Da-lulu for Lula... and election shenanigans | Hour 1

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the peak calendar show.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So I don't know about you, but I spent a good portion of the weekend becoming an expert in Brazilian, not jiu-jitsu, Brazilian politics and election law. And so now I feel completely competent and expert enough to promote all sorts of hot takes and opinions about what transpired down in Brazil, where A guy named Lula, who apparently is pretty cozy with Pootie Poot and would very much like to reorder the global stage. He's that's part of the BRICS nations. Did you know, like the BRICS nations, the B-R-I-C-S nations? Well, the B in. BRICS stands for Brazil. So and then the other ones are Russia, India, China. and South Africa, which to me, I feel like it should be the BRICSA nations because it's South Africa. Now, they have expanded to include other countries like Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. But you start adding in all of those letters and the acronym just becomes unwieldy, okay? Although I would point out they've got a healthy mix of consonants and vowels, so they could probably do something with all of those letters. But I digress. Okay, so the Brazilian president, his name is Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva. And he is, as the AP points out in their headline, as well as the very first line of the story, in fact, the description of the man, the only one that I saw really in the entire article from the Associated Press, is that he's a vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump. And that's really the important thing, right? Like, that's the only identification one needs when running for president of a foreign country that is, you know, not America, obviously. The key here is to filter it all through the prism of Donald Trump. So this way, if you hate Donald Trump and you are reading this story, you know you should be happy that Lula won because he is a vocal critic of Trump. And if you love Donald Trump, then you know right away, well, you're probably just going to stop reading the article, but you know right away that you should not like Lula because he's a vocal critic of Donald Trump. See, this is what we like to call in the biz, bias. Actually, we call it that outside the biz, too. It's just bias. There isn't any reason to put this... You want to add it in later as some, like, okay, here's our relationship between Brazil and America and whatever. You want to include that in the story, fine. But the guy, like, the defining feature. Of this guy. is not his opposition to Donald Trump or his criticisms of Donald Trump. There's a lot of other stuff. Going on with this Lula. Yeah, there's a lot of other stuff going on with Lula. For example, rampant corruption. That's a problem. Apparently, the stock market, not very happy with what has occurred. Market crashed in Brazil. It actually triggered their circuit breaker mechanism, which is to halt all of the trading because they did not want to basically collapse the economy when the election results came in, which, by the way, had tipped to the Brazilian election system, which everybody thought was like broken, like terribly broken for some reason that they had to extend the polling hours at certain places that were strongholds for Lula. And then they but they were able to miraculously count all of the ballots from all of the machines within a couple hours. And so, I mean, they really are an example for the rest of the democracies around the world. No, like you should be able to count all of these ballots and to know who won. And by the way, this is an unprecedented election. Election. Unprecedented. I mean, not just for the fact that I think he's 80 years old, and so now, like, he's the oldest guy ever elected president, but he is, he was also the second place votainer. This has been one of my biggest frustrations this weekend, is seeing all of the use of the term vote getter, which is a terrible, awkward, clumsy word, and it should be banned from journalisming. OK, the proper word should be votainer. And this is a hill I shall die on. So he finished second. This prompted the runoff. And then amazingly, like all of the people who did not vote for him in the first election round, they voted for other, quote unquote, far right candidates, because apparently everybody that ran against Lula was everybody else, all the other candidates, all the other parties, all the other voters, they're all, quote, far right, which is, again, what we call in the biz bias. They're not all far right. And you labeling an entire political movement or party as far right because they're not left, that Again, that's your thumb on the scale. So for some reason, everybody that really didn't like Lula so much as their first pick, they all picked him as their second pick in the runoff. It's an amazing, as I said, historically unprecedented to see this kind of a swing from finishing second as he did and then just gobbling up all of these votes, all these votes that were out there, getting all these new people to the polls as well. And he's going to celebrate more than likely by imprisoning the son of the former president, who he also threw in jail. And now he's going to go after the guy that he beat, a guy by the name of Flavio Bolsonaro. Yeah. So that that that guy's probably going to end up in jail with his dad because that's I mean, that's how they roll, apparently, in Brazil. In fact... Lula himself, he got imprisoned for corruption. It's like everybody, it's like, I guess it's part of the deal. Like you run for president, you hold office, you wield power, then you lose, and then you go to prison for a while. It's kind of like what we're looking to do here in America. I guess this is the Brazilian way. We're going to go