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- [00:01]
Lawfare Host
This fall marks 15 years of lawfare and we're celebrating the only way we know how by gathering our community of readers, listeners and contributors for an in person celebration in Washington, DC. Get your tickets today at lawfaremedia.org 15years.
- [00:26]
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Did I talk too much?
- [00:27]
Brian Winter
Can't I just let it go?
- [00:28]
Boost Mobile Hype Man
I wish I would stop. Thank you so much.
- [00:35]
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Brian Winter
Enough.
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- [01:23]
Isabella Royo
I'm Isabella Royo, intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare archive for September 13, 2025. This week, the Supreme Court of Brazil convicted Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro for his role in the attacks of January 8, 2023, where mobs seeking to overturn the election of President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva stormed multiple federal buildings. Bolsonaro was convicted on five charges, including attempting a coup and attempting to abolish the democratic rule of law. The former president was sentenced to 27 years in prison. President Trump, who previously revoked the visas of some justices involved in the case and linked the proceedings against Bolsonaro to a tariff hike targeting Brazil, has criticized the ruling, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pledged that the US Will respond accordingly to this witch hunt. For today's archive, I picked an episode from September 2022 in which Brian Winter, editor in chief of America's Quarterly, joined Lawfare's Tyler McBrien to discuss the then upcoming 2022 Brazilian election, then candidates Jair Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva, the mood of the electorate, the potential for an election crisis, and more.
- [02:46]
Tyler McBrien
I'm Tyler McBr, managing editor of Lawfare, and this is the Lawfare Podcast. September 27, 2022 in just under a week, on October 2, Brazil will hold the first round of its general election, which will determine the country's next president. To talk through all things Brazilian politics, I sat down with Brian Winter, editor in chief of America's Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade living and reporting across Latin America. We discussed the leading candidates, Jair Bolsonaro and Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, the potential election crisis, and what's at stake as Brazilians head to the polls. On Sunday. It's The Lawfare Podcast, September 27th. Brian Winter on the imminent election crisis in Brazil.
- [03:30]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
Brian, as you very well know, there's an election coming up in Brazil. So I want to ask first, if all of Brazil is a stage, who are the main players and who do they represent?
- [03:40]
Brian Winter
Well, there's two main players in this election. There's the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro. He, I'm sure is well known to part of your audience, called in some quarters the Trump of the tropics, has presided over Brazil for the last four years. Very difficult period that included not only the pandemic, but difficult economy and some constant institutional tensions as he lashed out against media, the Supreme Court and parts of the international community. And then the other big protagonist in this election is Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, who was president of Brazil a long time ago, actually. Now, from 2003 to 2010, that was a golden age of a kind for Brazil. There was a period when a lot of people came out of poverty and into the middle class, when the economy did well. But it was largely due to a commodities boom that was led by China, and that led to, you know, positive growth and a lot of these same trends in other countries throughout Latin America and the world. And so there are a lot of misgivings, even among some Lula supporters, as to whether he would be able to replicate that magic if he is elected again in this election at the age of, well, well into his late 70s.
- [05:10]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
Great. And as you mentioned, something interesting about this election is that both of the leading candidates have both been presidents before. Of course, one is the incumbent. So given that, what are their main policies that they are pushing for this election, and how do they differ, if anything, from their respective administrations?
- [05:30]
Brian Winter
Well, neither has gone into huge detail about what they plan to do for, I think for different reason reasons. Lula has answered some questions about his plans, but he. He tends to say, in fact, to read a quote from him, he said, you have to understand that instead of asking what I'm going to do, you just have to look at what I did. And so he's really saying, look at my past record. I was good with social programs. I was fiscally responsible as well. And everybody kind of won under my presidency. Everybody from the banks and sort of big business to Multinational corporations, and of course, the working class in Brazil, which saw huge gains. But again, the concern is that he may be underestimating the difficulty of an external scenario, which is going to be much more difficult should he be elected and take office on New Year's Day 2023. For President Bolsonaro, he has not offered a whole lot of detail either, on the economic front especially, but I think that we can expect a mix of conservative economic policies, ostensibly market friendly policies. The reason I'm tripping over this a bit is because while he has a very business friendly face to his administration, in practice, the last four years have not been that great for Brazilian business, in part because of the constant disorganization and conflict that has characterized his four years in power. So, you know, it's interesting. I have a lot of contacts in the business world in Brazil as well as here in the United States. And you know, on paper these guys should all be with Bolsonaro, but in reality they're pretty split because they say, you know, the Bolsonaro years have been kind of a mess with a president who, in their telling or in their words, has often been more concerned about whether boys should wear blue and girls should wear pink, to quote a famous quote from his women's affairs minister, then issues like tax reform, for example. So in practice, it's a, it's a, it's a more muddied scenario.
