administration, advocating for a reevaluation of U.S. involvement:

"If you take the coup cash out of Brazil, I think you will see a much fairer fight." [50:12]

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9. Final Thoughts from Guests

As the episode concludes, both Nikolas Ferreira and Mike Benz share their personal convictions and hopes for the future:

Nikolas Ferreira speaks passionately about the importance of individual responsibility, moral values, and cultural transformation:

"We need to create children that have moral values... All of us need to defend, not only to speak, but to live what we are defending for." [126:06]

Mike Benz reiterates his commitment to freedom of speech and condemns the human rights violations perpetrated against Bolsonaro and conservative voices:

"My North Star here is about freedom of speech... I think it's a testament to the corruption we had in our own country under the Biden administration." [110:30]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Mike Benz [11:06]: "The U.S. state Department... they try to silence the greatest leader of the right conservative wing in Brazil."

• Nikolas Ferreira [26:07]: "My social media was down for one month because I just questioned the voting electronic machines."

• Mike Benz [16:33]: "We exported our censorship models... to control the information space in every country on earth."

• Nikolas Ferreira [05:32]: "We are facing tyranny in Brazil."

• Mike Benz [30:44]: "If the US is serious about applying diplomatic resources on the issue, there are many ways that can be done."

• Nikolas Ferreira [126:06]: "We need to create children that have moral values... we need to create our children's' souls."

• Mike Benz [110:30]: "It's a testament to the corruption we had in our own country under the Biden administration."

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Conclusion

Episode 550 of the PBD Podcast provides a profound exploration of the intersection between international interference, domestic politics, and the fight for democracy in Brazil. Through the insights of Nikolas Ferreira and Mike Benz, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the challenges facing Brazil's right-wing movements and the broader implications of U.S. foreign policy interventions. The discussion underscores the critical need for transparency, accountability, and the protection of free speech to safeguard democratic institutions worldwide.

Transcript

[Nicholas Ferreira]

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[Mike Benz]

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[Nicholas Ferreira]

No ID required, no activation fees. Get a new number or keep your own.

[Mike Benz]

It's up to you.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

That's four lines for $25 a line.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Plus four free phones. Visit a store or go online today.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Only at Metro by T Mobile.

[Patrick Bet-David]

When you join Metro plus tax for.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Limited time and subject to change max.

[Patrick Bet-David]

One offer per account.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Did you ever think you would make it?

[Mike Benz]

Adam, what's your point?

[Patrick Bet-David]

The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever saw. It's right here. You are a one of one.

[Mike Benz]

My son's.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I don't think I said okay. We were gonna go pre recorded with this today. We decided to go live because we have two of the most important voices in the world today. One of them happens to be Alexandre de Moras's best friend, Mike Benz, who is in the house today. For whatever reason, these two guys just really like each other. He always picks on him and there's a lot going to be that's, that's going to be exposed today. Mike said he's got material he's going to be sharing. He's never shared before. And if you know Mike, we've had him on, we were all together what a three, four, five months ago. And him talking about usaid, all these other conversations that's been had. And when I was with the President of Brazil, we showed a clip of his. The president reacted to it. There's a lot of people in Brazil right now are watching to see what he has to say. Some of the stories having to do with CIA possibly being involved with the coup and even, you know, pulling Bolsonaro aside, saying, hey, you better kind of play along with us, Lloyd Austin and others or else. But I'll let him explain it to you. He knows it better than I do. And the other one is maybe not even maybe. I can say he is the biggest superstar in all of Brazil. If you go to Brazil with him, you cannot walk the streets without people stopping him. We're in Brazil together eating pizza at this one place, I want to say four days ago, five days ago, this was just a few days ago called Inferno. And while we're going there, we're having dinner left and right. Everybody gets excited to see the face of Nicolas. I want to say the proper way. Nicholas Fera.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, it's fine.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Who's got These two books as well. We're going to put the links below if there is. Rob, if you can find the links to these books. One of them is a parenting book. Right. And the other one is about politician Christians. Right. So both of them are going to be there as well. By Nicholas. It's great to have you on the podcast.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Thank you, Patrick. For me, it's an honor. Thank you so much.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Mike, how you doing?

[Mike Benz]

Never been better.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's good. I'm excited for that. By the way, initially it was just supposed to be us. Okay. Then I said, if we're going to have you on, we may as well also have Mike on. Because I want the Brazilian people, I want people around the world, Americans, Brazilian to see this because Americans get a chance to see you. Brazilians get a chance to hear from Mike directly. Both audiences need to learn about each other and what's going on with Brazil. And we were at CPAC a couple days ago, two days ago, Eduardo Bolsonaro was there. He had a chance to speak. There was a lot of talks about Brazil. And then while we're there leaving, I kind of want a little bit of feedback from you here. An hour after we are done with the interview with Jairo Bolsonaro, we're sitting there, hey, 38 years coup poisoning Lula, you're seeing all that stuff being talked about. What can you tell us about what's going on there?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

So first of all, for me, it's an honor to be here. Patrick, Mike, thank you for what you're doing for Brazil. I talk about politics day by day in Brazil, but in Portuguese. So if I make any mistake here, I'm sorry, I'm trying to improve my English. Making a mistake. Okay, so what's happening in Brazil? We have a Supreme Court. We are fighting against tyranny, a censorship, especially from Alexander Morais. And they try to to silence the greatest leader of the right conservative wing in Brazil. That is Jay Bolsonaro. They say that he tried a coup, that he tried to kill Lula and the vice president. But we know that the only one, the one candidate of presidential elections, War J. Bolsonaro. He was stabbed in his belly by a ex socialist affiliated party. And now they are trying to put him in jail for a fantasy coup. He was here in in U. S. When happened the 8th of January. People entering the congress was a bad day for Brazil. But they are not any terrorists. They did of course, some small crimes, but they are getting 17 years of jail like any other corrupt, corrupted guy in Brazil. They get this for jail in Brazil, for corruption, for robbery, for anything. So we know that they are doing this for, to these people because they were wearing green and yellow T shirts. If they were using red, red in Brazil is for the Labor's party, for the socialists. If they were using red, maybe red, they would be free right now. So they are persecuting us for everything we say. Like for now I'm being shoot because I said that Lula is a thief and he should be in jail. So we are facing a tyranny in Brazil.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Can you say that right now? So the fact that you're saying he's a thief and he should be in jail, you flying back to Brazil, is there any risk for you that anything could happen? Or no, he.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yes, of course. Being sued criminal for saying that. Me, as a deputy, I can say everything. And as all the Brazilians should say though, but we are not able to say the truth in Brazil.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Now your story for some people that don't know, Rob, if you can pull up the clip you were telling me this when we were together is this is you at 17 years old, right. This is a school where I think it's called Pook, if I'm not mistaken.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, it's a Catholic university.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And this is how you went viral, by the way. Just so everybody, everybody knows, you know, Nicholas has got 17 + million followers just on Instagram. He posts a clip on Instagram, it gets a million likes, not even a million views. This guy's the biggest sensation there. While we're there walking around, everyone's saying he will be the president in the next eight years. And the people want him to become the president in eight years. But explain to us what happens here because this is where people learn about you. You're 17 years old in this clip.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah. So just to let you know, guys, I'm. I came from a very poor neighborhood in Brazil called Cabana. I don't have any politicians in my family. I think I was the first crazy one to enter in politics. And I am graduated in law by the Catholic University. And at the time of 2015, 2016, there was an impeachment in Brazil that we took out Dilma's ex president. And then everyone went to the streets to go to the protests. And then of course me as a young guy, I did the same. But I started to post some videos in the Internet and started to go viral. This one is the first one. In that stage there was a lot of socialist leaders. And then I was working at my office and I heard that the One guy called Leonardo Dubov. It's a guy that he. How can I say that? He put the socialism in the church, in the churches, the Catholic churches in Brazil. And then I heard that he wasn't there. I said, I gotta say some things right to his face. But as a student, I couldn't. So I told a girl to come over and I said, I'm a huge fan of him. Please let me talk. And then she said, okay, you're a student. Okay, go there. Of course, she thought that I was a leftist. And then I, I said. I began saying, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Because of you, I'm not socialist. And I started to punch him with my words, of course. And then it went viral. And this was my first video that went viral because I. I was only 17, 18 years old. I was entering in the law. In the law.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Is that like the compare. Is this a liberal school? Is this a far left school or no?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, so it is, but it shouldn't because it's a Catholic university, but is very. It is a very liberal university.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Rob, can you play that clip while he's. I mean, we're not going to understand what he's saying. I just want him, the audience to see when he walks up, I'm so skin. Can you play that? So you're thanking him right now?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I'm appreciating Leonardo. Both. I'm saying thank you because you made me. You made me choose a side in my Life. You made two interviews in 2003 saying that your theology is not necessarily Christian. In the second interview that he said that communism was the worst thing in the world. A person said that and he said that it was wrong. So how I know that. How left is a hypocrite?

[Patrick Bet-David]

You're saying this to his face.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, I'm saying through his face.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You can pause it right here. So you play this clip, this goes out. Is this the first time Brazil learned about you? Like, prior to this, they don't know who you are?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, I think it was the first time. First they didn't know who I was.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And at this point, do you have any aspirations of getting into politics or.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Not yet, no. I was only into the protests, making some videos, and I wasn't running for anything. I was just 18 years old. I couldn't even run for city councilor. You have to be 21.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Got it.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So, I mean, obviously from there to now with what's going on with Brazil. Mike, for you, when you started talking about. I think it was the Clip that we played in the interview with Steve Bannon where you're explaining the fact that you know what really has taken place in Brazil, the powers behind it. And I think even when you were with Joe on Joe's, you explained the fact that they went to tell him Bolsonaro, I'll let you tell the story. What is the exchange with how the US was involved with the elections in Brazil?

[Mike Benz]

Well, are you, are you referring, when you say they went to tell Bolsonaro, are you, you're referring to the CIA director, Lloyd Austin? I actually can pull that up on screen. If you go to the, the slide deck, it'll be slides starting on slide 12. I can walk you through that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Go for it, Rob. If you can go through that right there.

[Mike Benz]

So this is the US State Department. Yeah, if you can go to the.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Slideshow, just press view slideshow. There you go.

[Mike Benz]

So, and we'll go through this line by line here. But the U.S. state Department called in massive favors and leveraged personal connections to build voting machines for Lula aligned Brazil officials. And then the CIA warned Bolsonaro not to warrant, not to mess with or cast doubt on all the new U.S. state Department secured voting machines, determining his election. And if you go to the next slide and walk through this. So this is from the Financial Times. This piece is basically about, in fact, if you go to the slide after this first, what they say is this was a concerted but unannounced. So this was basically a covert action by the Biden White House, the Biden Pentagon, the Biden CIA and the Biden State Department to fortify Brazil's election. So if you go back to the other one, the slide before. So the US provided practical help in the election process to obtain components, especially semiconductors needed to manufacture the new voting machines. The former U.S. ambassador to Brazil. So they are using shadow diplomacy here because they don't want their formal US State Department fingerprints on it. They're going to the former US Ambassador in Brazil to leverage his personal connections with Taiwan Semiconductor and to leverage those connections, I'm sorry, inside of the Texas Instruments, to distinguish semiconductor needs and give priority. Now we have a semiconductor shortage here in the US they are diverting semiconductor chips that the US needs and sending them to Brazil, a foreign country, to add voting machines that the democratically elected president of Brazil doesn't want. The U.S. state Department and some senior Brazilian officials also asked Taiwanese authorities to give priority to Brazil's need for semiconductors, which are used in the voting machines. And then if you go to the Next slides here. Yeah. So then I say what's funny is both the 1964 military junta in Brazil and the 2022 judicial junta in Brazil received direct help from the CIA to rise to power. And then if you go to the next one, you'll see CIA chief, this is Reuters told Bolsonaro government not to mess with Brazil election. This is in May 2022, 64 schools.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Are you talking about the Sam. What is it?

[Brandon]

Brother Sam.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Brother Sam.

