John Bolton To Develop Cuba, Venezuela Strategy With Brazil’s Bolsonaro
President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton — a “bloodthirsty maniac,” as Esquire put it, perhaps best known for being part of George W. Bush’s war machine — appears to have, unsurprisingly given his reputation, taken to Brazil’s far-right President-elect and proponent of military dictatorship Jair Bolsonaro.
According to McClatchy, Bolton and Bolsonaro are partnering up to develop an elaborate, joint foreign policy strategy against Cuba and Venezuela. In a Twitter post published Wednesday, Bolton announced that he would be meeting with Bolsonaro on November 29, writing that Brazil and the United States share “many bilateral interests and will work closely on expanding freedom and prosperity throughout the Western Hemisphere.”
In a separate statement, the White House added that Bolton and Bolsonaro will also discuss China’s efforts to put a stamp on the global market. Given Bolton’s recent public remarks about Cuba and Venezuela — Bolton said that the United States government is “looking forward” to watching their governments fail — the announced effort to put pressure on the two impoverished countries hardly comes as surprise.
The same can be said for Brazil’s President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who has threatened to break off diplomatic and other relations with Venezuela and Cuba. The blossoming relationship between Bolton and Bolsonaro, the United States and Brazil, has the potential “to really shake things up,” according to Jose Cardenas, who also served in the National Security Council under former President George W. Bush.
Jair Bolsonaro is elected president of Brazil. Read his extremist, far-right positions in his own words. https://t.co/FcF1ur1zxu by @AndrewDFish
— The Intercept (@theintercept) October 28, 2018
Fernando Cutz, a former senior director at the National Security Council in the Trump administration, added that the relationship between Bolton and Bolsonaro, a far-right proponent of military dictatorship and advocate of torture, “will be one of the best we’ll see.”
As detailed by a previous Inquisitr report, Bolsonaro is considered to be one of the most extreme leaders on the planet. An admirer of military dictatorship, a proponent of torture and extrajudicial killings, Bolsonaro has been widely condemned for holding xenophobic, racist, and homophobic views. He has threatened female representatives in Brazil with rape, advocated that parents beat their homosexual children up, and even called for a civil war. “When, one day, we start a civil war here and do the work that the military regime did not do. Killing some 30,000… not kicking them out, killing!” he once said.
But evidently President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton has embraced Bolsonaro and evidently considers him an ally. In early 2017, Politico warned that Donald Trump’s “warm words for strongmen set off alarms.” If Trump’s cozying up to Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping set off alarms, one could infer that the administration’s collaboration with Jair Bolsonaro has them blaring.
