Brazil’s far-right president is thirsty for Joe Rogan on main

Time to Log Off is a weekly series documenting the many ways our political figures show their whole asses online.

If we here in the United States learned anything from living under President Donald Trump, it’s that being a dedicated — if addlebrained — shitposter is in no way inhibitive of simultaneously being an astonishingly terrible politician. If anything, it’s an asset!

Consider, for instance, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took time out of his busy schedule of “repeatedly catching COVID” and “being literally full of shit” to wade into the most pressing issue facing the citizens of his South American nation: the fragile emotional state of an American podcaster worth $100 million dollars.

Embarrassingly enough for Bolsonaro, his thirsting for Rogan wasn’t even all that original, coming hours after a differently — if equally — embarrassing tweet from El Salvador’s president and Bolsonaro’s fellow right-wing authoritarian Nayib Bukele.

Rogan, currently the “hey, I’m just askin’ some extremely stupid, wildly harmful questions” impetus behind multiple high-profile artists’ move to yank their catalogues from Spotify, has yet to reply to either head of state on Twitter. This can only mean:

A) He hasn’t noticed the multiple high-ranking politicians thirsting after him.

B) They’ve taken this to the DMs.

C) He truly doesn’t care that literal presidents are jumping up and down and waving their arms at him in a pathetically transparent attempt to cash in on his credibility among ... English-speaking podcast enthusiasts, I guess?

Whatever the case, the desperation from Bolsonaro in particular, right down to his “I’m not sure what Joe Rogan thinks about me or about my government, but it doesn’t matter” feint at playing it cool only serves to highlight the degree to which Brazil under his leadership has become the sort of restrictive, authoritarian, anti-free speech haven Trump himself would have killed for. “If freedom of speech means anything, it means that people should be free to say what they think, no matter if they agree or disagree with us,” is a laughable sentiment coming from a man whose government has overseen direct intimidation and criminalization of critics and regularly blocks news outlets on social media.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s handling — or, not — of the COVID pandemic has seen his country face one of the worst economic downturns in history, to say nothing of the more than half a million Brazilians who have died on his watch. Nevertheless, this is how he’s chosen to spend his time — farting around on Twitter for the clout (although at least he’s not sharing golden shower videos anymore).

Sir. Senhor Presidente. Jair. It’s time to log off.