On the menu today: Brazil rarely grabs the attention of the American news cycle, but the images of thousands of supporters of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro storming the presidential palace, Congress, and Supreme Court will do it — but thankfully, as of this writing, order has returned to the Brazilian capital. Meanwhile, the fight that resulted in Kevin McCarthy’s becoming the speaker of the House had a lot of MAGA-on-MAGA infighting — Marjorie Taylor Greene against Lauren Boebert, the anti-McCarthy 20 ignoring Trump, Mike Lindell fuming at Greene — pointing to cracks in the foundation of the usually unified pro-Trump movement.
When Did Early January Turn into Short-Lived-Insurrection Season?
As of this writing, the immediate crisis in Brazil appears to have been resolved. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has already toured and inspected the damage at the National Congress, the Supreme Federal Court, and the presidential office in Brasília; the sites were attacked and ransacked by supporters of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Police and security forces have restored order, the army surrounds the buildings to ensure no further mob action, and the president — known to all as “Lula” — is pledging that the perpetrators will be brought to justice. At least 400 protesters have been arrested, according to CNN Brazil.
Grand opening, grand closing.
Many have commented about how the images of the green-and-yellow-clad Bolsonaro supporters smashing windows and running through the hallways and chambers of government buildings resembled January 6 Capitol Hill riot in Washington. They’re more alike than the would-be insurrectionists might realize. You can’t overthrow a government just by getting a crowd together and briefly overwhelming the cops on duty at government buildings. A mob like that can do damage, but it can’t build anything, and it can’t make any serious claim to legitimacy or constitutional authority. It can only hope, against long odds, that it can summon enough of a threat of violence that the entire previously existing constitutional order collapses and that it can rule by force.
Scenarios such as this are rare and seem to be getting rarer with time. It’s not like the Brazilian police, prosecutors, judges, the military, and Lula were all going to shrug and say, “Oh, well, I guess Bolsonaro gets to be president again.” Populist movements have an easy time whipping people up into an angry frenzy, but not such an easy time turning all that energy into something constructive and lasting. And average human beings, from the U.S. to Brazil to the far corners of the Earth, just wants to live in peace and provide for their families. Angry mobs in the streets are bad for business; in most cases, the anger burns itself out eventually.
Bolsonaro’s hanging out in a vacation home in Kissimmee, Fla.; at the end of the year, he was dining at Kentucky Fried Chicken. (Christopher Buckley’s satirical novels have a harder and harder time keeping up with reality.) The U.S. government now has a massive headache, as Bolsonaro likely entered the U.S. on an A-1 visa, which are reserved for heads of state, which are usually canceled after the recipient leaves office. Bolsonaro’s term ended December 31. And even before Sunday, he may have had good reason to never return to Brazil:
Bolsonaro, who has been accused of threatening democratic rule in Brazil and encouraging the devastation of the Amazon forest, is currently under investigation in at least four criminal probes.
As long as he was in office, according to Brazilian law, Bolsonaro could only be arrested if he was convicted by the Supreme Court.
Now, a trial against him would be handled much quicker by lower courts, and these investigations could potentially lead to his arrest and prevent him from running for office in the future if found guilty.
The existing probes against him include allegations he leaned on the federal police to protect his sons, spread known electoral falsehoods, and promoted the spread of misinformation from a troll farm in his presidential office.
You know the world’s turning upside down when a Brazilian crook is running to the United States to avoid extradition.
Lula tweeted in Portuguese:
They took advantage of the silence on Sunday, when we are still setting up the government, to do what they did. And you know that there are several speeches by the former president encouraging this. And this is also his responsibility and the parties that supported him.
Lula’s government is going to want Bolsonaro back to face justice in any one of those ongoing criminal probes, along with any criminal charges arising from Sunday’s riot.
Instances like these exemplify why American conservatives ought to be extremely wary of Bolsonaro. He’s a demagogue who’s met with the socialist Peruvian president who recently tried to pull off a coup of his own and allied with some of our biggest adversaries. Newly elected leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is atrocious in his own right. But at least Lula doesn’t threaten liberal democracy in the same way.
The Rise and Fall of the MAGA Dynasty
One of the odder aspects of the messy fight over the selection of the speaker of the House was watching usually like-minded, Trump-aligned MAGA figures turning on one another. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) accused Representative Lauren Boebert (R., Co.) of engaging in unserious obstructionism. Former president Donald Trump urged House Republicans to unite behind Kevin McCarthy but didn’t flip a single vote. And after McCarthy won the battle, MAGA My Pillow king Mike Lindell denounced Greene.