[Mike Benz]

Yeah, yeah. But I want to just kind of, you know, close the loop on this. Because if you go to the next one. Next slide. Yeah. So Bill Burns makes a personal voyage. This is months before the election even happens. We are now force feeding Brazil electronic voting machines the elected president doesn't even want in the country. And so the State Department is doing that. Then we send in our covert action boys, the CIA, to say, don't you cast doubt. Look at the language. Told Brazilian senior officials that President Bolsonaro should stop casting doubt on his country's voting system. It's not even his country's voting system. We. We sent the semiconductor chips to build that because Brazil didn't want them themselves. So we're putting the machines in there and then telling them we don't question the results of these machines. So go to the next one. So then this is Austinism foreign policy. A month after Bill Burns, it was the Pentagon Secretary Lloyd Austin's turn to go down to Brazil and push the chief of the Brazilian armed forces to commit to actually do a pledge. Go to the next slide. Brazil manifestos seek to rein in Bolsonaro before election. This is before the election in a July conference with regional defense ministers. So we are personally paying as U.S. taxpayers for the head of the Central Intelligence Agency to go down there. We are suffering under a chip shortage and we are getting that diverted so that electronic voting machines can go down. Then we are paying for the flights of the CIA director to go down and warn them not to cast doubt on the machines that they didn't. That, you know, they couldn't build without us and that the President didn't want. So this was. And actually, let me show you something else here as well, Mike.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The question here before you go to the next thing. Why are they doing this? Well, why do they care?

[Mike Benz]

So my focus on this is on the Internet censorship side. This is. I did not. I love the people of Brazil. I. I love Brazilian zook dancing. I've always been around Brazilian people. I don't speak Portuguese, but I did not really. I didn't seek this out. This was something that was an unavoidable, inescapable reality of the US censorship work that I was focused on. It was a recurring fact since Trump won the election in 2016, as soon as Bolsonaro started gaining traction in Brazil, that these issues were interlinked, that they wanted to stop Bolsonaro for the same reasons they wanted to stop Donald Trump. I have that much, 100%. There are other issues. So I have this big unpublished report that I'm just showing you some things from here tonight, but that'll be published sometime in the next several months. There is the open question. So the technical reason they said they did it is because Bolsonaro is a threat to democracy. And who's they?

[Patrick Bet-David]

The CIA and Biden.

[Mike Benz]

The CIA, Biden, State, State Department, usaid, the NGO Swarm. We have this concept called democracy promotion programs, which is, you know, this idea that if something is categorized as an authoritarian threat or it leads to illiberal democracy without sufficient democratic institutional safeguards. We deputize our democracy promotion programs to basically overturn their governments to do regime change operations, to institute judicial reforms in the country, to control their prosecutors, their judges, their universities, their unions, their media ecosystems in order to manage their democracy. And when something gets categorized as a threat to democracy, that's a technical term that unleashes the capabilities of our regime change apparatus. Now they did that to Trump, they did that to Bolsonaro. But whenever something's deemed a threat to democracy, there's always something else behind it. In Trump's case, it was very obvious that Trump's policy about Eurasia was the primary reason that they ran all of the coup like actions against him. From the multiple impeachments, to the 91 felonies, to the special prosecutor's probe, the Bob Mueller two and a half year FBI special prosecutors, to the whirlwind of state funded media and intelligence six ways from Sundays, things against him. There were other things that Trump did that flew in the face of the interests of international corporations and banks and foundations and NGOs. That one was the primary one in my view. In the Bolsonaro story, since my primary focus is on Internet censorship, it's very easy for me to tell that story and I can walk you through that whole thing. But in terms of the why they did it, again, technically all they need to say is threat to democracy. But there are always interests underneath that and there are many threads. You know, there is a sort of murder mystery who done it. There are many financial interests in Brazil There are many US Multinational corporations of interest there. There are international interests around China and the relationship between China and the Biden administration. There's the connection with the unions and many of the union groups and there's several others. And this is actually why I'm happy to sit in and sort of play second chair to Nicholas, because I have my own questions around the specifics of who financially benefit from any of these things. Because, for example, Lula connected his whole government to China and he was very open about that. This is the sort of thing that the State Department and the CIA and USAID typically run operations to stop. And yet you had this very strange situation where we ran these operations to install it. Just this Chinese influence in Brazil. And when you look at the Biden family relationship with, with Chinese stakeholders, you look at the, the Hunter BIDEN, you know, $10 million, basically windfall from, from Chinese clients, first consulting company and partnerships with Chinese energy companies. You see this, this recurring pattern with, with the Biden administration. I don't have, though, since everything I do is open source, I don't have any confessions from people in the.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, so can I just, can I just unpack what I think you're saying and then tell me if that's kind of what you' Nicholas, I'm going to come to you next. So are you saying hypothetically to the average person, not somebody that's Mike Ben's caliber, this is your world Deputy. You've, you know, you're in working with the State Department, you're in the world Internet, you're rounded, you're. This is your world that you study to the average person. You're saying China potentially used Biden as a favor to make sure Bolsonaro doesn't get in the way because under Lula, they're able to buy and get more resources and things that they want there and Bolsonaro gets in the way. So, hey, us, we'll stay quiet and we won't do anything with you. We'll keep doing business with you. But we need a favor from you. We need to make sure you go out there and do whatever you can for Bolsonaro to stop talking about the voting system and rig it if you can make sure he doesn't win. So we can put Lula in, because Lula is going to play game with us, play ball with us. With China, we can get in and do whatever we want to do. Is that kind of what you're insinuating?

[Mike Benz]

I don't know. That there are things that keep coming up in My research about it that I find highly disturbing and I would not be able to get without the subpoena power of Congress. And it is my opinion that at the end of this process and once the report that I'm working on is published and all this can be just the whole timeline, chronology, network map, funding flows, cast of characters, all that. It's my belief that it would be beneficial for the American people to understand, to have an autopsy of the rogue activity of their own government. For any of the oversight bodies that we currently have set up, whether that is the weaponization subcommittee of Jim Jordan, whether that's the House Foreign affairs or Senate Foreign affairs committees, whether that is declassifying federal secrets, frankly from COVID actions involved in this, there are any number of, of subpoenaed power equipped courts, congressional committees that could probe those questions most immediately. What comes up most frequently publicly in this, in what they talk about is this international exchange of ideas between Trumpism and Bolsonaroism. And that's a very simple one to understand, which is just the raw political calculus of you get rid of Bolsonaro, you get rid of Trump, you get rid of the, you know, and this is a direct quote, the international exchange of ideas. You can actually go to my foundation's website, foundationforfreedomonline.com if you put Brazil into the search at the top, you'll see, oh yeah, one word. Yep, yep. And you just put Brazil on the top and you'll see a report that I published a little over two years ago. If you. Yeah, yeah, US tax dollars funding text message censorship in Brazil publish this in July 2022. So just in time for the CIA director to descend on, to descend on Brazil. And you'll see we US Taxpayers paid to get the censorship state installed in Brazil.

[Patrick Bet-David]

US Taxpayers.

[Mike Benz]

Yes, yes, we've. Because these are all, this is all USAID and NED and the NGOs that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Are all in Brazil, private text to family and friends are fast becoming as targeted by counter disinformation techniques as public facing post on social media. This escalation of fact checkers interventions and sharing limits on text has been introduced through new speech constraints on popular encrypted apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Rob, can you go a little bit higher so I can read the last sentence? These developments are being funded by millions of dollars in US Tax. Nicolas, did you feel this and did you see this happen in Brazil?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yes, of course. Our superior Electoral court, they made a lot of decisions that was bad for Bolsonaro. For example, when, when Alicia Morais announced that Lula won in the Superior Court. There was another judge called Benedicto da Silva. He just went through him and said, mission, mission given, mission accomplished.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right. You have that clip, by the way.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

And until now, this judge didn't. This judge didn't came to public to say what. What I mean was that he didn't say that. So it was very strange. There is another judge in Brazil called Barros that after the elections that Bolsonaro lost, he said, we defeated Bosonarism.

[Patrick Bet-David]

One replay.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, this is the video.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Ricardo Lewandowski.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Now he's announcing Lula as the president. And then this judge comes to him and say mission given. His mission accomplished. So what he means about that?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Mission given, mission accomplished published.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

So he was working against Bolsonaro. So he's a judge, he should be in Portugal. So this is one judge. It's. It's the same. You can stop the video right there. This is the same judge that said that this is Lula. And after that he's receiving. I don't know how you say this in English, but he's giving some taps in his face as he was his best friend. So this is the kind of judge that's saying that Bolsonaro is a tyranny, he is a people, he's a person that he's. He's giving misinformation to Brazil.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But at this point, because. And there's a lot of telegrams, groups that you're part of, right? That the communities are talking to each other. Are you seeing what you can and can't do?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah. For example, in. I think that in other social medias it was more. How can I say? It was clear to me that something wasn't coming to me. So there was some information that if you Google it, for example, you would. You would find. There are some others information that you try to find and it was harder to find. So for example, in the elections, you couldn't say that Lula was. Had Maduro as a friend. You couldn't say that. You couldn't say that Lula was friend of Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua. So you couldn't say that. You couldn't say that Lula was supporting abortion, for example. I had. I was sued, I was muta. I was finding for like 3000 reels just because I made a video saying that Lula was supporting abortion, we're supporting drugs. And I was fine it because of that. So there. There's another minister of the Supreme Court called Jumar Manges, that he gave an interview like maybe six months ago that he said that Lula is in presidents because of them. Like any. Any other country that gives politics seriously, it would be a scandal. But in Brazil it's normal, because the Supreme Court of Brazil is not more a judiciary power, it's a political power. So in the elections, for example, Bolsonaro, in our independence day in 7th of September, we. He had a huge protest, like 3, 2 million people in Brasilia, in Sao Paulo. And then he couldn't use these images for his network. He couldn't use. It was.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It was crazy just to show how many people were in. You guys couldn't show.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, he couldn't show that on tv. And for example, in the labels party, in the Labor's party was saying that Bolsonaro was a Hannibal. They were saying that Bolsonaro was a pedophile. They were saying that Bolsonaro would end up the. The ferias, the. The holidays for the. For the workers. So it was all that kind of disinformation. And anything happened with Lula and his friends for Bolsonaro, anyone that for example, question the voting system would be fined. My social media was down for one month because I just questioned the. The voting electronic machines. So my lawyer doesn't have access to the process. My social media just went bad because of a political pressure, but not a judiciary process. So that. What happened in 2022, we all thought that of course there was an interference, interference in Brazil, but we didn't know where did it come, how they did that. But now it's clear that as Mike said, that if wasn't US Ad, maybe Bolsonaro or Sherbolsonaro would be the president of Brazil today.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Now, Mike, let me ask you, as you're processing what he's saying. When I was with the President, I asked him, so for example, what can. What can us do under Trump? Because we saw that Lula's popularity, when he was done being President, after the eight years he was in from 2003 to 2011, he left with a popularity of 80%, 81%, it was very high. And then he goes and does his time. You know, his wife has the stroke, she passes away, he gets 12 years, Alexandre de Moraes comes in, takes him out. Bolsonaro wins in 2018. And then they bring him out to make sure he beats, you know, Bolsonaro and boom, the rest is history. But I asked him the question, I said, so now Lula's popularity went from 80% to 24%, the lowest it's ever been In Brazil, it's not a good thing. Brazilians don't like this guy. Coffee is expensive. Everything is expensive right now. They're going through it. What is the opposite of what CIA did to hurt meaning? So now how does Alejandro de Moraes or X, which now I think they banned Trump's network and Rumble, and now Rumble and Trump's network are suing Brazil. And while Lula's there, Alexandra's there. What can us? It doesn't look like this guy's afraid of anybody. It doesn't look like this guy de Moraes is afraid of anybody in the States. Do you think things can change in any way where Bolsonaro could run and win in 2026?

[Mike Benz]

Yes, if the US is serious about applying diplomatic resources on the issue, there are many ways that that can be done. Not sure this is the most appropriate forum for discussing them, but. And there are actually two open threads that I did want to get to from what Nicholas just said. But the short answer is there are many things that the US can do if the US Ambassador is serious, if the President is serious, if Marco Rubio is serious, and yes, much can be done, I'll leave it there. I think what you need is policy alignment and then the appropriate organs to mobilize policy alignment.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Where amongst Bolsonaro and us.

[Mike Benz]

Well, you're going to need to synchronize all the different facets of U.S. foreign policy. When that can be done on.