full Brazilian. Here in America. I kind of get the sense that's where we're heading. Just given the comments... from certain Democrat leaders that are really looking forward to winning on November 3rd. And once they get power, they would very much like to start imprisoning people. That's what they've said. So I assume we're going full Brazilian. So Lula was reelected Sunday in a result that provides relief to critics of widening U.S. influence in Latin America. This is. Now, to be fair to the Associated Press, Lula did make this a part of his campaign. He ran against America. And if you go on to Twitter, formerly known as X, if you go on to Twitter, you will see For some reason, and we may never know the reason for this, but for some reason, we're seeing. A whole load of communists and socialists and. People of the left and the far left, and they're all very, very, very happy with Lula's victory. But we are assured he's not a commie. That's what we are assured. Brazil has a market economy with a very, very rich welfare program. And also he was the former leader of a trade. Of a union and also co-founded the Workers Party. Not a commie. Just all the commies are happy today. OK, so again, see, I became an expert in Brazilian politics here, so you didn't have to. 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Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. All right, so back to the Associated Press story. With 100% of the vote counted, that's pretty impressive. They got all 100% counted. Mere hours after the polls closed, Brazil's electoral court announced that the soon-to-be 81-year-old Lula had a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes over his opponent Flavio Bolsonaro. That gives Lula 51.8% of the total vote. Bolsonaro quickly refused to concede defeat and asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that allowed, or sorry, that followed a last minute decision to extend voting hours by two hours. Bolsonaro is the son of former president, is this Jair Bolsonaro or Jair, Jair Bolsonaro, whom Lula defeated to win the presidency in 2022. And then imprisoned Bolsonaro. So his son, who is a senator, is ran for president. Lula's triumph bucks a regional trend of victories for right of center presidential candidates allied with. Donald Trump. It also means Latin America's largest economy with a GDP of $ 2. 6 trillion per year will likely continue defying Trump's demands despite the pressure of increased tariffs. Now, as I mentioned, Lulu ran against Donald Trump. That was what he did. And for leftists, this is all you need to say. It's like, you had me at I hate Trump, right? So he said, either the homeland remains free or we die for Brazil. This country will not accept being anyone's backyard. Okay, but like, like you kind of are like, unless you're an island, everybody's got a backyard. All countries have a backyard in this regard, right? You got, you got a neighbor. That's your backyard, right? Like nobody believes that the United States owns Brazil or any other country. So then later in the story here, they quote a 51-year-old businessman and a supporter of Bolsonaro, a guy by the name of Rodrigo Valentim, and he said another Lula government would harm the economy. He pointed to financial markets' positive reaction to the result from the first round of the election when Bolsonaro beat Lula. He says, I don't understand how people can vote for Lula. The country is collapsing. Lula is set to begin his fourth non-consecutive term as president on January 5th, 2027. Oh, and by the way, just in case folks were not aware, Lula also pitched a strategic partnership with Russia, and he even went over to Russia for their victory parade in 2025. So in case, I'm not sure how this squares with everybody. with all the lefties that have the Ukraine flag in their social media profiles. I'm not sure how this lines up. Like, you hate Trump because he loves Putin, but you love Lula, who loves Putin. Like, I'm not really clear. What is the Putin standard here? Is there one, or is it just, it's really just a Trump standard? So, well, no, I know what it is, obviously. It's that They don't care about Vladimir Putin. They don't care which side Putin is coming down on. But they they appeal to that as a standard because they think you care. Right. They think you'll be embarrassed that Vladimir Putin has been praised by Donald Trump. And how dare he do that? Meanwhile, they're out there in the streets celebrating for Lula, who praises Putin, too. So whatever the Electoral College are sorry. So this I learned in my crash course on Brazilian expertise over the weekend that they've got actually a couple of different courts. And one of them is an electoral court. And then there is the Supreme Court. So the electoral court, they're the ones that made the announcement that that Lula had won. OK, and this, according to the AAP. ended an evening of confusion at polling places after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ruled three minutes before the closure of the polls to stay open for two more hours. Okay, so you get this. The Electoral Court, like, that would be the court, as the name would indicate, that would be the court that deals with the elections. But for some reason, the Supreme Court was the one that stepped in and said, keep these polling stations open. And actually not the entire Supreme Court, just one Supreme Court judge. And I don't know if this matters. I'm not sure like this is this may just be coincidence. But this one judge, Cristiano Zanin, he happens. To be the former. Defense attorney for Lula. I don't know if that has an impact. I don't even know if that's relevant to the story. I just I came across this information as I was becoming an expert in Brazilian politics. And it seemed like something that I don't know. I felt like I should include in the telling of this story of the one judge who stepped in to extend the voting hours at not all polling places, apparently, but certain polling places that that just so happen to be in areas that Lula dominates. So I'm not sure if that, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure it's not irrelevant. