Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency: when ‘Groundhog Day’ meets ‘Friday the 13th’

Covering Brazilian politics since Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power feels a lot like living in 1993 cult classic ‘Groundhog Day.’ In the film, Bill Murray’s cynical weatherman Phil Connors finds himself trapped in a loop, reliving the same day over and over again. Phil eventually concludes that there are no consequences for his actions and indulges in a sequence of wanton debauchery before losing hope and attempting to kill himself, again and again. 

But, every morning he wakes up in the same bed and breakfast in rural Pennsylvania.

While the level of absurdity and tragedy has certainly increased since Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president — not helped by the arrival of the novel coronavirus — those of us unfortunate enough to be covering the administration have essentially been reliving the same news day for nearly 16 months.

First, you wake up and do what has become second nature to journalists: log on to Twitter and find out what scandal is on your plate for the day. The misdeeds of the president’s brood, the next cabinet minister to claim the Earth is flat, or that euclidean geometry is a communist plot, or the latest anti-democratic provocation of the president. 

Then you frantically attempt to come to terms with the level of insanity on display, check what those in the know are saying about the scandal, file a piece, only to find out that the...