- [08:04]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
Yeah, it's a great quote from, from Lula, who, as you mentioned, is entreating people to look at what he did in addition to what you mentioned during Bolsonaro's tenure. What else would someone find if you looked at what, what he did in the, in, you know, in the past four years?
- [08:20]
Brian Winter
Well, it's been a difficult four years for Brazil. Brazil has lost more than 670,000 people to the COVID 19 pandemic. Brazil is, of course, the world's fifth largest country. So, but even if you look at those numbers on a per capita basis, Brazil, at least last I checked, the Johns Hopkins database was in the world's 20 worst countries when it came to deaths per capita. And it's interesting, the economy in Brazil has started to recover a bit over the last couple months. And there was an expectation that that would be reflected in the polls. I mean, this is what we usually see in countries around the world when unemployment's coming down. And even unlike the United States, inflation has started to get a bit better in Brazil. And yet again, if you believe the polls, Bolsonaro's numbers have not really improved. And he still trails in this election by between 6 to 12 points, depending on which poll you look at. Tallulah, One theory for this is that the memory of the pandemic is still very strong. And this is a leader who, I think it's very fair to say, denied science, underestimated, downplayed the value of the vaccine, talked about, you know, supposed cures that. That have. That did not prove effective. You know, it's a similar story to what happened in 2020, when Trump was still president here in the United States. And I think that there's polling as well as kind of anecdotal evidence. I travel often to Brazil. I'm based now in New York, but I'm often there. And people have not quite forgiven him for his management of the country during that process or the many callous remarks that he made during that time. Saying things like when asked about his responsibility for the pandemic, saying things like, I'm not a grave digger, and saying that, you know, the country needed to stop being a country of sissies. And these are things that I think people have not forgotten. It's also true that many of these things are not unique to Brazil. It's a difficult time for incumbent governments all over the world. By one count, incumbents in Latin America have lost 13 straight elections. And I think, you know, you can. A lot of this does have to do with Bolsonaro. A lot of it does have to do with Brazil. Both are interesting stories, but there's a regional and a global context going on, which is that people all over the world, particularly the Western world, are unhappy right now and dissatisfied with whoever is in power right now. That's Jair Bolsonaro, and he's absorbing a lot of that rage.
- [11:19]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
You mentioned, of course, the. The recent memory and, and, you know, current situation of the COVID pandemic. What are some other salient issues for Brazilians, specifically, whether it relates to the economy, social issues that they may be voting on, or, as you mentioned, is this less about platform and more about ousting an incumbent?
- [11:41]
Brian Winter
I think that to really understand Brazil right now and to understand this election, you have to go back to the 2000s, which was the era in which Lula was in power. And I've already spoken about what a golden era this was for Brazil. But it's hard, even in words, to describe how optimistic the country was during that time. I lived in Brazil from 2010 to 2015 as a reporter, and so I caught the tail end of this period and the beginning of the problems that, that showed up in later years, but, but during the 2000s, which was during Lula's presidency, this was a country where the middle class grew by some 35 million people. But it also seemed like Brazil had kind of cracked the code and was finally realizing the potential that people have long said Brazil has. There's this old, old, tired quote about Brazil that, that comes from the author, Stefan Zweig, who said Brazil is the country of the future and it always will be. And that has captured some of the country's fits and starts in its development over many decades. There was a sense in the 2000s that the future had finally arrived. And then not long after Lula left office in 2010, not long after my arrival, things started to fall apart. And even though Lula was no longer presidency, it was his hand picked successor who won the 2010 election. This was Dilma Rousseff. And under Rousseff's watch, the country really, really fell apart. Brazil is actually poorer today on a per capita basis than it was 10 years ago. That's an astonishing statistic. And so as we get into the present day, you asked about the issues in this election. It's true that inflation has come down or starting to come down. It's true that unemployment is also now below 9%, which makes it the lowest unemployment in Brazil since 2015. But the residual consequences not only of the pandemic, but of this intense, terrible period of time during the 2010s that followed the years of prosperity, are still with the country. And to cite one other statistic, there are an estimated 33 million Brazilians in a country of some 210 million who are suffering from some degree of hunger. And in a country where there was at least the idea that that was part of the past. So I think it's a country that lived through its bonanza years, which were then followed by extreme difficulty. I mean, an imperfect parallel would be the 20s versus the 30s in the last century here in the United States, and is now trying to find its way again. And the polls tell us that a majority of Brazilians, at least for now, think that electing the guy who oversaw those boom years is the right way to try to do it.