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. All right, so going over the, this, what they call it? Not unprecedented. Oh, the confusion. There was confusion. polling places in Brazil in this election for president. There was a runoff election and you had a guy named Bolsonaro. He came in first and you had the incumbent guy Lula who came in second and then they did the runoff. And then there was some confusion at polling places because the Brazilian Supreme Court judge, a single judge on the Supreme Court, not the electoral court, which usually makes these types of decisions. But for some reason, this time, Lula went directly to his former defense attorney, who's now on the Supreme Court, and went to him and asked for polling stations to remain open. Now, what the media in the West, and I notice Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, they're very, very keen to put down this whole idea that there's any kind of confusion or chaos or rigging of this election, that everything was above board and the right wingers are just trying to, you know, stir up this kind of conspiracy theory to undermine confidence in the election and all of this. However, and they'll point out that Bolsonaro also sought for the polling places to be kept open. Slight difference. But he was asking for it all over the country and Lula apparently was not, which doesn't really mean anything. I mean, just, you know, I'm sure a. Bunch of right-wing hacks can read into that or something, but Lula's request came after issues with buses that provide transportation to the Poles in Sao Paulo and Salvador, two cities that tend to favor him. Bolsonaro's request was due to heavy rains in in Brazil's south, where he is favored. Okay, so they both were asking for an extension, but only one of them got. the extension in their area. And that was the guy that just so happened to have hired the judge who made the decision. So the decision delayed tallying the votes by two hours. It was unclear how many polling stations stayed open after the scheduled closing time. Polling stations in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro closed shortly after the original 5 p.m. Deadline. So you have this chaos now because you had most of the polls close around the country, apparently, at 5 o'clock. And then a bunch of other polling stations stayed open for an additional two hours. Yeah, that's problematic. Bolsonaro, whose father is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula, pointed out that the judge, Zanin, is Lula's former lawyer and criticized him for changing. The rules of the game in the middle of the game. He said it's impossible to recognize the results of the election in the context of these things that happened. Now, it's not clear if Bolsonaro's complaint could meet the legal threshold to. Annul the results. Bolsonaro has the right to request a recount if he has evidence of fraud, but that might not change the results. The president of the electoral court, Casio Nunez Marquez, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by the former president, Bolsonaro, he said that the extension of voting hours did not impact the results. So we don't know. Later in the story from the Associated Press, Bolsonaro beat Lula by more than 2.2 million votes in the first round of the election earlier this month. Yesterday's victory by Lula marked the first time since Brazil's military dictatorship ended in 1985 that the person who finished second in the first election won the presidency in the runoff. See, so he made history. I mean, it's unprecedented. And no one is supposed to ask any questions. And if you do, you're an election denier. Now, CNN Brazil... They reported that 213 cities that chose Flavio in the first round ended up voting for Lula in the second. Kind of weird, right? If you've got 213 cities that initially went to Bolsonaro that then flipped to Lula. Kind of weird. And Andrew Colvette from Turning Point USA said, what is the statistical probability of 213 cities voting for Bolsonaro? And then as if in unison, spontaneously flipping to support Luna three weeks or Lula three weeks later. And then you've got some guy named Benjamin Sweetwood who responds to Andrew Colvette saying, actually. The statistical probability is not easily calculable. But it's also not at all improbable. About 8% of Brazilian voters backed other candidates in round one. Those candidates were eliminated in round two when they went head-to-head, and that redistributed millions of votes for round two. But again, these votes went to other quote-unquote far-right or right-wing candidates and parties. The first round results were also very close. They were separated by just two percentage points. There was also greater voter turnout in round two. He says it's entirely feasible that Lula finished behind Bolsonaro in round one and then won in round two without any Bolsonaro voters switching their vote. Just Lula carried all of the others. Yeah, I'm sure that could happen. Yeah, I guess. So what does AI have to say about this? Let's ask the local data center. People put the question to Grok, the Twitter AI. And here's what the AI said. Assuming independent 50-50 swings across Brazil's 27 units, so they're like voting districts or whatever, the chance that all of them move the same way, it is not a statistical impossibility. Oh, okay. Well, what's the possibility there? What's the probability? Well, Grok puts the the probability that every single one of these units would move the same way, assuming that