Zach Beecham

Even things that it would be kind of shocking to hear Trump say, Bolsonaro said.

I spoke in Brazil to Ana Clara Costa, who's a Brazilian journalist who spent about two months, she said, on the campaign trail with him during this campaign.

And, you know, I met her at a bookstore cafe in Rio.

It's a nice part of the city.

And she's sitting there recalling these moments and she looks at me and she just says...

She just genuinely couldn't understand why people liked this guy at first because he didn't understand anything that he was saying.

His understanding of politics was so shallow, so ideological, so extreme.

But truly, it turns out that he...

ended up embodying the spirit of the times in Brazil and the sense of frustration with the establishment.

I got this sense really clearly during another part of my Rio trip.

So I went to the neighborhood that Bolsonaro was from, because he was a congressman from Rio, ran into a guy named Paulo, who's a longtime resident of this community and was actually Bolsonaro's neighbor.

So what's the real Bolsonaro?

What is he really like?

Paulo was really convinced that Brazil was beset by the demon of corruption.

And he's not wrong about that, by the way.

But his belief is that Bolsonaro was the only person who could stay incredibly independent from that system.

Here's one big difference, one that was really foundational in determining why these two countries diverged.

And it's that Brazil has a multi-party system.

And not just like any multi-party system.

There aren't just a handful of different parties.