- [14:48]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
I'm sure there's an old adage somewhere cautioning against predicting Brazilian politics. Maybe Stefan Zweig has another nugget there. But I'm going to ask you to do just that. If you could game out a few of what you think are the most likely scenarios in the election. And, and I'd ask you Just to talk about the election for now, because I definitely want to go into what may come after, which I think is the biggest question facing many people right now. But how do you see this election going? Can we put a lot of stock in the polls that, that Lula is, has quite a comfortable lead.
- [15:19]
Brian Winter
The record of polling in Brazil is quite good. There is some kind of Bolsonaro myth making to the contrary. But actually, if you look at the big polls, they have been quite accurate over the years. By the time election day came around in 2018, they, they predicted Bolsonaro's margin of victory pretty accurately. And those same polls are now telling us that Lula has a very steady lead of between again, like I said, 6, 10 percentage points, maybe a bit more as a matter of fact. I mean, in some ways this has been a very boring campaign. I say that not. I mean, there's been plenty of controversy and plenty of heat and light, but the numbers themselves and the main players have not moved that much. There was some speculation that perhaps a third party candidate could make waves, maybe someone kind of in the center, center right space, but that really hasn't happened. There's another candidate named Ciro Gomez, kind of on the center, center left who has captured some of the anti Lula vote that doesn't want to vote for Bolsonaro, but not in a way that has made any material difference in this race. The race between Lula and Bolsonaro has also been somewhat steady. I mean, the gap has closed by a statistically significant amount since, since March of this year. But that was probably always going to happen as more Brazilians started paying attention to this election. Which is all to say, I think that the base scenario still has to be a Lula victory by a fairly comfortable margin. It is the year 2022. We have seen other countries where the polling has gotten it completely wrong. And so I am constantly reminding myself of the need to not take polls as gospel. When I was last in Brazil earlier this month, I heard one pollster himself say that he believed that the margin in Lula's favor might only be half what his own poll showed, because he believed that Bolsonaro voters might be, for different reasons, either afraid or shy about sharing their true intentions, essentially because they believe that the other institutions in Brazil are against them. So that's a, a key Bolsonaro talking point. But I, I don't think so. I mean, I, I still think that at the end of the day, the, the most likely scenario is a Lula victory of between five and 10 points in the first round and then if there's a second round, which it seems likely at this point, that Bolsonaro would lose by about 10 points.
- [18:26]
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- [22:30]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
So if we take the polls, as you said, which indicate Lulu wins, what happens then? You've mentioned in one of your articles you've called it, there could be an imminent election crisis. Bernie Sanders, along with some moderate Democrats, have also raised alarms of a potential coup. What are people afraid of happening after the election of a LULA victory in particular?
