Recent Bolsonaro tantrums a known (but effective) diversionary tactic

In recent months, media outlets in Brazil had praised President Jair Bolsonaro’s restraint. After celebrating an alliance with traditional pork-barrelling parties in Congress (a group known as the “Big Center“), Mr. Bolsonaro reined in his frequent diatribes, giving uncautious observers a sensation that he might have decided to act more “presidential.”

Readers of The Brazilian Report were not about to fall into that trap. We explained that Mr. Bolsonaro’s true self is not one that is prone to conciliation and that a return to his belligerent ways was only a matter of time.

That happened on Tuesday — in a big way.

In the span of an afternoon, Mr. Bolsonaro drew the attention of the media by saying Brazil should stop being a “country of sissies” complaining about the pandemic, celebrating a suicide that led to the suspension of clinical trials of a Chinese-made vaccine, and made violent threats against the world’s number one military power.

Today, the reason for that spectacular fall off the rails seems to have been revealed. 

According to weekly magazine Época, state prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro are close to concluding an...