Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro lost his restraint during a press conference on Monday. He asked a journalist to shut up and called Media Group Globo, the largest media conglomerate in Brazil.
“Shut up! You do rotten press. This is useless. You destroy the Brazilian family, the Brazilian religion,” the president shouted out of his mind at a Globo TV journalist who asked him a question about wearing a face mask. In particular, the journalist reminded the chief that he was fined in several Brazilian states for participating in demonstrations without a mask.
“I go where I want and how I want, okay? If you don’t want to wear a mask, don’t wear a mask,” then bluntly tore off his mask. “Look, put this in TV news: I’m not wearing a mask! Are you satisfied now?” said Bolsonaro, who has been targeting the press since taking office in January 2019. “Globo are nonsense journalist. Anyone who watches this channel is A victim of misinformation. Shame on you,” Bolsonaro continued.
The Globo Group was quick to react. “The president will not impede or inhibit the work of the press in Brazil by shouting or with intolerance,” it said in a statement.
Bolsonaro also railed against CNN Brazil, accusing it of having “praised” demonstrations that last Sunday brought together tens of thousands of people to criticize the government’s policy against the coronavirus pandemic, which has already left more than 500,000 dead in the country.
Bolsonaro has opposed any social distancing or isolation measures since the start of the pandemic, and has questioned the efficacy of vaccines and the usefulness of masks, while promoting drugs that have no proven efficacy in fighting the virus.
“As long as I am president… we are going to fight so that citizens have weapons and are not obliged to wear masks,” he said last Thursday in his weekly live program
