U.S. Congresswoman Susan Wild, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, on Tuesday said that a House hearing on Brazil called for by Republicans presents “a distorted view of Brazilian democracy” and “provides a platform for those seeking to undermine it.”
As The Brazilian Report showed, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, chaired by Republican Congressman Chris Smith, held a hearing today with witnesses dear to the Brazilian far-right.
Back in March, Mr. Smith held a press conference outside the Capitol with a delegation of far-right Brazilian lawmakers who support former President Jair Bolsonaro. During that event, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the third-eldest son of the former president and a close ally of Steve Bannon, claimed that Brazil is “no longer a democracy.”
The Brazilian far-right has made it their mission to denounce ongoing investigations into a 2022 coup plot as a political witch hunt, much like supporters of Donald Trump have done with the probes against the Republican presidential nominee.
Elon Musk’s involvement in this political battle propelled the discussion onto the U.S. political stage.
Congresswoman Wild, as the first to speak in today’s hearing after chairman Smith, was also the first Democrat to publicly shoot back at the Republican’s effort to denounce Brazil as a dictatorship.
“Brazil is a strong and vibrant democracy,” she said, with “an electoral system that is rightly considered to be one of the most secure and rapid in the world.”
Ms. Wild added: “Former President Bolsonaro’s conduct in office, his praise for the military dictatorship, his calls for violence against his political opponents, his refusal to acknowledge his 2022 election loss, his attempt to engineer a coup, and his incitement of the January 8 [2023] attacks triggered laws in place designed to serve as a check on Executive power resulting from the coup in 1964.”
Mr. Smith has parroted the Brazilian far-right’s criticism of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes — who is overseeing the probes into anti-democratic movements in Brazil.
U.S. Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat from California, told The Brazilian Report before the hearing that “Republicans are the opposite of concerned about democracy in Brazil.” She added that “the political violence and attempted coup that occurred [in Brazil] on January 8 [2023], in many ways a copycat of what we experienced in the U.S. on January 6 [2021], was a test of Brazil’s democratic institutions, which prevailed and delivered an impressively swift and decisive response.”
Search