- [22:55]
Brian Winter
Well, Bolsonaro has made no secret of his intentions with this election. He has said that he does not believe in the integrity of Brazil's electronic voting system. He has said that he will only accept a result that he deems to be auditable, which means he wants a paper copy essentially of each vote. That will not happen. Brazil's Congress voted in 2021 not to modify the current electronic system. He has also described LULA not just as an opponent, but as a illegitimate, quote, unquote, criminal threat who, open quote, can only win via fraud, end quote. And then finally, with regards to how Bolsonaro himself appears to see this election, he has said that he sees only three possible futures for himself. Prison, death, or victory. And in my opinion, he continues to act as if he genuinely believes that to be true. So, you know, I have said and written that I think that Bolsonaro will do everything in his power to contest and potentially try to overturn the result should LULA win either in the first round or the second round of these elections in October. The hitch, though, is that in the last few weeks, this again, depending on the Polls. Looking at the polls, the margin has not narrowed in the way that many of us expected it to. Put a different way, I think it's much, much easier for Bolsonaro to contest, say, a 3 point loss than a 6 point loss, much less a 10 point loss. And if it gets into those bigger numbers, I suspect even he will see the writing on the wall and start looking for another way out of his situation.
- [25:04]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
What would a Bolsonaro coup attempt or failure to transfer power look like? What are some, some options? And then on the flip side of that, what safeguards are in place in Brazil in terms of institutions, legal or otherwise?
- [25:21]
Brian Winter
Brazil is a country. Well, to state the obvious, it's a big country. And this is important because it's a country where power is actually quite diffuse. And if you've been to Brasilia and stood in the middle of this very strange planned city and you see all the different government buildings, you see the Supreme Court and all these regulatory bodies and the Congress and the Presidential palace occupies just kind of a corner of this esplanade of ministries, as it's called. And you know, it really drives home a larger reality, which is that Brazil is a country of institutions. It's not a particularly old democracy. It only came back to full democracy in 1989, following kind of a four year transition. 1989 was the first year that they had citizens vote directly for president, again following the dictatorship which ran from 1964 to 1985. It is also a country where institutions in recent years have not worked perfectly, but they do retain their own center of gravity. And so I think in practice it's harder for a leader with authoritarian intentions to make a grab for power in Brazil than it is in countries that are smaller and perhaps don't have the same tradition of separation of powers that Brazil has managed to build over the last 30 years or so. That said, it's not impossible. And you know, I've written about this a lot. I have also spoken to people who are close to President Bolsonaro. I take a certain pride in having dialogue with, with everyone, at least everyone who's willing to talk to me. And you know, it's. It's clear to me, even though they don't always say so directly, more or less, what the contours of a power grab would, would look like coups or disruptions to democracy in the 21st century. They don't look like they did in the 20th century. We're not going to see, I don't think, tanks rolling through the streets of Brasilia or anywhere else. It's just not how it happens today. I think it would be a more simple scenario that would echo in some ways what Donald Trump attempted to do here in the weeks following the 2020 election. Bolsonaro would declare that the voting process was riddled with irregularities, with fraud. He would likely seize upon a few real examples of either fraud or voting problems. And there are always a few, whether it's here in the United States or in Brazil or anywhere else. There's always incidents with voting machines, with people who are on the voter rolls who should not be, and so on. And so I would suspect that he would and his. He and his allies would use those incidents. They would magnify them on social media and elsewhere and use them as pretext to declare that the election itself was not legitimate. And that's where things get interesting, because it then turns into kind of a power struggle between the crowd who says that the election was illegitimate and those who say that it worked just fine, more or less. Thank you very much. I would say that most of the institutions in Brazil are on the side of respecting whatever result we see in October. But some of the lines are a bit muddy. And one of the institutions that could, at least in theory, favor Bolsonaro in such a confrontation would be the Brazilian armed forces. And this is a major, major difference between Brazil and the United States. At no moment in 2020 did Donald Trump have at least the senior leadership of the armed forces on his side. Of course, there's no tradition in the United States of the military intervening in day to day politics or elections. That tradition does exist in Brazil, where, like I said, there's people alive who have memories of the 21 years when the military was in charge, when it was a dictatorship, to just use that word unambiguously. And Bolsonaro has quite cleverly incorporated members of the military, mostly retired, but some active duty as well, into his government. His running mate is a retired general. So are some members of his cabinet. And I frankly hear, as far as their intentions in such a scenario, I hear whispers and voices on both sides. There are those who say that the Brazilian military are firmly on the side of democracy and the Constitution of 1988. And there are those who say, depending on how things go, they could very well take Bolsonaro's side. And this is a major reason why I think that if there is a disputed election, I don't believe that Bolsonaro would be likely to prevail. But things could get very messy.
