Zach Beecham

What happened?

So, in 2014, there was this absolutely massive corruption scandal in Brazil.

It's gone hand in hand with Brazil's worst recession in decades.

Corruption had long been a problem in Brazil, but this scandal exposed tremendous amounts of malfeasance from the highest levels of society, including top-level politicians.

It's by one metric the largest political scandal in terms of dollars of any democracy ever in the world.

It was bad.

The wide scope of the corruption scandal, right, combined with the economic downturn, basically created a sense among Brazilians that the elite couldn't be trusted.

They were corrupt.

They were poor stewards of the economy.

It's time to throw the bums out and replace them with someone new.

So who emerged as the champion of this anti-incumbent sentiment?

All's Jair Bolsonaro.

He was, I mean, to be blunt, he's a weirdo, right?

Bolsonaro had been at the fringes of Brazilian politics for a long time.

He'd been in Congress for quite a bit, but he never really passed any legislation because he was so strange that nobody really wanted to work with him.

And by strange, I mean not just like personally unpleasant, but ideologically very extreme.

So he's an open admirer of the military dictatorship.

He once told a fellow female legislature that I wouldn't rape you because you weren't worth it.

Oh, good lord.

He really is an extreme guy.