[Patrick Bet-David]

No, let's stay on that. I'm curious. What does that mean? I want to know what that means. You know, because for me, you're dealing with a country that out of their 11 supreme courts, only two are conservative. You're dealing with a country that out of their 81 Senate, only 22 are conservative. You're dealing with a country that out of 513 congressmen and women, only 130 are conservative. When you look at Bukele, Brandon, you were telling me earlier, the fact that Bukele, the way he did it in advance.

[Brandon]

Yeah. He kind of set up his Congress before he became president, so he had everybody in his favor, the majority. So he looks like a dictator, but he just happens to have everybody on his side. So he does. No resistance. And a real beautiful setup for what he wanted to do with his policies.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And that's a beautiful thing because he can just go in and say, here's what we want to do. Right. In this case, this is a very different situation that he has. So if. If US can't go and say, well, let's you know, what do we do with the Supreme Court? What do we do with Senate? What do we do with that? That's a longer term play to me. Short term, between now and 20, 26, what can us really do?

[Mike Benz]

Just doesn't feel appropriate. I'm just gonna say it. I, I don't, I don't think that this is the forum to. But I'm happy to listen to you guys talk about it. It's just.

[Brandon]

Yeah, it sounds so interesting.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah. One thing I can say is all Brazilians, Mike, all Brazilians, we are hopefully that this guy pays for what he's doing, because what, what we think, what we feel day by day, is that he's the law and anyone can put him in his place. And he's just, he's just doubling down. You know, he doesn't quit, never. So I, I agree with Mike. It's difficult to say what us should do with a judge, a supreme federal court judge, but we all hope that he pays for what he's doing because he's doing very bad things with people. We didn't talk about the 8th of January yet, but there are a lot of innocents. They are still in jail. There are 17 years of jail and he doesn't quit. He's just doing this because he hates the, the right wing, hates the conservatives. And the most, he hates Bolsonaro. They want to put him in jail for a fantasy coup. So we want to see like this guy paying for, for, for justice, you know?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Mike, Dan Boncino got a job today.

[Mike Benz]

Is it the McDonald's job from working with cash?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right. When are you getting a job? Because it almost seems like you're applying. It almost seems like what you're saying that my read on what you just did right now is, hey, the right person, you are a right person. You have a way of doing it. You could be the one helping out. Are you one, either in talks or two if you're not? Are you open if they were to offer you something?

[Mike Benz]

Well, what I was getting into there was about. And one of the reasons I want to circle back to some of the things that we were just talking about and play some of these things for the world to see here, is that we, like I mentioned congressional committees on this, who have subpoena power, who can do transcribed interviews of all the officials involved, who can use the power of the purse to slash budgets, who can do public hearings and put this all out, and prosecutors in the US who can take appropriate action to the extent that there's criminal wrongdoing there is right now, agency by agency, the people at the top of the perch have been the people who have been punished by the system. RFK is at the head of HHS cash and now Dan Bongino at the top of FBI. Time and time again, we've seen this. Dr. Jay Bhattachary at the top of NIH. I think that there is an American interest in pursuing this and the weaponization of the foreign policy establishment and its covert and overt capabilities and its NGO capabilities to go after Bolsonaro as a way of going after Donald Trump. And so I mentioned this phrase, stopping the international exchange of ideas between Trumpism and Bolsonaroism. So on that piece that I pulled up before the foundation for Freedom Online Brazil report, you'll actually see. That's a direct quote, I think, actually just if you scroll down or just run a control F for exchange, you'll see this. If we'll just. Yeah, there you go. So this was funded by the US Here. If you scroll down, this is a US taxpayer. So what this is. If you click this video, this is a presentation to ifes, which is a USAID partner and implementer. This is international idea. This is attached to the National Endowment for Democracy and usaid. And it's basically election management in foreign countries. And you'll see here our US Taxpayers paying international ideas. They get all their money from Congress through a State Department contribution. So this was back in 2021, 2022. And if you just play this, you'll see what the thought process was ahead of Brazil's election for how our own NGOs were weaponized to go after Trump by going after Bolsonaro. Well, okay, do you have an ads there?

[Patrick Bet-David]

There's two more seconds left. So, Rob, if you want to.

[Mike Benz]

I think there's two ads.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, yeah, we'll go through both of them. Your words of wisdom on how we can build up society's defenses against this information and more specifically, on which measures have proven most effective.

[Mike Benz]

This is international idea. This is. This is our issue it would address.

[E]

So the question is how society can enhance the ability to detect and resist the fake news and false facts. This is a picture of really recent research.

[Mike Benz]

We did pause there. So here he is presenting. This is hosted by U.S. u.S. Taxpayers. And this is. I published this years ago. Right. I published this two and a half years ago. At this point, similar keywords on the Brazilian and US Populist. Right on parler. And you'll see it's Trump, you know, election fraud irregularities. The very Things that people in Brazil were prosecuted or banned from being able to talk about. They grafted off of the model of something that was done here in the US ahead of the 2020 election when DHS partnered with groups like EIP, the Atlanta Council, Grafica, two of our universities to censor Americans ability to talk about election voting machines. And then we systematically trained the Brazilian judges to do the same to stop Bolsonaro. And I can walk you through that whole process, but this is just from things of our. If you let it play, you'll see how basically this is our taxpayer funded NGOs and CIA cutouts working with here a Brazilian professor effectively on how to co strategize to stop the international exchange of ideas between Trump and Bolsonaro from Paolo.

[E]

And we got the narratives in this course that have been use it during the end of the year, at the beginning of the year, just after the Biden election and before they got in office. And the extreme right used mostly these kind of words to sustain their research and strategy to harm democracy and put questions and doubts about the results of the elections in the West.

[Mike Benz]

That's the crime we put in in.

[E]

The Red Square is the same ideas and words we have been using. Of course in Portuguese you can get from our political discussion and social networks from the swim rights. So swim right in Brazil is in Poland as well and get the same message and translated in Portuguese and put in the boundaries of our culture. But basically they are reproducing the same narrative, the same discourse. And if you get information, the same information from social networks like Pollard, from Europeans, you get mostly the same kind of words like fraud, stop fraud, suppression, irregularities and so forth. So that's what I'm saying, that it's not only in an engineer that goes through different platforms, but also in an international movement to exchange ideas that harms them.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I got this Mike, go for it. So this makes sense. So these words are the words that they're both worried about.

[Mike Benz]

Yeah, we exported our censorship models when they started to work against Trump. We exported them to Brazil, we exported them to Europe, we're exporting them to Australia as part of a State Department USAID push to control the information space in every country on earth. So the reason for example this that I published was about the US taxpayers funding the censorship of encrypted chat apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. This is because we had already moved into Brazil to censor social media. This is why Brazilians were one of the first people to come to GAB and some of the Other alternate in parler and these other platforms. But on this point you mentioned Bahoso, am I saying that correctly? So if you go to slide 23. Yes, yes. So this is NDI. NDI is the DNC branch. It's the CIA wing of the DNC. NDI is the Democrat party wing of the National Endowment for Democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy is the premier CIA cutout of our tens of thousands around the world. It's a big umbrella one. It was created in 1983. It was conceived in the office of the CIA Director William Casey. The CIA had gotten in a lot of trouble just a few years earlier when the heart attack gun was held up in front of Congress. The Democrats hated the CIA. Ronald Reagan wanted back. They couldn't get that approved. They couldn't get the powers back because Democrats controlled the lower house of Congress. And so they came up with an idea to create National Endowment for Democracy to have an outside NGO funded by the State Department where all the grants are reviewed by the CIA go out and be the operations arm. Basically a plausible deniability layer for the CIA the same way the CIA provides that plausible deniability layer for the State Department. They have four core fours iri which is the Republican branch of the CIA of the ned. It's the International Republican Institute. It was founded by John McCain who ran for president in 2008. The Republican nominee. On its board are people like Mitt Romney who ran for president in 2012. Basically until Trump you had to be IRI if you wanted to run for president in the Republican Party. On the Democrat side it's called. The other political core for is called ndi. The National Democratic Institute who was Hunter Biden for example is on the chairman's advisory board of the ndi. If you've ever heard me talking about the wonderful CIA world of Hunter Biden. But NDI again is fully funded by the US government. They get hundreds of millions of dollars every year. They are notorious for regime change and organizing street riots, penetrating the unions in countries, penetrating their for profit companies, penetrating academia, mobilizing student youths to take to the streets. And here you have the NDI senior elections advisor encouraging Brazil's top judge Bohoso to. If you just play this clip here in this rumble, you'll see this again. So we're paying.

[Patrick Bet-David]

How long is it?

[Mike Benz]

You can just play the first, just play like the first 30 seconds to get the idea of it. And you can, if you need to mute that for the answer a second. I just want to show you that all this is meticulously forensically detailed. So.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

This will go out to all.

[Mike Benz]

The panelists and just feel free if you have some strong feelings about it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

To answer because I did want to talk a bit about something that we know about.

[Mike Benz]

Disinformation campaigns have often specifically targeted women and marginalized communities.

[Patrick Bet-David]

We want to hear from him.

[Mike Benz]

Right.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Can you fast forward to when he speaks?

[Mike Benz]

Well, you'll see what she can you pause for a second. What she goes, she presses him to do more to censor non inclusive speech. This is our taxpayer funded CIA cutout pushing the top judge in Brazil to do more to censor. And in fact, you know, you can play that out or if you, you know, I've got a million of these clips. We trained all their judges. I mean, I can show you it's.

[Patrick Bet-David]

We trained all of Brazil's judges.

[Mike Benz]

Yes, yes. It was in fact in the program, the Banner program that coordinated this. They said one of the specific reasons they did this is so that these judicial institutions, what they call them, EMBs, election management bodies. This has been a big push since Trump won to control the judiciaries because usaid, its charters, is allowed to do so called judicial reform to influence the laws and the judicial decisions in foreign countries. And so, you know, you can, if you don't want to sit through this whole thing, but you can hear her say it's, this is, I'll make this, this is in the report with millions of other things. But I'll put this on my X account for folks, you know, right after this. But if you want to go to the next slide, you'll see if you want to just hear straight from the horse's mouth without having to skip around. So this is a presentation of the top judge in Brazil to the Wilson center, which is the close partner and implementer of the U.S. state Department. It gets, I think over 30% of its annual funds directly from U.S. taxpayers. It is one of our flank of State Department interlocutors.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Nicolas, do you know who he is?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yes, of course. That was the guy that I told, that I told you here like 10 minutes ago that he said that we defeated Bolsonaro, we defeated Bolsonarism. After that, Bolsonaro lost the elections.

[Mike Benz]

Yeah. Now if you want to play that, I can give you a background. They did a whole war game for how, teaching them how to censor, you know, Bolsonaro post the Wilson Center. The State Department funded Wilson center, you know, with, with them. But which, which clip are you talking about? Yeah, this one. If you want to Just listen. If you, in fact, if you just skip to the end of it, just do the, just do the last 45 seconds and you'll, you'll get the picture of it. We brought them in for this. Yeah, just. Yeah, like actually. No, no, no. Start a little bit for that. Yeah, yeah, right there. Yeah, that's fine. You'll see this page and check if.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The information is true. So we prepared for a war and I think we are winning so far. I don't like to celebrate things before they're over, but so far misinformation has been very unimportant in this election compared to what happened before. And so what we did, I think we got rid or we prevented what we call the useful innocence people that would forward fake news without knowing or.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

For not being conscious.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I think we scare the amateurs and the professionals. The digital militias that have a hierarchy and are funded, we are paying very.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Much attention to them.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And a couple of them, we have this mantle with the federal police and with great publicity. So I think we reduced disinformation campaigns to a minimum in these elections, fortunately.

[Mike Benz]

Okay, so if you pause there now, the Wilson center is a U.S. state Department organ. We pay for this. The Wilson center then got together with Brazilian judges and officials and did a whole disinformation war game to train them on the best practices of what we had used to censor Trump during the 2020 election. You know who else was at the Wilson Center? Nina Jankovic, the head of the Disinformation Governance Board. We are literally taking best practices from the US that were used to stop Trump from winning in 2020 and training every organ we went around to the prosecutors, the judges, the universities. There's a whole story here with the unions, top to bottom. We spent tens of millions of dollars. And so it's a big loss for.

[Brandon]

Them to lose usaid, or is that just the tip? They say?

[Mike Benz]

Oh, my God.

[Brandon]

Because, I mean, it seems like they're a bit on an island without them. Is that correct? Or is this like, is there the NED still?