Note that the habitual hyperbole of many figures in the MAGA crowd steers them into an all-or-nothing mindset that leaves little room for differences among allies, which is a not-all-that-rare phenomenon in politics. For example, during the speaker fight, Florida representative Matt Gaetz contended that, “There is very little difference between Nancy Pelosi and her California delegation mate that seeks the gavel.”
Now, if you really believe that there’s very little difference between Pelosi and McCarthy, you can’t accept any deal that leaves McCarthy in place as leader of the GOP conference. Giving Freedom Caucus members more power within the Rules Committee is not going to make much difference if McCarthy really is ideologically and temperamentally indistinguishable from Pelosi.
This is not a phenomenon solely among Trump-aligned Republicans. Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) apologized for calling anti-McCarthy Republicans “terrorists” and Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) apologized for losing his temper and lunging at Gaetz. But up until pretty recently, when Trump said “Jump,” most MAGA-aligned GOP lawmakers said “How high?” When Trump backed Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary, his supporters mostly fell in line, with some grumbling.
The movement driven by Trump since the summer and fall of 2015 is now showing cracks, and perhaps splitting into factions. The former president is still the biggest dog in the pack, but not everyone feels as much need to follow his orders, and there’s much less fear of crossing him.
It is now clear that neither Donald Trump Jr. nor Ivanka Trump is likely to play the role of the heir apparent to an American political dynasty. Ivanka and Jared Kushner have made it clear that they won’t be participating in Trump’s 2024 bid. (The former president later declared on his social-media platform that he’d asked them not to participate.) For what it’s worth, Donald Trump Jr. is a little more interested in doing outreach and relationship-maintenance to conservative groups such as the NRA, but he appears more interested in podcasting and memes than a role in government.
When Trump departs the stage, the throne will be empty, and a lot of populist-nationalist figures will fight viciously over who inherits it — Don Jr., Tucker Carlson, Greene, Josh Hawley, Mike Pompeo, Matt Gaetz. You could even see the likes of Candice Owens, Sarah Palin, Jeanine Pirro, or Dan Bongino leading lead the MAGA crowd, you don’t need a government job, you need to be outrageous and entertaining and channel their rage, so even the likes of Alex Jones might qualify. Notice that the MAGA crowd quickly falls in love with any celebrity, so people may well whisper in the ears of figures such as Kid Rock, Gina Carano, Aaron Rodgers, etc. that this is the time to jump into politics.
Beyond that, as far as I can tell, a significant portion of MAGA-world’s cashflow is dependent upon Trump and perceived proximity to him and the sense that they have his ear, with the exceptions of Tucker Carlson and the Fox News employees. Seb Gorka, Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Kimberly Guilfoyle . . . the perception of their power, influence, and importance is heavily driven by the perception that they have Trump’s ear and can steer him in a particular direction with endorsements and such. If Trump’s influence is declining, how badly does anyone need those people? How much is anyone willing to pay to have a “Trump whisperer” around?
Few figures have developed a populist-nationalist power base separate from Trump. Probably Vance comes closest, or he has the best potential to do so, now that he is in the Senate.
The current mass of tens of millions of MAGA fans will end up gradually unifying behind someone eventually. Maybe within a year or two . . . or maybe not for a while; some leaders aren’t replaceable — whether it’s Winston Churchill or Osama bin Laden. Members of the MAGA movement are generally older than the average American, and they will age at the same pace as the rest of us — and shrink as a share of American demographics.
For a long time, people asked, “Who will inherit the talk-radio throne from Rush Limbaugh?” and the answer turned out to be . . . nobody, really. Sean Hannity is the current top dog, with an audience of 16 million . . . but that’s roughly half of Rush’s audience when Rush was in his glory days. The talk-radio audience got older, and the format lost ground to the Internet and podcasts.
The MAGA movement that exists at the start of 2023 is likely going to look different by the end of 2024, and even more different in the years that immediately follow.
ADDENDUM: Over on the Washington Post op-ed page, I look at Colorado governor Jared Polis’s short-lived decision to ship migrants to Chicago and New York, infuriating the mayors in those big cities:
Better border security is only one piece of the puzzle of dealing with illegal immigration, asylum seekers and the waves of migrants at the southern border. But it is an essential piece, and the fact that Democrats are publicly warring with other Democrats over this subject ought to be sufficient motivation to spur Biden and his team to see if a bipartisan deal can be reached with the new Congress. With luck, what Biden saw in El Paso will add to the sense of urgency.