Right-wing enthusiasts over at Blaze Media are seeing shark fins circling President Donald Trump and MAGA in the aftermath of the disastrous election for Trumpy Brazilian candidate Flávio Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro fled Brazil after losing a presidential election against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Even as Bolsonaro called himself the nation’s legitimate leader he fled to Miami after a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered him to surrender his passports in connection with a money-laundering investigation. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, is already serving a 27-year sentence for corruption.
But Blaze Media writer Auron MacIntyre says MAGA would be fools to not see the threat rolling in from Brazil.
“Republicans should prepare to defend the constitutional order while they still have the power to do so. Nobody is coming to save us,” warned MacIntyre.
Even if an independent agency did argue that the MAGA-curious Bolsonaros were cheated out of a victory, MacIntyre complains that it is unlikely that a government or international body is willing to take action to pressure Brazil into removing Lula and installing Flávio. Lula remains in office, and, as MacIntyre describes it, he “will be allowed to further consolidate power and punish his enemies,” putting Brazilian conservatives in an “increasingly dangerous political situation.”
But even as Trump sics his DOJ on liberal politicians and his perceived political enemies, MacIntyre warns that “American conservatives should recognize the danger” coming out of Brazil for MAGA.
“Donald Trump lost a bitterly contested election in 2020, fought the result in court, faced criminal prosecutions connected to efforts to overturn it, and eventually returned to the White House. The parallels are hard to miss,” said MacIntyre. “When judges and prosecutors become participants in an all-or-nothing political struggle, appeals to their neutrality will satisfy fewer and fewer Americans.”
“Meanwhile, American progressives are making plans for a new institutional crisis of their own,” MacIntyre claimed, even as Republicans dither away their flimsy congressional majority.
“To call congressional Republicans a total failure may be too generous,” said MacIntyre. “Failure assumes they were trying.”
Instead, he complains Republicans are trying to “run out the clock on Trump and wait for MAGA to loosen its hold on the party.” They would rather preserve their place in a “failing political arrangement and throw the country into chaos” rather than confront and toss the liberal establishment that has it out for Trump.
“Conservatives had better understand what time it is,” warned MacIntyre. “A stern lecture about civic responsibility will not stop a riot. Brilliant arguments about separation of powers will not restrain officials determined to bend the rules. A court’s seal does not make every political judgment impartial. If a constitutional crisis arrives, the right will need more than faith that its opponents will play fair.” The Bolsonaros can flee to Trump’s America, but MAGA has “nowhere else to go.”
“There will be no neutral power waiting offshore to repair our institutions, no foreign president to return the country to us,” he cautioned.