Ione Wells
speaker
364 appearances
21 recordings
3 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 17 Aug
Ione Wells’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Definitely. I think in terms of policies, they're quite similar, both socially conservative, appealing to their base on so-called anti-woke issues, anti-net zero, anti-environmental protections. They want a sort of low tax society pledged to be tough on crime. On his rhetoric too, again, quite a lot of parallels with Donald Trump. He's very outspoken, particularly on social media.
His family also very involved with his brand as well, especially his sons. So again, a bit of a parallel there with Donald Trump. In terms of his base as well, I think there are some similarities. He's got a big backing in particular in Brazil among evangelicals, a religious group that has grown a lot in Brazil in particular.
the left in Brazil typically do better in more metropolitan areas among unionised manufacturing workers, for example, whereas Bolsonaro has really managed to grow quite a base in some of the more rural areas, appealing to the so-called, you know, sort of left behind parts of the country.
And I think in that sense, yeah, there are lots of parallels, both in terms of policy rhetoric, but also who their base is as well.
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think his even his sort of sense of humour at times has been something that might raise eyebrows among if it was sort of any other politician that said it. But with him, it's not really surprising. I mean, he did a joke recently, for example, when he was doing an interview with The New York Times, where he talked about being sort of energised.
And he even mentioned, joked about sort of not using Viagra anymore and things like that, which is just sort of comments that you wouldn't imagine most politicians to sort of be caught dead saying. And yet somehow when Bolsonaro says that he's allowed to sort of get away with that among his base. They think it's funny. It's part of his brand, I suppose.
And in that case, he's not afraid to shock in a similar way to Donald Trump, I think.
Yeah, I think he was always a real, as we say in the UK, a Marmite figure. People love him or hate him. As president, he did do lots of things. He slashed environmental protections in the Amazon, which his critics hated because it fuelled deforestation. But his supporters loved it because it promoted farming, mining, business in the area.
He still actually got quite a lot of support in that sort of Amazon region where... People that are working in agriculture, for example, want more development in the area, want less environmental protections. He did things like raise the minimum wage, relaxed gun ownership laws. He was very opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage.
He also oversaw the country's COVID response, which again was quite divisive because... Brazil had one of the worst death tolls in the world. Brazil has now surpassed China's official death toll from the coronavirus, but the country's president continues to downplay the threat from the virus.
His supporters praised him for some of what he did, including, you know, big, big cash handout programs for some of the poorest in the country. But... His critics accused him of really downplaying the virus. There was a famous viral clip of him where he essentially just sort of dismissed it as a little flu, you know, was accused of not taking it very seriously.
And I think that period, especially, you know, I think actually we did see this a bit around the world everywhere, that no matter what the policy of the person in charge during Covid, you know, the response to it could really energise people.
the leaders supporters, but it could also really turn people against them because of, you know, some of the struggles that people were going through at the time. So he definitely did face a sort of big backlash, you know, by his critics, but I think he has still managed to maintain a very strong base, even to this day now in Brazil.
That's right. President Lula da Silva, now President Lula da Silva, who he was running against, ran again in 2022, which did give the left a big boost because he's a big name, a well-known figure, had been president before. Lula won the first round of that election in 2022, but not quite by enough to secure it for him. In the second round, Lula only received 50.9% of the vote. Bolsonaro got 49.1%.
So this was the closest presidential election result in Brazil to date. which I think really laid the ground for a very, very controversial result either way. When that result happened, Bolsonaro neither conceded defeat nor really challenged the results that divided the nation. There was a lot of kind of uncertainty as to why he wasn't really saying much at the time.
His supporters didn't want to recognise President Lula as their new president. We saw some of Bolsonaro's supporters, for example, driving lorries to set up roadblocks across the country, protest the election result. And in a video statement, Bolsonaro had said to his supporters that blocking roads wasn't a legitimate protest.
There was a bit of a confusion about what he was really doing. There were these ongoing protests, including some of his supporters trying to attack the headquarters of the police in Brasilia, demonstrating near military bases as well. But despite this, on the 1st of January in 2023, President Lula was sworn in.
And he's vowed to rebuild Brazil, which he said was in a terrible state, terrible ruins, since Bolsonaro had been in power.
No, he wasn't at that ceremony. He had left Brazil a time and had gone to Florida, which I think some of his supporters were a bit disappointed by, that he was sort of seen by some as a sort of sulking, but others felt very much still that they had his back. They were going to protest this result.
A week after that inauguration ceremony, loads of Bolsonaro supporters were bussed into Brasilia wearing their flagship Brazil green and yellow football shirts, which is sort of much to the dislike of left-wing football fans, has sort of become the de facto uniform of Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil.
Showing 281–300 of 364 · page 15 of 19
← Previous
Next →