Jair Bolsonaro Under Pressure Over Trump's Travel Ban on Brazil
Jair Bolsonaro Under Pressure Over Trump's Travel Ban on Brazil
"It’s a terrible irony that the US has banned travel from the country that most closely imitated its approach to Covid-19," said AS/COA's Brian Winter to The Guardian.
Brazil’s embattled president, Jair Bolsonaro, has come under further pressure after his political idol Donald Trump imposed a travel ban on non-US citizens coming from the South American country in response to a soaring number of Brazilian coronavirus cases...
Brian Winter, the New York-based editor of Americas Quarterly, said he believed that because of the warm ties between the US and Brazil “the Trump administration waited as long as it possible could to take this measure”.
But the US message now to Brazil is “even this friendship cannot protect you from being banned if you are passing the 20,000 deaths mark and you can’t get your curve under control”, Winter added.
“There was no political eagerness to do this in Washington. They knew it was going to be embarrassing for Bolsonaro and Brazil and they tried to hold off.”
Winter continued: “It’s a terrible irony that the US has banned travel from the country that most closely imitated its approach to Covid-19.
“People try to make this about diplomacy but ultimately it is just a very, very sad indictment of the Covid policies really in both countries–because Bolsonaro has clearly been imitating both the actions and the rhetoric of the Untied States.”...