[Mike Benz]

Yes, they're in a full blown panic over it. And now there's a question of if they can offset that through funding from the EU and other international bodies like the un. They want to try to create sort of like replacement funding through the private donor networks, through the Soros networks and the Gates networks are going to have to pay. The Craig Newmark networks, the Piero Midyar networks, the Reid Hoffman networks may have to spend their own billions, you know, to offset that, but they're Also working with these. You know, the censors in exile here in the US Are trying to get this funding to continue this work by partnering with foreign. Foreign governments to get it now that USAID is down. But that is going to. It's gonna cost them a lot.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Mike, let me ask you a question. Have you been again, Three questions I've asked. You're very good at dodging any question I ask. I don't think you've answered a single question of mine. I think you just came with a PowerPoint to present. I ask you, since you have knowledge in this.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

He brought up a husband.

[Patrick Bet-David]

No, I'm asking, since you have knowledge in this. I ask you with Dan Bongino, we would want someone like you on the inside to help something like this. If you're knowledgeable in it, are you open to the idea if they do reach out? And have you had any of the conversations? You don't have to answer the second one, but the first one.

[Mike Benz]

I just want to be useful.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You just want to be useful, which means. Yes. Yes, that's what that means.

[Mike Benz]

Whatever the best role for me is. Okay, so my North Star here is about freedom of speech. And, you know, it's not about trying to get a particular person elected. It's not about, you know, what happens in foreign countries, you know, for the sake of what happens there. It's, you know, like I said, I think Bolsonaro is a hero. I think he's a martyr figure. I think it's a human rights violation, what happened to him. My priority is as an American, to tell this story about Brazil, because this is a story of the American government, and this is something that the Trump administration, if it wants to get done, its domestic agenda is going to run into this international Goliath. They're gonna run into the eu. They're gonna run into it in Canada and Australia. They're gonna run into it in Ukraine. They're gonna run into it in Central Asia. They're gonna run into it in Sub Saharan Africa. But the Brazil case study is a really clean one because the size of the operation and how sloppy they were about covering the trends, that's good.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So that means the fingerprints are gonna be left with what's going on, Nicholas, for you, when you're hearing what he's saying, I'm assuming you see half of the stuff you already maybe have seen or, you know, the judge. You're in the country, you go through it. But for the people, okay, today, Americans are listening to you. Brazilians are listening to him. That was my idea for them to see the both messaging to see what Brazilians are going to hear from Mike to be inspired. What can I do? Right. And from your end, for Americans to say I love this guy, I need to be involved. I want to, you know, share this information with other people. How can we do something about it?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, what Mike said here, I think for all the Americans, it's. It's very hard to. To understand, but it's the truth. You are paying taxes. And these taxes is going to interfere in our politics in Brazil. And it's not for the good, it's for the bad. If you see like the, the other page that he. The other one there was training. Bahosu, the think tank that was training. Behold.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, those three ladies robbed the Winston center, the.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

The NDA. Like all of these, they are training our judges.

[Mike Benz]

Like you want to go to Slide 1, by the way, I don't mean to interrupt but.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

No, no problem. Yeah, like to censorship us, you know.

[Mike Benz]

Does that look familiar?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yes, it is.

[Mike Benz]

That's the USAID ZEPS program.

[Brandon]

Is this something the judges want or is something you must call the next to do though?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

So that's why these guys, if you, if you hear again the beholder speech, he says that we, we are winning so far the war because we don't want to happen what happened in 2018. Again, this kind of, this misinformation. So he says that Bolsonaro only won because of the fake news and disinformation. And that's why they need to combat this. Because Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism, they are a threat to democracy, but they are the threat to democracy. So your taxes are paying the tyranny in my country. That's what's happening. So these guys are interfering in our politics. And for the bad, as I was saying, I don't want them to interfere in nothing. Either in right or either. Neither in left. Because we want a free country, a soberity country. And that's why day by day they try to censorship us. For example, if you put the other slide that says the. The unapproval rating on approval of Brazil of Lulas. Yeah, this thing, it's from the 14th of February of this year, approval rating of Brazil's Lulus falls to 34 for 35. And this is the. And the reason of that is mainly because a video of, of of me that I did on Instagram, I posted a video on Instagram because in Brazil informal work is very widespread and Lula government, as all the socialist government they. They try to collect more attacks from people. And then I made a video. It's. It's up, up, up. Go up more that this first one I made. I made this video and saying that 8.8 million likes. Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Can you click on to see how many view this video got wrapped?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Wow.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Just click on the numbers of likes. It'll show you if you click on that. Let me check it here.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I think you need to go out middle. No present reels.

[Mike Benz]

Yeah.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

And then you go down. You're gonna. You're gonna find it. Okay. There you go. Yeah.

[Mike Benz]

327 million.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Like this video, I think is the most viewed view in 24 hours in the whole world. And that happened because all Brazilians were very unsatisfied and still unsatisfied with Lula government. And they. And then they did.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What are you saying in the message?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Because the government tried to implement a measure to tax informal workers who move up 5,000 Rios. It's less than $1,000 in their account. So anyone who was an informal worker and made this. Who moved this in their bank account would have the government controlling what he's doing. His main account. So this is small business. Would be very. How can I say? Hurt it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You know what?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I would.

[Patrick Bet-David]

How long is that video, by the way? How long?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Four minutes.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So in the video, what are you explaining to them?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I'm explaining that the government wants to do this with the small business, that Lula is spending a lot of your money, a lot of your tax money, that the judges, they don't put their bank accounts to open as they want to put the small business. And then I'm saying we need to stop Lula, otherwise he'll stop Brazil. And this video made the government back down. And he. And the government took this.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The date on that video Rap. Sorry, what's the date on the video?

[Mike Benz]

It's 55 weeks ago.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

It's the 15th of January. Yep.

[Mike Benz]

Right down here.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

January 14th, 14th.

[Mike Benz]

Wow.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Sorry. Yeah. So one month after Lola approval rating got down because of this video. And that's why they try to censorship us. Because with this video, I passed Lula of followers on Instagram, like all of or the majority of my videos, they had more than 1 million views. And that's why they try to. To push us down and say that we are threatened to democracy because we talk to the people. As I said, I came to. I came from a very poor neighborhood. People listen to me, and I'm just speaking. I'm just speaking truth. And then after this video all the Lulus government said that they were going to sue me, that I did fake news. I did this information disinformation. But in the video they couldn't find any lies, any fake news, any fake news. So they couldn't do anything with me. But they threatened me a lot. So my security, I need to. I need to walk with more security in Brazil because of this. Because I'm. I'm so dangerous. You can see, look at my face. I'm very dangerous to democracy. And. And there are. There are a lot of traffic coins. Drug dealers in Brazil. They are being sold. Yeah, there are a lot of drug dealers in Brazil. They are being released by the Supreme Court. And they, they don't go against this kind of crime organization, but they move the whole world to put me, Bolsonaro and others in jail. So people in Brazil are. Are just disintegrated by this kind of measure. And that's why in 16 of March we're all going to streets to protest in Rio de Janeiro, Copacabana. With Bolsonaro because.

[Patrick Bet-David]

With Bolsonaro.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, with Bolsonaro because we need to put a end of in. In this. Where is Bolsonaro gonna be in Copacabana? Rio de Janeiro.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Where are you going to be?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

At the same place.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Same place. It's not like different locations.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, it's going before we are doing in different locations. But Bolsonaro told that was better to put only in one place.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Everybody goes to one place.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Everybody goes to one place.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So right now is, is the confidence there that Bolsonaro, because you're 28, you cannot run till 2036. Right. If I'm not mistaken.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, I can't run.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, I need to be sure.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

5.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right. Right now it's one of two things was the conversation. One, lower the age to run, which that's not the topic right now. You know, they may want you to run for Senate because that's one way to help. Right. That's kind of one of the things we're talking about. So if they're not going to lower the age and they have them right now not being able to run for 2026. And if they have control of all the three different branches of like you got supreme and House and Senate, what can you do for them to allow Bolsonaro to run? Because if he does run, what's going to happen? His wife's going to be the face kind of like what's going on with Venezuela where Maria Corina Machado ran with. I think what's the Guy's name, Edmundo Gonzalez, I think that's his name. Would that be kind of how they would do it? What do you think can happen?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I really don't know what's going to happen in Brazil. When I talk to this triple sonaro, he says that I'm the candidate and, and that's all I'm gonna run for president.

[Patrick Bet-David]

He's saying that?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, he's saying that. So, and I asked him, what should I answer if someone says that? Maybe other candidate, maybe other person. He says, I am running for presidency. So I really don't know what's going on. I just don't think that the, the system will leave him free to run. I, I don't know that he, he was, he will be able to run for presidency in Brazil. I really don't know because they, they have a lot of power, a lot of power in Brazil.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. So, you know, and we can do.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Much because if you are in a normal democracy that you have the executive power, the legislative power, the judicial power, okay, it's fine. But me as a congressman, I, I don't have any power today. I just only have my voice. So that's why we're still speaking and giving speeches, because this gives hope to people, this defends the moral, the principles, the, the values of the, of the Brazilian people. But that's all we can do. Like we, of course, come here to us that Elon Musk shared a lot of videos of mine. It helps a lot. Mike is doing such an amazing job, but that's all we can do. I'm not saying it's, it's less thing to do, but it's all we can do, so. But we can't do much.

[Patrick Bet-David]

To me, I, I, okay, so if this thing's at from 80 to 34 to 24, you got 329 million views. I don't know if I've seen a video with 329 million views. And you're from Brazil. US is a bigger country. Honestly, I don't know if you've seen, I've seen a video with 329 million views, 8.8 million likes, and I'm talking, you know, the only thing I guess I saw is when Messi's post got 77 million views on Instagram when he won the World Cup. Yeah, I mean, that's Messi winning the World cup is what I've seen. Right. So the only thing it makes me think about, if they're not going to get out the way and look, I can Say this. You know, Mike for sure can't say this, but I can say this. Okay, Mike, earmuffs. Could it be because it's either heavy involved with the president, us which I don't think they want to do. When I had the president here and I asked him the question about Iran and you know the fact that the last time the sanctions hurt Iran so much that Iran almost fell, okay. And it was pretty bad, I said, what's your, you know, what are you planning on doing with Iran? He says, we have so many problems in America right now that I got to think about me. I can't do anything else. So then if it goes on you guys and you said, I don't want any help, leave us alone. Don't help the left, don't help the right. That's kind of what you said about five, ten minutes ago. Right? Okay. What are you going to do if they're not moving? What is the only option you got left? I mean, revolution is the only option. And that's not something anybody wants to talk about.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, but I believe in the power of the people, like we the people. I, I don't under underestimated that. I, for example, people went to the streets in 2016 and we took Dilma out of the, the office of the presidential office. So we need to go to the streets again. We need to push the government because unfortunately Brazilian people only go to streets because of economy. Coffee in Brazil it's so the price is so high right now. The oil, the fuel is the same, the eggs now in Brazil it's so a higher level. So people are getting mad of people are getting mad with Lula government. And that's what may what makes Brazilian people goes to street. But this is sad because we need to go to streets not only for economy, we need to go through the streets for our freedom, for our freedom of speech. But Brazil is a huge country. We have a lot of Brazils inside of Brazil. So only economy will put us in the streets again. So now with this rating disapproval of Lula, maybe people go through streets again and push the government to maybe took Lula out and maybe put someone else over there. But I, I don't know. Brazilian have a short memory. Unfortunately Brazilian people has a short memory here in U. S. You guys have a lot of guys that stood for our country, that fight for the freedom. And you put this in schools and universities. And in Brazil, all the schools in all the universities, they are taken by the left. So when a teenager looks back to the history, he doesn't know why he's fighting for. So that's why he doesn't fight. So Brazil, it's. It's a. It's a very difficult account. We have a huge potential. We have a great natural resources. Our food is great. We. We are. I love Brazil. But unfortunately, most of Brazilian voted for Lula just because he promised to give meat for people. Maybe you guys, Americans don't know, but there is a meat in Brazil called picanha. You guys maybe go to a Brazilian steakhouse here.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It's delicious.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, Picanha, Lula. He definitely said, if you vote for me, I'm gonna give you picanha and beer. And that's why Brazilian people voted on him. He was in jail for like more than 500 days. And people in Brazil are like, okay, I want pecan, I'm gonna vote for him. So Brazilian people has a blame on it. I know that there's a lot of interference, interference, interference in election in Brazil. But the culture of Brazil needs to change. Like we are a country that has more than 80, 80, 80% of Christians, but we are not Christians at all. So you know that it's deeper the problem in Brazil. That's why, for example, I. I made this kind of books. I studied a lot of philosophers that says that politics, it's only maybe the. The reflects of what goes in culture before. So all the left in Brazil, they took power of the culture. So if you open the Brazilian tv, you're gonna see a lot of bad values. They try to destroy our family only with the novels, with the documentaries in our schools. So it's not only the politics that needs to change in Brazil is our culture. That's what I'm trying to do. I mean, the politics, of course I do my job, I do my work, but in the other side, I try to say to Brazilian people that we need to do individuals responsibilities. Otherwise we are not going to change Brazil.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Rob, can you go back to that slide you had about the price of coffee? So if you look at this with price of coffee, that's as of December of 2024, average monthly price of coffee in Brazil from January 2021 to December of 2024. Look where it was just in 21.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

