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.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
You know, his fan base almost using the criminal allegations that had been brought against Donald Trump as a form of sort of energy, really something that really riled up Donald Trump's base.
What do you think of the conviction? He's still going to be president.
They believed, like many of Bolsonaro's supporters believe about him, that he was a victim of political persecution. And I think it's quite likely that Bolsonaro will have seen that and thought that that is actually something that he can sort of play to as well.
They certainly do have a sort of good relationship. And even though Jair Bolsonaro himself wasn't allowed to travel to go to the inauguration of Donald Trump, certainly when I was at the inauguration of Donald Trump, I saw a lot of Brazilian fans there, people who were Bolsonaro supporters. There was even actually a Bolsonaro impersonator on my flight from Sao Paulo to Washington.
He did. He looked identical to, I actually thought it was Bolsonaro. I thought I'd got my hands on this amazing story that Bolsonaro somehow managed to defy his travel ban and end up on my flight. But it was actually not him. It was a professional lookalike, I should say, who had gone all the way to Washington just to be there for Donald Trump's inauguration.
So that sort of friendship, alliance, whatever you want to call it, between both Donald Trump and Bolsonaro, but also between their fans, I think is certainly significant.
In terms of what Trump could do to help him, interestingly, this week, actually, as well, less than 24 hours after these charges were brought against Bolsonaro, Trump's media company sued the Brazilian Supreme Court judge, Alexander de Moraes, accusing him of illegally censoring right-wing voices on social media.
Now, this is a slightly complicated angle to all of this, but Alexander de Moraes is one of the Supreme Court judges who essentially will now decide Bolsonaro's future, will decide whether he goes to trial, essentially. Moraes has become a bit of an international name because he's
in the past ordered social media platforms to take down certain accounts that have been investigated for disinformation, for particularly political disinformation or undermining democracy. And Trump's media company are now sort of taking him on legally. But I think the timing of this is significant. The fact that it's less than 24 hours after this charge was brought.
And suddenly the judge at the centre of it all is actually now being sort of taken on legally by Donald Trump and his company is quite interesting. On your wider point, though, of, you know, what could Trump actually do to assist Bolsonaro?
I think a lot of it is about sort of their support that they show online, the way that they're managed to really rally up people, use them as a cause that they can get international media's attention on, get their sort of fan base energised by. Practically, though... he is potentially going to face a legal process in Brazil.
So there is a bit of a question mark about whether that support, that rhetoric, only goes so far, really. If...
Yeah, I think to make another comparison with the US here, you know, the election that's due here in 2026 has a lot of parallels with the last US election. You have an elderly incumbent on the left who has had some recent health issues, who will be nearly 81 by the time of the next election, who is probably going to face pressure not to run again. That's President Lula.
Then you have, if, as you say, if Jair Bolsonaro is in some way allowed to run again, if this ban were to be lifted or if he wasn't to face trial and legal challenges ahead, you know, you then have this very popular right-wing figure who is energised by, you know, presumably, if he's got to that point, overcoming various legal barriers and and still has a big base in Brazil.
He is still very much the figurehead of the right in Brazil. His Liberal Party is the largest in Congress. He's still able to attract big rallies across the country. He, as I say, has big support among evangelical Christians, among farmers, agriculture business. Polls still suggest that he's the most popular right-wing figure. So I think that base is certainly still there.
I think where, again, there are parallels to Donald Trump is you do have some figures on the right, too, who can't really stomach him and feel like he is a toxic brand and basically privately probably would much rather that he does potentially go to jail and that they can kind of rebuild a more moderate right wing challenge to President Lula and the left in Brazil.
But I think it is fair to say that, yeah, were he to overcome these barriers, he would be a really significant electoral force, not least because he still has the sort of campaigning material behind him. He's still got a big base on social media and in real life here.
Thank you for having me.
It has been a bit of a shock result, particularly for the incumbent Daniel Noboa, because electoral authorities here in Ecuador have called this a technical tie after both Daniel Noboa and his main challenger, Luisa Gonzalez, received pretty much identical percentages of the vote. Now, it was expected that it could go to a second round in April, but polls say
had suggested that Daniel Noboa was significantly ahead. This result is more narrow than expected, indicating that second round could be much harder to call. And certainly the result dashed the hopes of Noboa's supporters, many of whom had been really buoyed by an early exit poll suggesting that he might even clinch victory outright.
Showing 321–340 of 364 · page 17 of 19
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