I just want to put up top that this story is about what it sounds like, which is fantastical and like something out of a spy thriller, and yet there’s nothing we can put past this administration. But it’s also about how The New York Times missed — or chose to ignore — a story staring it right in the face.
When I read reports last weekend about how Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president who’d been sentenced to home confinement after being convicted in a notorious coup plot, had been arrested after an attempted escape, the first person I thought about was Donald Trump.
Trump, of course, is Bolsonaro’s best buddy and fellow authoritarian coup-plotter who, unfortunately for us, was indicted but never convicted because he became president again and killed the cases against himself. And since becoming president, Trump has spent months railing against Brazil and its Supreme Court — even imposing 50 percent tariffs on the country as retribution — demanding Brazil’s current president release Bolsonaro.
But that wasn’t the only reason I thought about Trump. Reports about Bolsonaro’s arrest focused on how his ankle monitor was breached after midnight, and security forces immediately detained him, putting him in a pretty cushy jail, under orders from a judge on the Brazilian Supreme Court who noted that Bolsonaro lives close to the U.S. embassy.
Bolsonaro had in early 2024 slept in the embassy of Hungary — where another authoritarian buddy, Victor Orbán, is president — in what authorities believe was an attempt to evade arrest.
I couldn’t help but think the judge and law enforcement might be aware of a plot involving the U.S., and I discussed it on my SiriusXM show on Monday, speculating that it could have been an attempt by Bolsonaro to get to the U.S. embassy and get asylum from the U.S., which, under Trump, would give it to him.
It wasn’t until Tuesday that I actually saw the video from later in the day on Saturday of Trump, heading to his chopper at the White House, being asked questions by reporters about Bolsonaro, which you can watch right here.
At first, Trump clearly seems not to catch that the reporter is asking about Bolsonaro being arrested the night before and instead thinks it’s just a general question of some sort about his dictator pal.
TRUMP: So I spoke last to the person you just referred to, and we’re going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future.
Reporter: Sir, are you aware about the president being arrested today?
Trump responds with what is clearly shock, sticking his head out .
TRUMP: What?!
Reporter: I’m talking about the former Brazilian president being arrested today.
TRUMP: No, I don’t know anything about that.
Trump seems a bit stunned, and again says, “I don’t know anything about it,” before asking the reporter, “Is that what happened?”
Then he kind of grimaces, and says, “That’s too bad,” and repeats again, “I Just think it’s too bad.”
The Timespublished a story about the latest on Bolsonaro’s arrest, but it oddly focused up top on how Trump, supposedly learning the limits of his power, doesn’t have as much interest in Bolsonaro as he used to, and it quoted from the exchange with reporters — but only the part where he says “That’s too bad,” and not the part where he says he just spoke to Bolsonaro:
“That’s too bad.”
It was a telling response from President Trump on Saturday when he learned the news from reporters that his once close ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, had just been arrested.
Did he have any thoughts?
“No,” Mr. Trump replied. “I just think it’s too bad.”
What a difference a few months make.
In July, Mr. Trump sent an angry letter to the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, demanding that the authorities drop charges that Mr. Bolsonaro had attempted a coup. Mr. Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports and imposed sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to try to keep Mr. Bolsonaro — a right-wing politician sometimes called the Trump of the Tropics — out of prison.
Five months later, Mr. Trump has all but admitted defeat.
This ia a very strange framing. It completely omits what Trump said before he said “That’s too bad.”
Trump said he’d just spoken with Bolsonaro the night before.And said he they were going to be meeting “very soon.”
How would Trump be able to meet Bolsonaro in home confinement in Brazil?
And how did the Times not catch what would otherwise throw cold water on the framing of its story? After all, far from forgetting about Bolsonaro, Trump was very much thinking about Bolsonaro, having just spoken to him and planning to see him “soon.”
Thankfully, the always sharp Rachel Maddow proved I was not crazy and being conspiratorial. Because when I did a search this morning, after seeing the video, I found that she indeed covered this on her MS Now program, raising all the right questions even as she pointed to what fantastical plot this would be if true.
But where is the rest of the media, and why did the Times not home in on Trump’s highly interesting comments, instead making it appear as if Trump had been giving up on Bolsonaro?
Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.