Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil, plans to return earlier from his trip to Florida, as he declared in an interview two days after thousands of his supporters stormed the Brasilia headquarters of Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court on Sunday.
Bolsonaro has been in the United States since the end of December, where the images of the assault have encouraged comparisons with the attack on the Washington Capitol on January 6, 2021. Defeated at the polls in October, he preferred to take refuge in Orlando while his successor in the post, Lula Da Silva, was sworn in as president on New Year's Day.
"I came [to the United States] to stay until the end of [the] month [of January], but my intention is to bring my return forward," Bolsonaro told the Brazilian affiliate of the news channel CNN on Tuesday.
The 67-year-old ex-military man was admitted to an Orlando hospital the day before with abdominal pain related, according to what he stated, to the injuries he sustained when he was stabbed in the 2018 election campaign. “I came to spend time with the family .
But I did not have quiet days.
First there was this unfortunate episode [due to the attack by his supporters on Sunday] in Brazil and then this hospitalization of mine," he added in his conversation with CNN Brazil, in which he recalled that the doctors who treat him at home are more familiar with his medical emergencies, implying that this is the reason for the early return to Brazil.
After his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, revealed on Monday that he was hospitalized, the far-right politician himself tweeted a message with a photo on a bed in a medical center: "After being stabbed in Juiz de Fora/MG, I was subjected to five operations.
Since the last one, twice I had adhesions that led to other medical procedures.
Yesterday I had new adhesions and I was discharged from the Orlando/USA hospital.
Thank you for your prayers and messages for a speedy recovery,” he wrote.
The images that arrived on Sunday from Brasilia, and the bitter memory of the events of January 6, whose second anniversary was celebrated on Friday, have caused some voices, such as those of Democratic legislators Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Joaquín Castro (Texas), have asked the White House to act to force the extradition of the former Brazilian president.
Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter: "The United States must stop granting Bolsonaro refuge in Florida."
Castro, also on the social network, elaborated on this idea: "Bolsonaro should not have refuge in Florida, where he has been hiding from accountability for his crimes."
To questions from journalists, both the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the State Department spokesman, Ned Price, have avoided commenting earlier this week on the situation of the former president on US soil, where he arrived with a visa.
In addition to avoiding the trouble of imposing the presidential sash and making the solemn transfer of power to his successor and rival, Bolsonaro's critics interpreted his trip to the United States -where he arrived on the presidential plane, since he was still head of state- as a way to avoid various investigations into his management, which await him in Brazil.
These days in Florida, before the hospital, a mansion of the
Former Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter José Aldo da Silva.
On Sunday, he lukewarmly condemned the assault on Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidency of radical Bolsonaristas, many of whom arrived the day before the assault on buses from different parts of the country to join the hundreds who had been camped for two months outside the headquarters of the Army in the capital.
“Peaceful demonstrations, according to the law, are part of democracy.
However, the depredations and invasions of public buildings like those that occurred today, as well as those practiced by the left in 2013 and 2017, are beyond the rule,” he said.
The former president was referring to the popular protests in the final stretch of Dilma Rousseff's government, and after her dismissal, when her supporters walked on the roof of Congress.
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