everybody kind of splits 50 50 because you don't know where those votes go. So you assume 50 50 probability and the chances are somewhere around one in 134 million. See, so you're saying there's a chance. There is a chance that this all could have happened exactly how you The media and the Democrats in America are saying that it happened because right now there is a big pressure campaign to say that this was all on the up and up. We've got celebrations coming in from the likes of Alex Soros. He was very happy with these results, as was Bernie Sanders. Very, very happy. They were out on the social media touting Lula's miraculous, unprecedented victory, the come from behind, the comeback kid at 81 years old. Again, I feel it's important to point out that Brazil has a court that is devoted to election decisions. And Lula bypassed that court and instead filed a motion with the Supreme Court. And just coincidentally, it was heard by the one judge that happened to have been his previous personal criminal defense lawyer before he got the appointment to the Supreme Court by Lula. I'm sure it's all just coincidental. Let me jump over to the text line and see what folks are saying. This is John. I want to congratulate you, Pete. You have the best program on the station. Thank you. And I've lived all across the U.S. and I've seen all kinds of stations. You provide factual information. information for people to think about and make informed decisions, and you do it with humor. That is correct. I do. I love the fact that none of your show is filler crap. I hear from others. Congratulations. Love listening. Keep up the good work. Thank you, John. I appreciate that. Awesome Andy. Says, so they extended voting for two hours, which rightly makes you suspicious. Well, not just that they extended for two hours. They extended it and there's a reason why that's also suspicious. Um, but they extended it only in certain areas. Um, and it was only at the direction of a judge that wasn't part of the elections court. So, and it happened to be the guy, the, the, the candidates, former personal defense lawyer. But when the U S quit counting votes in 2022 with Trump winning virtually everywhere, and then started counting the votes four hours later with Biden miraculously winning everywhere, there wasn't election fraud. Got it. Um, OK, that is a you obviously, Andy, have a misunderstanding of my position on all of this, which was it is suspicious. Let's get some evidence. That's what I demanded. Evidence, court filings, proof. Right. That's what I want to see. I have no idea if there was rigging in the Brazilian election. It looks suspicious, just like the water main break at the Atlanta Fulton County. Counting site. That looks suspicious. Yes. Again, I don't know why this has been so difficult for people to understand for all these years. I thought I was being clear. That's on me. I'm the professional communicator. Obviously, if for some reason people still don't understand what I was arguing for in 2020, then that's on me. That's my fault. Ian says Lula's win over the sun is as dodgy as his win over and subsequent jailing of the elder Bolsonaro hoping for a righteous coup. Well, the last Bolsonaro that tried that ended up in jail. Name dropper, Doug. I lived in Rio de Janeiro for 13 years, employed at the American consulate for five. All I'm going to say is I found myself rolling my eyes way too often. Brazilians in general are just a different kind of animal. Not surprised they elected Lula the buffoon again. And Jennifer says Brazil should serve as a reminder to everyone. You cannot vote your way out of communism that yes, that is just historically speaking. Um, you can vote yourself into communism, but you have to shoot your way out. That's just, that's just generally the, the track record. Um, So about the two hour delays, this was interesting. What caused the delays? What was the problem? Well, it had to do with the free busing to and from the voting centers. OK, and so you had to run the buses and they had to be politically neutral. Right. You're not allowed to do campaigning and stuff on the buses, in the buses, whatever. However. this may surprise you. You might want to sit down when you hear this, that apparently in some places, um, some of the buses had a fixed stars, the PT star PT is the party of Lula. And, um, The official in charge of busing said those buses could not run unless the signs were taken down, which then, of course, delays the busing. OK, so that was what prompted some problems with the buses. And the problems stem from Lula's party putting their stuff on the buses, which then delay the buses. Then they say, oh, my gosh, the buses are delayed. We need more time. And so instead of waiting then for the election court to make a ruling, they go right to the Supreme Court justice. And within literally within minutes, the polls were ordered to remain open by this lawyer with a wardrobe change. Then we find out that a lot of the polling centers had already sealed up the ballot boxes. And so once you do that, you cannot comply with the Supreme Court decision to extend the voting. Once you close. Everything down, you cannot reopen them for obvious election integrity reasons, right? An unprecedented scenario was created then in Brazilian democracy, with some centers open and others closed simultaneously. And this was due to the actions of Lula. Now, Maybe just a coincidence as well, but the leftist areas, they did not shut off their machines or close their polling stations. It almost was like they were prepared for this. The other areas, they did close theirs on schedule. Again, could be a coincidence. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support. and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to ThePeteCalendarShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.