We all saw what happened on January 6, 2021. A strikingly similar event occurred yesterday, in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil The Brazilian Congress was stormed with substantial destruction to the interior of the building being done. It will take weeks for the building to be reopened. This attack happened almost two years to the day, that the US Capitol attack occurred. One big difference is that the building in Brasilia was mostly unoccupied.

Donald Trump lost the election in November 2020. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s version of Trump, in so many ways (e.g. downplayed Covid – never wore mask) lost his election in October 2022. Trump said the election was stolen. So did Bolsonaro. Trump blamed voting machines. So did Bolosonaro. Trump has never conceded. Neither has Bolsonaro. Trump supporters and Bolsonaro supporters both attacked buildings where Congress met and broadcast their attacks on their phones. So far, in the US, around 1,000 arrests have been made in relation to the attack, on the Capitol. Over 400 arrests have already been made in Brazil.

Steve Bannon who loves anarchy, told his audience, on the day before the Capitol attack that “it will be wild”. Bannon, after Bolsonaro’s defeat in Brazil, immediately attacked the integrity of that election, and, the voting machines used. Bannon stated that the new president of Brazil, Lula, stole the election and the Brazilian people knew it. Sound familiar? Bannon added,

“Once they start taking and digitizing the elections, once they start going to machines where you can’t get paper ballots—you don’t have proof of ID, they’re taken away from the precincts, they start to centralize it in collection centers—that’s all done for one reason. That’s to consistently steal elections because they know they don’t have the backing of the people.”

Again, sound familiar. Bannon has been in constant communication wth Bolsonaro’s son, since the Brazilian election, including with him, guess where, of course, at Mar-a-Lago, last November. No doubt, Bannon, other Trump allies, as well as Trump himself had some influence in what happened in Brazil.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard tweeted the following on Bannon’s role in Brazil.

“Bannon played a central role in helping Trump plot his coup/insurrection trajectory here as well. All the more important for Special Counsel [Jack] Smith to include Bannon in his investigatory sights—along with Trump, Giuliani, Stone, Eastman, and Chesebro.”

One last thing. After some delay, a spokesman for Bolsonaro did condemn the attack in Brazil. Not surprisingly, Trump has been silent.