To where it's at today. And you're saying the people are feeling this.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, because coffee is the, the most popular drink in Brazil. So everyone drinks it. So even the rich or the poorest one, he feels the, the. He feels the price going up and he gets mad. So that, that's why I'm saying people in Brazil are getting mad with Lula's administration because of that. Because the coffee that you drink every day, it's in a mic.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Maybe you can't say what us can do. Okay, And I'm gonna leave that one alone for now. Okay, but what can the Brazilian people do? Okay, Your clips are being played in Brazil, all over the place, translated Portuguese. They're seeing it. They know who you are, they're recognizing who you are. When we were there, your name came up. A lot of times as I'm having conversations with different Congress, Senate people that are talking, what feedback do you have to the people who are sitting there saying, okay, without America's help, what can we do? What would you say to them?

[Mike Benz]

It's hard for me to give advice to the Brazilian people. You know, as an American citizen, it feels, it feels a little bit outside my place. I think in general, the, you know, it's. It's amazing to see the success that you've had. I too, like Patrick, have never seen an Instagram video with over 300 million views. That's highly impressive. But I think that is ultimately the path to bringing power to the people is to make your voice heard as loud as humanly possible and to keep turning your voice up and up and up and up, and to find partners at every conceivable level in the us, in Europe, to wherever. And I don't mean that in an interference way. I mean that's simply for people around the world to hear your message. This is a common interplay in these situations is there's the concept of the so called international community, which are like minded all around the world, who believe in a cause or believe in a principle. And the bigger that tent is.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The.

[Mike Benz]

More that energizes and the more that also impacts the people in the country because they will hear the media sirens around the world who amplify that message. It gets out and support can come from strange places. When you sing your song loud enough, and I think you guys are doing the right thing in terms of that. And that's really the only thing it feels appropriate for me to say, because I think below that you start to get to issues around political organizing. And it feels out of place for me to opine on that part of it.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

But I think it's a great advice. As I was saying, we need to give power to the people. That's all we. All that the tyranny wants to do with the people is to underestimate their power. So our voice, I Never. I never thought that maybe I can talk about John Baptist here. John Baptist. John Baptist doesn't know what is PBD podcast, but I'm talking about him now. So what we do in life, as the gladiator says, echoes for all the eternity. So we need to speak, we need to put our voices loud and loud and loud, and then maybe Brazil will shine bright again.

[Brandon]

Do you think you guys have too many political parties? Because in Congress loan you got like 24 of them and then that whole center block, it's what, like 50 of the Congress? And seems like that kind of jams a lot of things up. So like, are they consistent with the way they vote or do they go with like in whichever direction the wind's blowing?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, the congress is a complex team to talk here, but yeah, there's a lot of parties and the left, it's. It's very strategical to put extreme left, a left, a moderate left. So to took power. So they change their faces as the demon he put as a angel just to gain. Just to gain you. So you have, for example in Brazil a party called Socialist and the Liberty Party. So it doesn't make sense, but they run with this kind of name because they are experts in propaganda.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

So yeah, we need to. To do a reforma. We need to do a reform in our parties and elections. But it's very hard because people who in charge right now, maybe if we want to do a reform, it's gonna go in a bad way.

[Brandon]

Can you convert anybody from that center, you think? Because it. I don't know, it seems like there's some guys that maybe could pull to your side. Like here we only have two political parties, but they're. If you got like several of them on in that center block. And is there any potential to recruit?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I think the ideal maybe is to run like without a party. Maybe you have an independence candidate. It would be nice. But parties in Brazil, it's a huge instrumental of power. If you have a party in Brazil, you are very powerful. So I think it's going to be very difficult to change that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Mike, let me. Let me ask you with Kassab. What do you think about Gilberto Kassab? You know, he is. He seems like he's a pretty powerful guy right now with the.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Leader. What is it? The center?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, he's the leader of the center in Brazil. He has a great space in Sao Paulo's government under Tasizio now, for example, Bolsonaro talking to him, I think one month ago because of the people that are in jail of eight January, we need votes for the nsg that we are fighting for these people. So. But, but he, he. He's dangerous.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You have a relationship with him or.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

No? No, I don't. I. I talked to him like one day when I got down from my apartment. He was there, he said some, some stuff to me and I said, okay, thank you. And that's all. I never talked to him. But he's a, he's a powerful man.

[Mike Benz]

Is.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Is he a guy that has enough power and influence to help you or help Bolsonaro run in 2026 or. He's not a guy that's going to help Osonado.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

So as I think the, the center goes where, where people are winning. So if he thinks that Bolsonaro has a chance to win, he's gonna be with Bolsonaro. If he thinks that it doesn't, he's going with Lula. So we have, he has photos with all the ex presidents in Brazil. He's the, the presidents of the Social Democratic Party. So he goes wherever the team wins. I can't say that I trust him because I really don't. But maybe like if he wants to help Bolsonaro right now, okay, help is always good. But of course he's gonna ask something and I don't know what he's gonna ask for.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Like a favor.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, of course. The center never comes without a favor. And I don't know if this is favor. It's goes higher than our principal values. I don't know as a. I don't talk to him. So I'm not in the negotiation of this.

[Brandon]

Have you ever tried to like, in a strategic way?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

It's hard because even though I'm the most voted congressman in Brazil, I'm only 28 and I started just right now. So I put in my place, like my place is here. I'm doing my job. If they want to talk to me, I talk to anyone. If maybe Lula wants to talk to me, I don't know, I wouldn't talk. But. Okay, but some guys I would talk because I think this is politics. I didn't choose the, the presidents of the parties. I didn't choose the deputies that worked with me. I didn't choose the Senates. People choose that. So I need to work with, with the material. Prima.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Let me, let me ask you with Amazon Fire, is that a big issue?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Oh, is the big issue not for, not for the socialists right now? Because Lula administration has all the records of fires in the Amazon right now.

[Patrick Bet-David]

If you can pull up the chart, Rob, I texted you earlier to make the comparison. So here's what we got. It shows if you go to that lengolo a little bit lower. It shows you how many fires they've had. Look at that. Zoom in a little bit. 44 million acres of fire has been burned. Acres has been burned in Brazil just last year. Okay, 2019 was 19 million, then 19 million, then 13 million, then again 19 million, then 27 million under Lula and then 44 million. Just to kind of put in perspective how much 44 million acres is, Rob, if you can go to the other link that shows states in America so people can kind of know 44 million acres is more than the state of Alabama, more than Arkansas, more than the state of Florida. Florida is only 30. Go a little bit higher, Rob, so we can show the. The top, right? No, that's a wilder. Go to the third one state land area. Yeah, right there. Go to the, to the other way. Look at that. Go down. Only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. 15 states are bigger than 44 acres. 35 states in America are smaller than 44 million acres. That's fire. And so what is, what is Lula's administration saying about this? Is this normal to you guys? How do people reacting about this?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

So when Bolsonaro was in the presidency, there were of course fires in Amazon, because it's a natural thing, but it was very lower than right now. And I need to remember you American guys, that Leonardo DiCaprio, Greta, Mark Ruffalo in the elections, they said that Bolsonaro were putting fire in the Amazon. Emmanuel Macron, for example, he posted an old photo of Amazon, Bernie, and said that was under Bolsonaro administration.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Get out of here.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

But it wasn't. So that, that is the. The kind of person that we were fighting. Yes. This is not a photo under Bolsonaro administration, but he posted, posted as it was. I have some, some Information here, Patrick. In 2:20, in 2024, the National Institute for Space Research recorded 140000 fire outbreaks in the region. Is the highest number since 2008, when Lula was also president. So he beat his own record. Additionally, the legal Amazon region experienced in 2024 the highest number of fires in 17 years, according to government data released in January 2025. So there, there was a lot of propaganda against Bolsonaro, but he did a lot of things putting army in. In Amazon to stop the fire. He did a lot of things. But in this time, all the left in the whole world was saying that we don't preserve the Amazon, but there's any other cow. There isn't any other country in the world that preserves more the environment than Brazil. We don't. They don't like. We. We do a great job. Even though it's a. It's a tough challenge that we face in Amazon because it's huge. It's huge. It's a huge place. But the left with Lula, and right now we are facing the, the top fires in the, in all history.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It seems like under Lula, when the fires happen, it's climate change. But when the fires happen under Bolsonaro, it's his fault.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, it's his fault. It's all Bolsonaro's fault. Now socialists goes to his house and his wife is cheating on him. He says, Bolsonaro's fault. Like, everything is Bolsonaro's fault. You know, in Brazil is like that. I don't think it's different here. Everything is Trump's fault. Right.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So next question. Rob, if you can pull up. Lula's wife had a message for. For Musk and Mike, I'm coming to you after this one here. So this is Lula's wife, wonderful lady. She is giving a message to Musk here. Go ahead and play this clip. Ro.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

You, Elon Musk, what role you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Think X is playing in Brazilians gaining their freedom? Mic, what role you think X is playing?

[Mike Benz]

I think it's. I think it's enormous. I think that's why they want it shut down in Brazil unless compliance measures were put in place. I think that the LULU government, as well as the Biden government, was intensely aware that the power of social media would be the determinant of whether or not the election would go one way or the other. I have quotes from the people involved in this that they believe their work censoring Bolsonaro was dispositive in terms of tilting it in Lula's favor. There was a personal meeting, actually Lula's. I think it was, what, his first month in office, at the first meeting with the Biden administration. It's. I know you accuse me of going back to the slideshow, but the fact is, I think that a lot of people haven't seen this. And since I know that, I'm not accusing at all.

[Patrick Bet-David]

No, my point to you was when I was, when I was bringing you and Nicholas here, I wanted to make sure that the people in Brazil.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

If they wanted to know how they can have freedom. That's what I was saying. Not accusing of a slideshow. If you got the slideshow, I'm being cheeky.

[Mike Benz]

No, I understand.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Play the clip. What's this one here, Mike?

[Mike Benz]

Well, what I'm showing here is. This is the. This is. Okay, so this is February 2023. So I guess this was. This is a joint statement following the meeting between President Biden and President Lula. So I think this was their first meeting after the 2022 election. So today, President Biden and President Lula, during the meeting, they discussed the nature of the U. S. Brazil relationship. Strengthening democracy. Go to the next slide. Biden and Lula pledged to work together to strengthen democratic institutions, which means strengthen these control networks. And reaffirmed their intention to build societal resilience to disinformation and to work together on that. So Biden and Lula talked about the need to stop online disinformation and agreed to work together. This is when I go back to this coordination between the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NGOs. This is part of an interagency working group to control the internal politics of Brazil. And that money is still flowing. And it's not just usaid. They're the biggest money spigot. But I'll give you some other examples because I'm actually fascinated about what. Something Nicholas just said about the fires. But maybe I'll start with. If you go to slide. This is, I think 24. 24 or 25. Yeah. Next one. Sorry, 25 or. Yeah, 25 can blow that up. Okay, so here's just one.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Rob, can you zoom in a little bit? Even more? Does it allow you or. No, it doesn't look like it's all good. Go for it, Mike.

[Mike Benz]

Yeah. So would you say the unions are more pro Bolsonaro or pro Lula in Brazil? It's a union candidate. Yeah, yeah. All things unions. So here's a $12 million US Department of Labor. That's my wallet, Patrick. Your wallet. US citizens paying $12 million to the unions in Brazil. So I'm going to read some of these details. Okay.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What?

