Bill Maher Disturbed as Bolsonaro Son Flees Brazil; Cruz Slams USAID for Bankrolling America-Haters
Bill Maher sat across from Ted Cruz on his show and called the situation in Brazil disturbing. Flávio Bolsonaro lost the election to Lula and hopped a plane to Miami the next day, and Maher said he does not want to see that model come to America.
“This I find disturbing. I don’t know that much about the Brazilian election. I know his father ran, his father tried to do a Trump, and they put him in jail for it,” Maher said. “This is his son. He lost the election. He thought he was going to win. And then the next day he’s on a plane to Miami. I don’t want to see a guy loses an election and he has to get out of the country because he’s going to be arrested. Now maybe this guy deserves to be arrested, but I don’t know. This is dangerous stuff that I see possibly coming here.”
Cruz did not hold back on Lula. “Lula, who’s the current president, is a communist who hates America. By the way, I’m not putting words in his mouth. That’s what he says. He ran as a communist who hates America,” Cruz said.
He pointed out that Lula locked up his predecessor and argued it fits the pattern of Latin American strongmen settling scores. “I understand why the son got out of town because with Lula coming back, I think he had every reason to think he’d come lock him in jail.”
Cruz then dropped the data point that has been circulating on the right. “Beginning of the Trump administration, they cut 83% of the funding to USAID. Do you know what happened after that? Seven consecutive elections in Latin America, every one of them the pro-America, more conservative candidate won and the anti-America, Marxist candidate lost, which raises a pretty strong inference that that money was funding the candidates who hate America.” He noted Brazil was the exception in an otherwise unbroken streak, and that even the New York Times has described the broader shift toward pro-America, free-market candidates as unprecedented.
Cruz closed with a straightforward preference: he wants foreign leaders who like America instead of those who campaign on hating it. The exchange put two things on the table at once — the risk of turning election losses into exile or prison, and the possibility that American taxpayer money had been tilting the field the other way for years.