Bolsonaro Doesn't Quite Concede, But Agrees To Transition. Probably.

More damn trucker protests, too.

After losing Sunday's presidential election in a close vote, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro didn't say a word in public until Tuesday, when he gave a two-minute speech in which he didn't concede, congratulate his opponent, or even mention the results of the election. Instead, he insisted that "Our dreams are more alive than ever" and — very ambiguously — promised to "continue to follow all the commandments of our constitution."

Read More: Brazil Will No Longer Be Run By Evil Anti-LGBT Trump-Loving Fascist 

Once Bolsonaro finished his brief comments, his chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, said that Bolsonaro had authorized that the transition would go forward as prescribed by law. That was as close as Bolsonaro is likely to get to a concession of defeat, but it was enough to begin the handover of power to the winner of the election, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who mostly just goes by Lula. Da Silva won the election with 50.9 percent of the vote to Bolsonaro's 49.1 percent, amid attempts by Bolsonaro supporters to suppress the vote and months of Bolsonaro's having insisted that if he didn't win, the election had to be rigged. His return to office is likely to be very good news for the planet, seeing as how he's vowed to stop the massive deforestation of the Amazon that's happened under Bolsonaro.

And just like another recent would-be dictator in the Americas, Bolsonaro had convinced many of his supporters that the elections were hopelessly corrupt, although there's been zero evidence of fraud. After the election results were announced Sunday, hundreds of angry Bolsonaro supporters, many of them truck drivers, set up roadblocks on major highways, sometimes while Bolsonaro-supporting federal highway police stood around doing nothing.

The New York Times reports:

On Monday, three federal highway police officers stood and watched as protesters blocked the main highway between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil’s two largest cities.

Late Monday, Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice, ordered the federal highway police and state police to clear all national highways. Under the order, the director of the federal highway police faced arrest if his agency did not comply.

During his brief remarks Tuesday, Bolsonaro didn't exactly tell his supporters to knock it off and go home. Instead, very much like Donald Trump's initial tweets on January 6, Bolsonaro said the people blocking roads had every reason to be angry. He called the protests "the fruit of the indignation and feelings of injustice in the electoral process," and only vaguely suggested the roadblocks should maybe end, because his people wouldn't want to be like a bunch ofantifaleftists, would they?

“Peaceful demonstrations will always be welcome,” he said. “But our methods cannot be those of the left, like property invasion, destruction of goods and restrictions on the right to come and go.”

He stopped well short of telling supporters We love you, you’re very special, but you have to go home now.  As of Tuesday night, Reuters reports that some 190 roadblocks are still in place around Brazil, after more than 400 were removed by police.

And just like when his North American counterpart told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by, many Bolsonaro-supporting truckers decided they knew exactly what he meant. 

“It’s exactly what we expected. The president has always known how to recognize our support,” said Wellington Rodrigues, 41, a protester drinking a beer who had helped block a highway outside São Paulo. “We want to continue, because it’s our right to protest.”

Also like Trump, Bolsonaro seems genetically incapable of ever shutting up, so the two days of silence following the election left many very worried about what he was planning, particularly whether he might try to call on the military to take over. That's what many of his supporters wanted, too. At a roadblock outside São Paulo's airport,

Dalmir Almeida, a 38-year-old protester, told The Associated Press that after completing three days of strikes, he and others will drive their trucks to the military barracks to ask for their support. “The army will be in our favor,” he added.

The New York Times   reported similar hopes for a coup as well:

Protesters said that they were trying to create enough of a disruption that the military would intervene, enabling the president and the armed forces to overturn the election.

“We want the truth about the voting machines,” said Reginaldo de Moraes, 45, an evangelical pastor who echoed Mr. Bolsonaro’s conspiracy theories. He was standing on the side of the main highway leading to São Paulo’s airport, which he had helped block for hours. “We don’t believe them,’’ he said, “and we want the Army to take over and count the votes correctly.”

We hope this will not come as too much of a shock, gentle readers, but as Yr Wonkette noted Monday, Bolsonaro's conspiracy claims have plenty of support among American wingnuts, because election-denying fans of fascism here have to stand up for election-denying fascists anywhere. On Fox News last night — hours after the statement that Bolsonaro's administration would participate in the transition — Tucker Carlson explained that Brazil's election is actually not even over because did Bolsonaro concede? He did not. Also YouTube tyranny!

TUCKER: There are a lot of questions about this election, whether all the ballots were counted, for example, and Bolsonaro has not conceded. But questioning the election results in Brazil is no longer allowed there, or even here. YouTube has just announced it will censor any posts that raise doubts about the vote total.

In a statement, YouTube told us they had, quote, "expanded our existing election integrity policy to prohibit content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2022 Brazil presidential election. Wait a second. The election is still ongoing. The incumbent has not conceded. How do you know the claims are, quote, "false?" Well, of course you don't. You are taking sides and using censorship to cement the results in place. This is propaganda. YouTube is interfering in a democratic election in a sovereign nation. How is that allowed?

Carlson also wondered why Joe Biden would go and recognize the Brazilian election results if Tucker Carlson still refuses to. How is that allowed?

The election really is not ongoing, regardless of what Bolsonaro didn't say. His administration is beginning the transition process, and Brazil's Supreme Court issued a statement saying that Nogueira's announcement meant that Bolsonaro had "recognized the final result of the elections." So there.

Lula is set to be inaugurated on January 1, 2023, assuming that Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson don't travel to Brazil to foment a coup.

[ NYT / Guardian / CNBC / Media Matters / Reuters ]

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