[Mike Benz]

12 million? Yes. And this was granted right after the. This was. I think the grant date for this was. Start date was December 2022. Right after the 2022 elections. Almost feels like a payoff for some reason. But here, go. Let me. Let me read this. Okay, so $22 million. I'm sorry, $12 million given. And you'll see the. And in fact, if you go to the next, if you go to the one right after, you'll see and. Yeah, so Brazil and one more over what? We'll come back to that in a sec. You'll see. Just so you know, you see the numbers here, right? This is on USA spending.gov you can look this up publicly. It's still active Brazilian unions, Lula's unions are still getting paid by you and me. They are taking money from us. We are capacity building. I'll read you the technical reason they say why. So if you go back to two slides again, let's just read this. Okay, so this is the purpose is to improve respect for labor rights and participatory planning with unions in Brazil. Again, this is the Bureau of International labor affairs at the Department of Labor. Direct financial support for workers organizing build cross movement networks with civil society organization allies representing marginalized populations and mobilized increased capacity of worker organizations to organize, mobilize and advocate on their own behalfs. Here, populations and beneficiaries are in Brazil. Workers and unions with a focus on Afro Brazilian young and women workers. And there's tie ins to the indigenous sects in Brazil, which the US State Department made a very big play for, which sort of gets me to some of the Amazon fire elements here. But this is stock standard. We've been funding the Lula machine from every direction. From the State Department, from usaid, from the Department of Labor, from the National Endowment for Democracy Solidarity Center. Can I go off on this for a second? Okay. I mentioned there's four core fours for our top CIA cutout, the national down for Democracy, which by the way, and you can even. You can go to my X timeline or look it up either way, this is a direct quote from the founder of the National Endowment for Democracy at their founding that the reason that they were created was because the CIA used to get in trouble for running financial assistance to political opposition groups. And it looks terrible when the CIA subsidizing them. That's why the Endowment was created. The National Endowment for Democracy was created so that the funding could be provided without CIA fingerprints on it. And the. So NED has these four core fours that I've been talking about, right? IRI for the Republican side, NDI for the Democrat side. They have one for the Chamber of Commerce. Basically business interests in a region where we do political dirty work. They will basically benefit in some way from the new government. The fourth one is called the Solidarity Center. It's the CIA's work with unions. The Solidarity Center's closest partner, by far and away, bar none, is the group that used to be known by democrats in the 1960s and 70s who hated their partnership with the Central Intelligence Agency. They used to call it the AFL CIA. It's known widely as the AFL CIO. It's the largest union in the US. It has international branches that have served for 70 years as the union arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. When we go to topple a government, we always go for the workers. We always go because a government can only wield the power of its own industrial base. It relies on the mine workers, it relies on the transportation workers, it relies on the dock workers, it relies on the media and the hospital workers. If we can penetrate the workforce, we can cause the whole country to come to a standstill. And then the police are out of luck. The military are out of luck. They don't have hospitals working anymore. They don't have toilets working anymore. They don't have energy resources anymore. And so Solidarity center, this gets its name from the Solidarity movement, which was Lequilessa. This was the Polish union group that liberated Poland from communism during the Cold War. But they were handed bags of cash by the Central Intelligence Agency during that process. And this was a blueprint that we do all around now. It was done against left wing socialist countries during the Cold War primarily, but now it's being done to right wing populist movements. This is this boomerang that we're living in now. But the Solidarity Centers, basically, you know, the AFL CIO is, is the, is the main arm of the Solidarity center and the AFL cio. If you, you can look this up before, before we get back to this, this grant. Look up the AFL CIO and who they named as man of the Year. I believe it was in 2021. 2022. Yeah, put, put Lula, you can. Yeah, put Lulu there. You'll see. This is the. They. Well, they gave the award here. Lula. Sec. Or scroll down.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, that's the one.

[Mike Benz]

Okay, that's the one. Click on that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right, but that's 2019.

[Mike Benz]

Oh, 2019. Yes. Okay. Yeah, 2019, huh? Right.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

There's a photo of people in the front of the deglassy where he, he is in prison, right?

[Mike Benz]

Yes, yes, that's right. Yes. AFL CIO led that to, to, to get Lula. Yeah, the US Union who works with the CIA around the world in its international branches. This is one year into Bolsonaro's term. They were grooming him for the task practically. And they are our biggest union. Now hold on. Go to the Molly Ball article. Look up the Molly Ball article in Time magazine and I want to show you something really interesting. Yeah. Time magazine you should put in right wing fever dream or fortified elections. You may remember. This is one of those famous articles of the past several years.

[Brandon]

So is Trump just unaware of this at this time? Because this is still under Trump.

[Mike Benz]

Oh yeah. Well, this is. Yes. He got rolled by the National Endowment for Democracy. He got rolled by usaid. And that is why they are so. Okay, here you go. The secret history of the shadow campaign that saved the 2020 election. You remember this?

[Brandon]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Benz]

Can you hit control? Actually, just scroll down. I believe it's the. Scroll down, scroll down right below the fold. Okay, let me read this. There was a conspiracy unfold. This is Time magazine. They all admitted to this publicly. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes. One that curtailed that Both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left wing activists and business titans. Also some right wing internationalist Republican business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse little known joint statement of the US Chamber of Commerce and AFL cio. They had protests ready to go to shut down the US Government if Trump won in a fair and square election. You can look all this up. This is a blueprint that was planned out. You find out on my X feed where we can go straight to the source documents. If you go to my X feed and you type in TIP and blm, you'll see this. They had this whole thing planned out. They had. Or just typing. Clear Trump win. Clear Trump win. That'll get you. Okay. Or scroll down, down to this source document serve. Or you can do like blm. We'll get you there too. Yeah, there you go. Scroll down. Yeah, right there. Okay, so. So this. So actually before I read this, if you click on the thread, you'll see the context for this. Yeah, right there. Scroll up a little bit. Or. Yeah, up a little. Okay. All right. Maybe it's different. Go down. You'll see. I have on my timeline the clear Trump. But this is the Transition Integrity Project. Rosa Brooks, I think Under Secretary for Policy and Biden's Obama's Pentagon. They had got together with military intelligence officials and the former heads of both the DNC and rnc, Michael Steele, Donna Brazile, that whole network, they planned what to do in the event of quote, a clear Trump win. This is scenario three here everyone can look up the source document. It's all over. I think I have the source link right there. And we can Click on that right after this. But let's start here. A show of numbers in the streets and action in the streets may be the decisive factors in determining how the public perceives it. So what they talk about is leveraging the BLM protesters. Cuz they did this in the height of the George Floyd riots. They said, hey, we're gonna run this war game. If Trump wins, how can we still make sure if he wins the election, how do we stop his inauguration? And look what they do in this war game. The person playing role playing Joe Biden, who was John Podesta in this, who was the one at the meeting who role played this, says that they presupposed that the Democrats would be able to use Black Lives Matter street muscle as a destabilizing protest force and the union workers and the whole AFL CIO network. And that basically their recommendation, because this is going to come down to action in the streets, is that they need to better test the likely receptivity to a Biden call to take to the streets where a Biden campaign's ability to control these actors, once mobilized, this is the BLM control the campaign's ability to wield them. And so what they propose is to build strong ties and grassroots to build strong ties and be responsive to BLM's demands. That way BLM will owe them a favor. They talk in this same thing and you can click the hyperlink. So you see, this is, I think Boston Herald, who reported this. They have the source document right here. Type control F for clear Trump win. Yeah, here it is. This is the word. Yeah. And just click again and you'll get to the second one. You'll see this is what this all folded under. Okay. How to stop Trump from taking office if he wins fair and square. And what they called for was enhancing resources to the Black Lives Matter resource. Black Lives Matter, which by the way, is exactly what the Chamber of Commerce did. Remember those billions of dollars from big corporations. And then lo and behold, there's this secret agreement which doesn't get published until six months after the. Months after the election. And who was actually the one who was going to be mobilizing all of these shutdown DC protests. Oh, it's the CIA's top union arm, the AFL CIO, who's behind the same thing in Brazil. And by the way, let me get the kicker here. I mentioned there's four core fours for Ned, right? The IRI NDI Solidarity Center. You know what the fourth one is? It's called CPay, the Center for International Private Enterprise. You know what that is? That's the CIA's liaison to the Chamber of Commerce. The exact two groups, the AFL, CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, who teamed up, had a agreement published in Time magazine to oust Trump if he won the election in 2020. Teamed up through the National Endowment for Democracy, working in Brazil that ousted Bolsonaro. And if you remember, they were the ones who were training the judges. They were the ones who ran that whole network, NDI. They set up a whole coalition. It was called D4D, designed for democracy. Spun a spider's web around virtually every Brazilian institution around information control.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Patrick, I have a question for Mike. Can I do that? Mike, do you fear for your life because you are denouncing CIA and the whole scheme. Do you fear for her life?

[Mike Benz]

I think assassinations are a lot rarer nowadays. They've moved towards prosecutors as a much cleaner way to do it. There's been a lot of blowback from assassinations. And they're upset about it. They're very upset about it. The blowback, you know, there's the interesting case of jfk, for example, and even today the censors talk about conspiracy theories about the CIA maybe assassinating. It was published in the late 90s during the declassifications, that the CIA was opening Lee Harvey Oswald's mail before he received it because they had a counterintelligence probe on him. But what I'm getting at is it's very messy when you take out a high profile figure in an assassination. It's messy because whenever there's a tilt of power, there are attempts to try to get transparency. If you read the CIA assassination guide, which I've done on my ex account, and it's very funny, this came out during the Church Committee hearings and actually came out in the 1990s during the JFK declassifications. But they talk about how it's imperative to make sure that there's only casual investigation afterwards and that these things don't have long memories in terms of investigation. And, you know, and it was, it was outlawed. And these things are never done directly by the agency. It's always through contractors or other groups. But what they've moved towards is judicial assassination. That's the clean way to do it. You get them accused of a crime, you throw them away for the rest of their life. What they try, you know, with Trump, with, you know, what they're doing to Bolsonaro. And it was my expectation that that was gonna happen to me eventually. Whether it was going to be, you know, under the Biden administration with the, I mean, I saw practically everyone, you know, everyone else who made impact be arrested by Merrick Garland and his goons. I thank the Lord every day that that Justice Department has been replaced because I think, you know, the joke I say is they, you know, throw me away for 30 years for premeditated jaywalking. They would find a reason and it's as good as assassination. But that doesn't matter to me. I feel a deep sense of purpose. I'm happy that there's an audience now for the things I talk about. But I was doing it. I do it. Throw me in a jail cell and I'll be finish my book or I'll try to convince the other people in the prison. I can't turn this off even if I wanted to. So it doesn't really feel like it's to me.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Thank you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

My question for you. So this, this the part where when I was Brazil, it made me think about Iran, us. They've had seven constitutional last hundred years. These guys have had it, right? We have the oldest constitution in the world. 193 out of 195 countries in the world have a constitution. Ours is the oldest. Right? Let's go back to 2020 or 2024, when they wanted to remove him off the ballot in Colorado. 2023, 2024. You remember when it was, when they were saying removing them off the ballot in Colorado. How different would it have been and how different are we from Brazil if we didn't have the Supreme Court 6 3? What if it was 63 the other way around? If it was 63 the other way around and say we didn't have Senate and we didn't have. Let's just kind of go exactly the situation they're in in Brazil right now because they have all three on the other side, Right? And that's why Kassab Gilberto was such a powerful man, because everybody needs to give him favors. And that's what he means by whatever the big favors. I don't know how big of a favor he's going to ask Bolsonaro, but what if we were 6 3? Or do we have that fickle of a system that if the left had extremist of Supreme Court justices, they could have removed them off the ballot? Would that, could that have been a possibility?

[Mike Benz]

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you remember, they tried.

[Patrick Bet-David]

This is. This is like.

