Kindred spirits Trump, Bolsonaro: terror twins of pandemic

US president Donald Trump and Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro both lie prodigiously about the pandemic ravaging their countries. The pandemic statistics don’t. The US and Brazil rank first and second in worldwide infections. American leads all 195 countries with 1,655,000 infections. Brazil just passed Russia for second place in the pandemic derby with 340,000. Their country’s infection rates are disproportionate to population. The US, with 4.2 % of world population, has 30.9 % of the world’s total. Brazil’s percentages are 2.7% and 6.2% respectively. This dubious distinction for both leaders is not coincidence. Both pooh-poohed pandemic from the get go. For Trump early on it was 15 cases that would magically go down to one. Bolsonaro fired his health minister who didn’t play pandemic happy talk with him, replacing him with a successor who quit a month later. Both pushed the dangerous, unproven treatment hydroxychloroquine. Trump claims he’s taken it. Bolsonaro said it’s “working in all places”.

Trump and Bolsonaro are both cut from the same cloth of hyper nationalism and xenophobia. Both are incredibly inept at governing. That is unacceptable in normal times; a catastrophe in time of pandemic. Trump gloried in Bolsonaro’s election as Brazilian president two years after himself. He called Bolsonaro the ‘Trump of the Tropics’, honored that Bolsonaro modeled his campaign after his. Alas, Bolsonaro has now modeled his pandemic response after Trump’s as well.