- [31:10]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
I want to zoom out now beyond Brazil's borders and talk about the stakes of this election for, for the region, for, for the Western hemisphere and then and beyond, you know, as you mentioned, I think it is fair to say Brazil is a big country in almost every sense of the word. So what are the stakes here for, for everyone else watching outside of Brazil?
- [31:29]
Brian Winter
Well, I think first of all, what happens in Brazil is very important to the rest of Latin America. Region of some 600 million people, critical to the rest of the world, you know, in a variety of ways, from management of the Amazon, which has been a huge issue, massively important to the future of, of climate change. And so that's. That one's not just important to the rest of Latin America, it's important to the world. And these are two candidates, Lula and Bolsonaro, who have vastly different ideas on how to manage that challenge. Bolsonaro being more permissive of the kind of development that leads to the destruction of the forest. And Lula who oversaw a 70% decline in deforestation rates during his presidency in the 2000s. I think that also if Lula were to be elected, this would have significant geopolitical implications. You know, Brazil under Bolsonaro has not been unambiguously pro us, nor have they been very, very antagonistic of China. I think they've struck a balance that has been more pro US, but, but with nuance. I think if Lula were to be elected, it would also be nuanced. But if you look at this as a spectrum, I think that Brazil would move one or two clicks closer to Beijing in terms of its geopolitical and trading relationships. It's also true that if Brazil was to go left in, that is, if they were to elect Lula, it would consolidate a trend that we've really seen over the last year, which is a wave of left leaning presidents in Latin America. There's great diversity within that group, starting with the fact that some of these leftists are dictators, Nicolas Maduro and Daniel Ortega, to name two. And some of them are true, I think, shining lights when it comes to a commitment to democracy and institutions. I would include the Chilean President Gabriel Borich in that category. But with Lula, I think that the trend toward left of center leaders would be unambiguous. I think that has a variety of implications as well, including the fact that you would have a degree of synchronicity across the region. Leaders who essentially believe that they're on the same team in some way, shape or form that could lead to some interesting progress in areas like trade and other regional alliances. But, you know, I think for, for most of the global community, I think probably the biggest stakes in this Brazil election probably involve the Amazon.
- [34:24]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
And finally here, I'm just curious to hear how you're going to spend election day, what you'll be watching for, if you have any election day traditions, anything like that.
- [34:34]
Brian Winter
Well, I've covered Brazilian elections going all the way back to 2006 as a reporter. And now in my current capacity as a political analyst and columnist, I will probably be here, and I will definitely be here in the United States, at least for the first round. But, you know, it's, it's easier to be a Brazil expert in the year 2022 than maybe it was 20 or much less 40 years ago. You can watch all the networks online. You can subject yourself to Twitter if you're feeling brave. There's all kinds of ways to try to keep tabs on what's going on. And I'll be talking to all of my contacts there on the ground for what I expect will be a pretty tense day, in part because of these concerns over the possibility of an institutional crisis, which are real and I think, which have mobilized a big part of civil society as well as the international community and the business community as well, none of whom, or at least few of whom have a preference. I don't think that you'll find in the international community, you know, an official preference for one candidate or the other. I think what they want to see is, is democracy and a respect for rule of law. And whatever the election result shows, and as we sit here today, that is in some doubt. So I think all of us are going to be watching very closely to see how things happen in the first round. And then if there is a runoff, you know, it's a country where things get very tense. And the last thing we need in today's world, where democracy is under stress all over the Western world, is a major setback in a country as big and as important as Brazil. So we'll see. It's going to be one to keep an eye on for sure.
- [36:34]
Tyler McBrien (Interviewer)
Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about Brazil, land of the future, as Stefan Zweig so, so aptly put it, decades ago.
- [36:44]
Brian Winter
Let's hope so. Thank you so much.
- [36:50]
Tyler McBrien
The lawfare podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter at Patreon.com Lawfair. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for other podcasts, including Rational Security, Chatter, Allies and the Aftermath. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series on the government's response, January 6th. Check out our written work@lawfareblog.com the podcast is edited by Jen Patya Howell and your audio engineer. This episode was Jay Venables of Goat Rodeo. Our music is performed by Sophia Yan. As always, thanks for listening.
- [37:38]
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