[Mike Benz]

They try. I mean, this is, this is like stock standard, right? I mean, this is what's happening in Romania with the Georgeskiu election in terms of nullifying it. I mean, whether you movement the ballots, you can't vote for it, or you nullify the election after he wins, I mean, they're both the same thing that you can't run if you're winning. I mean, it's basically the rule. And this is why it's terrifying that USAID and these other intelligence and statecraft affiliated NGO swarms go right for the jugular, targeting the EMBs, targeting the electoral and judicial organs around deciding elections and election processes and election results. I have, I hate to say it, but I have slides on all this prepared if you want to see straight from the horse's mouth, what that looked like, because USAID was doing the same thing. And even, you know, some of these slides that I have here, they're getting 12 countries EMBs in a room at once. For example, in the US the big EMB is the Supreme Court. They decided the result of Bush v. Gore when there was the Florida hanging ballot, hanging chad situation. Brazil, they have a different structure. They have their stf and then they've got their subcourt, the tse. And so they went for the juggernaut tse. But as you'll see, but they also train the sdf. In fact, if you want to pull the slide deck back up and, you know, hop on over to. Yeah, if you started. Yeah, how about slide.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Here you go.

[Mike Benz]

What is this? What number is this? Slide 7.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Mike, why don't you just put the phone up on the desk? It looks like you're looking at something else. Every time you look, then it's very inappropriate. I don't know if you see visually, it's not a good look, buddy.

[Mike Benz]

Okay, all right, all right, next one. Okay, so you'll see here again, this is ifas. Again, this is the State Department. This is. They get fully funded by the U.S. state Department. They implement the USAID's programs. The USAID partner and implementer on all things elections, they're working with another judge here, Jose Gilbert Berto Scandiucci. So now we've got Bosom Demira Scandiucci working directly with the SEPS USAID program, which is one of the most terrifying things. But go to the next slide here real quick. Okay, well, actually, let's stay on that for a second. This is another example of how US money continues to corrupt Brazil's democracy here. Covid. They went after Bolsonaro for questioning Covid and not distributing the vaccine. So this is internews. Internews gets half a billion dollars a year from US taxpayers. The founder of internews talks about how they had to constantly explain to people in foreign countries that no, we're not the CIA, we're not CIA media, we're just funded by the US government and we're directing this. So Internews, it has a network of about 6,000 different media organizations. They train 9,000 journalists around the world. They're basically a worldwide Operation Mockingbird apparatus for the U.S. state Department to be able to create a symphony of media in foreign countries.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Who runs it? Who runs it?

[Mike Benz]

Well, actually if you pull up the clip of the CEO of Just type in CEO, go to like X and just type CEO internews advertiser. And you'll see this was very viral. Elon was livid at this, as everyone should be, because I've been talking about internews, their huge role in Internet censorship because they use the State Department's media apparatus to push advertiser boycotts and all sorts of. Yeah, if you start from the beginning, it's just 28 seconds, you'll see. This is the, this is the CEO of InterNews right here.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Disinformation makes money and that's one of the. We need to follow that money and we need to work with the. In particularly the global advertising industry that a lot of those dollars go to pretty bad content. And so you can work really hard on exclusion lists or inclusion lists just to really try to focus ad dollars and challenge, challenge the global advertising industry all around the world to focus our ad dollars towards the good news and information, the good, the accurate and relevant news and information.

[Mike Benz]

So that's the general of effectively the CIA, State Department, USAID media octopus with thousands of tentacles around the world. Now here's Brazil, here's internews in Brazil, okay? Because media promotes censorship in these countries and that legitimizes the passage of anti misinformation laws. When judges act corrupt people don't take to the streets because internews media is saying that's what they should have done. In fact, internews will put pressure on governments if they don't censor, you know what the State Department wants censored there. So here's what they did in Covid. They created a program in Brazil called Rooted in Trust. You see, is a global pandemic information response program countering the unprecedented scale and speed and spread of rumors and misinformation. Project focuses on, you know, see Lebanon, Mali, Colombia, Sudan, Brazil. They have a whole section on Brazil in this report as well. Look at the highlights so far. Rooted In Trust has tracked more than 19,000 rumors about the virus, 14 languages, 81 million people. In response to the unique rumors sourced from each country context, the project spruced over 130 rumor bulletins, 500 radio broadcasts, and 480 other media stories. Through a series of training opportunities, events, peer to peer networks, and grants Rooted in Trust has sponsored 550 local media organizations, 350,000 people, almost 5,000 listening groups for this all to. To basically ban the ability to question.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But again, what I would say is this is why they lost. This is why Trump won. What I'm trying to ask you, and I want to stay on this one.

[Mike Benz]

Topic, they won because Elon allowed us to talk about this. They don't have that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And that's where I'm going, right? So where I'm going is for you. Okay. We live in the States, right? My concern was if we didn't have Supreme Court, they could have removed Trump off the ballot. If they would have done that in Colorado and a couple other states would have gone, then it would have been mayhem. Because Supreme Court, from your point of view, how different is Brazil than us when it comes down to this? You may say, well, no, what you guys have in America's xyz, we don't have this in Brazil. What is that?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I think the Supreme Court, I think, is the main problem because in Brazil we have 11 judges, and I think only two of them, only two of them was indicated by Bolsonaro. So all the other ones was indicated or by Dilma or Lula or Tamir, who indicated Alexander Morales. So the Supreme Court, I think it happens maybe in the majority countries of Latin America, as Mike said, that there is a different type of assassination, There's a different type of tyranny, because if the president stands as a tyranny, as a dictator, maybe people go to the streets, will take him out and his power is over. But when you put this to a judge who says that he is fighting for democracy, he's fighting for freedom, he's fighting against this misinformation. So they, they sell this as a, a good thing. So the Supreme Court in Brazil, they, they decide everything. So that's the, the biggest problem. We can't do anything against them. We can do, like, if I appeal, I'm gonna appeal to who? If election demonize decides what I'm able to do?

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's what I'm saying.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Nothing. Nothing. We can't do nothing. They decide in the COVID pandemic, they, they made a 24 by 7 all the day the traditional media was saying that Bolsonaro was a genocide, that he was responsible for all the deaths. And we couldn't say anything, anything not against the COVID but we couldn't say anything about. We couldn't question if the mask was. Was a great thing to choose for. For our health. For example, there was a lot of measures that the gov. The. The. The cities in the governments did. For example, these schools were closed one more than one and a half years. People didn't go to school.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The entire country or some places it was open.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

The entire country? The entire country. For example, people could go only to churches, but if there was a space between them. But there was a lot of favelas in Brazil, for example, that has a. Had a lot of parties over there and anyone cared about it. So where I was born is a favela. And there people were working as a criminal. If. If someone was maybe selling something and the police comes to there, he would be fined by that. So you can work in the pandemic, not in the. In the time schedule that the government said, okay, you can be open to 8 to 5pm only. So it was a time in Brazil that I confess me as a Brazilian, I thought that maybe the pandemic would take like one month, two months. But it took like almost two years because Brazil we play football in the weekends. We play, we go to. We go to. We go to the barbecue like we live. So I thought that no, Brazil is not going to stay at home for one year, for two years. But a lot of people stayed at home in that time. I was a city councilor in my city better Lozonchi and I made a lot of announces, a lot of appointments about COVID and I was very. Oh yes, I was very persecuted because of that. And in. In the media in that time I saw that was. Was very well planed to attack Bolsonaro. And now we see that a lot of things that he was saying, he was right. He always says that I didn't make any mistake about COVID because everything that he said he was right. People couldn't work so how they. They could put food on their tables.

[Patrick Bet-David]

He was the only president that didn't take the vaccination in the world. That's pretty wild.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

To think about being the only president that. How's your relationship with him? How are you guys together?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, I'm fine. If I call him now, I don't know what time he's in Brazil. Yeah, it's 10:00 maybe he answers me if I. If I call him right now. Yeah, we. I'm in this since two. Since 2015. So I know him for a very long time, and he was always. He's very friendship with me. He's very kind with me. He knows who I am. He knows my heart, he knows my family. Like, I have a wife, two kids right now. I just know this for one month that I'm father. We will be father again. So he knows that I'm. I'm trying to do my best. Sometimes I make mistakes. I'm only 28 years old. 28 years old. But he's a. He's a great guy.

[Brandon]

You've spoken to him since he got the charges against him last week?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, we have a. We have a meeting with. With all the deputies, the conservative deputies, and we have a. We had a great talk.

[Brandon]

Do you think it was weird timing how that came out, like, shortly after?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

But it's funny because Bolsonaro, I can say that with no. With no problem, because he knows that he's a crazy dude. Like, as a Trump, he's a crazy dude. He. He's very genuine. So when the. The news came out that he was like 38 years denounced for. For jail, he was like, I don't care. Like, he was like, okay, I don't care. I'm fine. He knows what he got into.

[Brandon]

Do you think that was your response to us being there, though, and giving him a platform to speak on that could reach?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

That's awesome. Patrick said, okay. We did a podcast with an interview with Bolsonaro. He asked me maybe did he like it. I was like, how long was that? Three hours? I said, okay, he definitely like it because he likes to speak when he likes the person. So if he stayed three hours with you guys, he like it a lot. He's a. He's a very tough guy. Of course, he's not perfect. He was the president of Brazil in a very difficult and hard time. The whole world was in a pandemic stuff. But he gives hope to. To Brazilians.

[Patrick Bet-David]

What's. What's the part about now, okay. With messaging, you going around talking, everybody else going around talking, Eduardo being here talking. Who's. Like, the part where I was trying to figure out with everybody that's there with Alexandra de Moraz. Right. He just got off of X. We saw that. That was a few days ago. Whether he got off of X or he was kicked out of X, I think it's the reality that he got off. Who does he fear? Like, what does Alexandra DE Moraz who's he go to sleep worried about? Who's he fearing?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I don't know. But one thing that I can. I can be sure about that is that he doesn't have peace. I have more freedom than him. Even then, even if he put me in jail, I have more freedom than him because he can't walk in Brazil. He can't. He can't go to an airport, he can't go to the. To the downtown of Sao Paulo. He can't walk because people hate him because of what he's doing. Because Brazil, we have a lot of issues in Brazil, serious issues of criminal organizations. We have problems with education, we have economic problems. And like the judge of our Supreme Court is worried about abolsonado of a coup that never existed. So we are like, come on, do your job. Go, go, go. Be a constitution control court, not a political court. So people are very mad with him because he's not doing his job. He's a politician. He's a politician in charge.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Mike, who do you think he fears? Because when he and X went back and forth, it wasn't. It didn't seem like he backed down. I mean, I think at one point, if I'm not mistaken, Elon had to fire everybody from X and then he had to rehire some people back from X in Brazil to make sure they were in a safe place. So who does Alessandro fear?

[Mike Benz]

Oh, nobody.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You're being serious. Sure, I agree with you. That's why I'm asking a question. Who gets in his way?

[Brandon]

What if all that money gets pulled? That, you know, you're talking about the 12 million. There's billions here and there. What if all that money gets pulled? Because it seems like a lot of the strength they're exerting comes from that.

[Mike Benz]

That needs to be done immediately.

[Brandon]

And how much of it's left after USAID been pulled away?

[Mike Benz]

Well, it comes from a lot of places. You have these Pentagon relationships between the U.S. military and the Brazilian army. You have these, you know, these State Department grants to the region, which are huge. Remember, USAID is getting folded into State, so you have the State Department funds. Then you also have the active aid ones that need to be cut, not just paused, but cut. You have the Department of Labor ones. You're probably going to have Department of Energy ones. You're going to have weird juicing of the universities through some of these other grant organs as well. All of that is one thing that at least creates a fair fight. I brought up, for example, the $12 million grant to Lula's unions. Right after the 2022 election, the Solidarity center just gave like a $7 million grant to the unions. That's tens of millions of dollars you're capturing, essentially. You're pumping up this. This is not Bolsonaro, who's getting tens of millions of dollars from it. And so that also makes people. Ideology is a funny thing. Sometimes people are true believers. Most of the time, hearts and minds work is about cash. I always call it hearts and minds and cash because you're, you know, you're only really sort of getting the tail end of people through hearts and minds when they read the news, usually it's downstream of their cultural leaders, their community leaders, their politicians, their significant people of note in the country. And if you capture them with cash, you get the whole hearts and minds behind that. And so you take the coup cash out of Brazil, I think you will see a much fairer fight. And I think that people will be more responsive to their own people because they will not have a foreign source of funds that are basically telling them advising what the judges should do. And again, getting back to that USAID SEPS program, they literally said in the launch event of the program that one of its purposes was to make the. The partner networks feel supported by the US Government. So one of the reasons that you've had this, I think this perception that there's nothing to fear from any sort of anger of Americans against what Brazil did is because they had the support of the Biden administration. The U.S. embassy didn't do squat when that happened. You remember, I posted every day, day 27, day 28. Here is what the U.S. embassy page. Here's their Twitter account. They're posting about, you know, disabled gymnasts in Brazil. And you know, how we need, you know, to support the LGBTQIA2 rock climbers in Brazil as the AS X, a major US champion, was shut down, and AS Starlink, a major US military contractor, had its assets seized. And as they began to potentially move into the Chinese starlink competitor into that. This is the sort of thing we have a State Department to stop from happening. And the State Department was their silence combined with the fact that they have formal State Department programs to make this happen, formal USAID programs to make this happen. You have Biden and Lula colluding on it. They wanted that to happen. They were supported for that to happen. The SEPS program literally says that the plan is to get foreign countries to implement legal and regulatory measures to go after the social media companies, to force accountability on them.

