US President Joe Biden and Brazil’s newly elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had some common experiences to discuss when they met in Washington DC in the US on Friday. One of these was the storming of the respective country’s parliament building after their predecessor lost the presidential election.
Joe Biden stated during the presidents’ meeting in the Oval Office of the White House that the democratic systems in the United States and Brazil have been subjected to tests, “very difficult tests”, in recent years.
— But in both the United States and Brazil, democracy won, said Joe Biden.
Trump of the tropics
Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and in the recent presidential election in Brazil, left-wing leader Lula da Silva defeated far-right Jair Bolsonaro, who has been nicknamed the “Trump of the Tropics” and was an outspoken admirer of the former US president.
Both Trump and Bolsonaro disputed the election results, without providing any evidence, but the claims caught on with their most devoted supporters. On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Biden from taking office as president. In January of this year, thousands of supporters of Bolsonaro stormed, among other things, Congress and the presidential palace in an attempt to force Lula out.
Sounds familiar
At the meeting in Washington, President Lula said his goal is to restore Brazil’s reputation in the world after his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro’s time in power.
— Brazil marginalized itself for four years. His (Bolsonaro’s) world began and ended with “fake news,” President Lula da Silva said.
Joe Biden then jokingly said to the Brazilian president “That sounds familiar”, a reference to his own representative Donald Trump.
During the meeting, the two presidents also discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unrest in Haiti, migration and climate change, including efforts to stop deforestation in the Amazon, the White House said.