Bolton visits Bolsonaro: a US meeting of the minds with Brazil’s fascistic president-elect
By
Bill Van Auken
30 November 2018
Brazil’s fascistic president-elect, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, hosted a meeting Thursday at his home in Barra de Tijuca, the wealthy beachside neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, with President Donald Trump’s right-wing national security adviser John Bolton.
The hour-long discussion reportedly touched on Venezuela, Cuba, Chinese influence in Latin America and Bolsonaro’s proposal to ape Trump by moving Brazil’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Bolton staged the brief stop in Rio and breakfast meeting with Bolsonaro on his way to the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, where the main question posed is the US trade war against China.
Bolton gave no statement to the press following the meeting, but tweeted: “We enjoyed a broad and productive discussion with the president-elect of Brazil and his security team.”
Similarly, Bolsonaro, who takes office on January 1, used his Twitter account to describe the encounter as “a very productive and pleasant meeting with the National Security Adviser of the United States.”
Accompanying Bolsonaro in the meeting was a group of incoming cabinet members who are representative of the most right-wing and military-dominated government to take office since the end of the two-decade-long US-backed military dictatorship in 1985.
These included his future defense minister Fernando Acevedo e Silva and head of the Institutional Security Cabinet Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, who are both retired generals. Also present was his foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo, who has described climate change as a plot by “cultural Marxists” to undermine Western economies and boost China, and declared that his mission will be to…