[Brandon]

So question. Do you think any of that money makes its way to the politicians in the Senate? This could be a question for both of you. So like senators, people in the House, could that us or their wives? Right, Anything like that? Like that seems like there's a lot of potential for that. So like could that be things that are motivating people are in the center that seem to go whichever direction the wind's blowing?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

If you follow the money, I, I'm sure that you're gonna find this money on these senators in the families of the senators of deputies.

[Brandon]

Of course there are a lot of guys that look like they have a lot more money than you'd expect them to have. We have that in our Congress.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah. The Supreme Court, our Supreme Court judges, they have, have a lot of watches that. It's way more than his salary. Like Patek Philippe for example. Lula, for example, he had a lot of watches. The name in Brazil that the left did the propaganda on Lula was he's the father of the pores, he's the father of the Porsche. It's beautiful, right?

[Brandon]

It's a good catchphrase.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, but he has a, he has a huge patrimony. And that's funny because look, the socialists in Brazil, they hate us. They hate us. Lula, before the elections he was calling Trump Nazi.

[Brandon]

So call him lazy.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

No, Naisy.

[Brandon]

Nazi.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Nazi. Sorry.

[Brandon]

Oh, Nazi.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Nazi. So before the elections Lula was calling Trump and Nazi. So socialists in Brazil, they hate the US but now they are finding out that the taxpayers of the US are sponsorship.

[Brandon]

Yeah, subsidies.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, the socialists in Brazil. So Americans need to denounce this like in mass.

[Brandon]

They wouldn't be happy if that money got pulled either because then that, you know, whole union program they have wouldn't be able to function.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Of course, but that's what the social is in the, and the whole, whole history. Do they take the other Manus people to their own money plan or the, the plan of power? But they are doing this with your money, like your hard working money. So it's, it's crazy to, to, to a government that is socialist. I, I don't have a, I don't have any doubt that Lula doesn't care about us. They care about their own interests. They care about China, wherever, but they don't care about us. It's, it's nice. Mike, if you could speak to Brazilian people why it's so different and why it's so good to have a conservative presidents in Brazil to make relationship with U. S. And how bad it is. Is it to have Lula, for example, in the presidency of Brazil? Because I think Brazil is a. Is a country that matters to us.

[Mike Benz]

I think my opinions on this are not hard to tease out from what I say, but I do feel it is inappropriate for me to. You know, my mission is about speech freedom, okay? And in the course of that, I talk about all these adjacent things. I talk about the unions and the universities and all these other things, because that's important to understand how the apparatus, why they were doing the censorship and the other things related to that operation. But that's for the Brazilian people to decide. And I think what was done to Bolsonaro was a human rights violation. It was the sort of thing that we typically put sanctions on foreign countries for doing in terms of destroying the democratic process, is what we have democracy promotions programs to stop when countries arrest their political opponents, you know, when their court systems get corrupt. That's why we have a judicial reform mandate for usaid is when court systems get too corrupt to use the carrots and sticks of our diplomatic sphere to get them to, course correct their judiciary. In this case, we literally did it to them. We said, you're not corrupt enough. You need to get more corrupt. But this is a testament to the corruption we had in our own country under the Biden administration. And in the beginning, this happened under Trump's nose. Part of this is because USAID does not have to report to the president when they do these type of operations, Unlike the CIA, they do not need to get a presidential finding for covert action. They can simply earmark the funds for humanitarian relief in Pakistan and then just run it through contractors to do things, you know, in Brazil. And I think the Trump administration had so much going on with Russiagate and, you know, and everything else happening at DHS and the border and Covid. And they frankly, didn't really know how the anatomy of the beast that they were operating on. This is why I'm so encouraged that USAID was targeted in this way right out the gate, so that at least you stop the bleeding and you go, you know, straight to the heart of it, which leads to, you know, all the other malfeasance in the intel world and its state and. And dod. But, you know, the. Yes, but. But that is for the Brazilian people to decide. But I'm interested, obviously, in the human rights angle.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

As a Brazilian, I'm just gonna give a tip to Trump's government. There's a lot of things that the Supreme Court's judges have Here in US they have a lot of things here, assets. It's just a tip because as you said, who they fear, I think they fear to lose money, I think they fear to lose power. I think they want to come here to us for. For some reason. And I think truly I think the only power instead of the people that can put a end of this tyranny or maybe to reduce the power of our supreme courts, is Trump administration doing not for revenge, but doing what is is right. Because I agree with Mike, there was a right human violation with Bolsonaro, not only Bolsonaro, but with the Brazilian people. Because we. All that I want is not that Bolsonaro becomes presidents with. With bad resources. I want that we have a fear election. That's all that we want. You want fear elections. So I. I'm sure if there was a free, a fear election In Brazil in 2022, Bolsonaro would be the president. So that's all that we want.

[Patrick Bet-David]

If there was a free election, you're saying Bolsonaro would be president?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah, for sure.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Final thoughts before we wrap up Nicolas, final thoughts before we wrap up the podcast. Your optimism, your future, what you're thinking, what's going to happen next between now and election time? Brazil, where's your mind? What are you thinking?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

So I'm going to give a different answer. Maybe because everyone talks about politics. If as it was the last resource in the world. As a Christian, as I said to you in that table, I think my hope died 2,000 years ago. He resurrected from the cross. And that's where I put all of my faith and my belief. I think that we as human beings, we need to take care about our individual responsibilities. I think we need as a man needs to be great husbands, I need that the women needs to be great wives. We need to create children's that has moral values. We need to know that we are creating children not to. To aim a good professional job, but we are raising a soul. And I think it changes everything because I can maybe go to jail, maybe they can, they can persecuted me for my words, but all that this word can do to me if they kill me is to meet my savior. So I need, I think that all the conservatives need not only to defend, not only to speak, but to live what they are defending for. I'm not only conservative because it's good for me to get in votes. I am conservative. I'm a Christian because otherwise I would be very far from here. I don't know where else I would be. I was born In a favela. My cousin was a drug dealer in there, so maybe my path would be very bad. But Christ saved me for this. So when I talk about politics, of course I have enemies. I have the. The opposite guys that tried to put me in jail and try to censorship me. But I look to them with eyes of compassion. I think we need to do this more. I was reading a book like one week ago, and there was a king called Filippineri and he was walking down the streets and then he saw a robber. And this robber was going to prison. And then he said, there goes Filipinero. If, if. If wasn't the grace of the Lord. So I think if we put this in our life, either in politics or in the podcast, we need to have purpose in life. Like us, for example, I read a lot of about the American history and I know that left Frankfurt school, they came to here, they enter in the universities. After that they. Their ideas came to the. The gospels. And these reverbs reverberated in Brazil. Now, unfortunately, a lot of churches in Brazil, they have a lot of false Christians, they have a lot of people there are socialists, but they don't know. So that's our true war, our cultural war. Of course I can put Bolsonaro in charge. We can have the senate, we can have the Congress. Okay, that's fine. But there are a lot of places that has powers that changes your heart. Maybe here in U. S. An artist that goes in on top of Spotify has more influence in their life, of your children, than a father has in their own children. So we can't only be conservatives because it's good for us in the elections. We need to be conservatives because our life depends on this. That's what I. I'm aiming for my life to be a. To be a good father, to be a good husband, to be a good politician. And my aim is to go to heaven. That's all that I want. So that's what I think for my life. You know, I. It's a pleasure to be here, Patrick. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Sorry, Brandon. Brandon. Thank you, Brandon. I never thought that I would be here talking about politics because it's very far from what I think I deserve. But I'm glad to be here and I put God on this because I think he can truly transform people.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Well, listen, just from spending the time with you the first time we did a podcast here with Paolo yourself. Who else was on? Eduardo and one other person. Yes. And we had a great conversation. And then in Brazil While I'm out there, we're having dinner, no camera on. We had you and Humberto. We got to give a shout out to Humberto. Remember Humberto?

[Nicholas Ferreira]

Yeah. He's awesome. Where is he?

[Patrick Bet-David]

He's in Chile right now.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

I love you, man.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Let me tell you, he loves you too. Afterwards, he said that was a very. Says that's why I like this guy. But no, no wonder. You are loved because of where you're at with your values and everybody feels the same way. I'm excited to see what happens with you. Bolsonaro's interview drops In Wednesday morning, 9am we have the clip, but we'll show it. We'll show it on Wednesday. Rob, let it just play on Wednesday. It's going to be fine. And Mike, I got to thank you as much of a hard time as give, I give to you. You know, I consume what you talk about because the reality, the reason why, it's that question with Dan Bongino and cash and all that other stuff. I'm hoping there's an announcement you're getting hired. I think if I'm on that part, I would hire a guy like you to bring you in. You have a little bit too much knowledge that it can't be wasted. And not only you have that knowledge. The part that makes you even special, that's tough to do. I talked to a guy today who's training my son for soccer. 11 years old, he's been playing soccer and he's obsessed with soccer. He came up here to train my son. He lives an hour and a half away. This is a very well known trainer. And I called him, I said, so tell me, what is your impression of my son when he gets trained? He says, I got to tell you, the first thing I do is I have to make sure a person's kid is not playing soccer because the parents want him to play soccer. He says, your son isn't playing soccer because of you. He's playing soccer because he loves the game. I said, trust me, if it was up to me, he'd play baseball because I like baseball more than I like soccer. I said, I want him to play baseball because we own a team. I'd like him to one day play for a team that I own so he can, you know, have fun. But this guy loves the game. I said, I can't stop him talking about soccer with what he's doing. And he's a big Neymar guy. He's a big Ronaldo guy. We live next to Messi, so he's had a chance to meet Messi, and he's met a lot of different people. But the reason why you need to be in is because you give me the vibes that you can't stop thinking about this stuff. This is you. You can't help yourself. You're obsessed with this. God is using you with this. I just hope the US Government uses you as well for this next phase. And if not, anything you said, something very powerful. I just want to be useful, and I respect that. This is the second time we spent time together. You seem very sincere. I'm glad you're on our side and keep digging and finding things that you find, because half the stuff you showed me, I've not seen it before, so I'm following it. I'm getting smart every time I hear you speak. I appreciate your last minute getting on a flight and coming out here and being with us.

[Mike Benz]

Well, likewise. And, you know, your leadership on this, I think is going to encourage millions of people, you know, on this. And thanks for having us on. It was a great, great conversation.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. And Brandon, we got to give a shout out to Brandon, who got. I've not met many people in my life that got a bachelor's degree in national security and a master's in national security. This guy devours this stuff. And he was in Brazil with us as well. Gang, for those of you that are Brazilian, if, you know, go show the support, you know, the books that this man has wrote. This handsome man. Everybody is saying he looks like Marcelo from snl. He looks like Marcelo the comedian rep. Can you pull up Marcelo from snl? Pull up Marcelo from SNL for people to realize Marcelo, right there he is. He is one of the biggest comedians in America for snl, maybe, maybe one of the funniest guys in the world. I. I would put Vinnie as very funny, but this guy's up there as well. Phenomenal work that he does. You guys look like you're twins, if not cousins or rel. That looks like your brother right there.

[Nicholas Ferreira]

It really looks like, man.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And by the way, he. He's the. The best comedian on snl. The best comedian on snl. Again, gang, follow the story. Stay close to everybody. Brazil, us Share this message with other people as well. God bless everybody. Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye.

[Mike Benz]

It.