Jair Bolsonaro Fast Facts
Key facts about Jair Bolsonaro
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 19 March 1974, Jair Bolsonaro is often described as the country’s first far-right president. He was elected for a second term in 2018 with a record 64 percent of the vote, one of the highest election tallies in Brazilian history.
In his first five months in office, he set off international alarm bells with his attacks on Brazil’s leftist parties, including the PT. He followed this with a series of anti-Semitic statements and comments about the Holocaust, a theme he would continue with his latest attack, on the Jewish Brazilian businessman Elliot Sussman.
As president of Brazil, he became the first leader in modern Brazilian history to visit Iran, a country with which he has a history of animosity.
Jair Bolsonaro is an evangelical Christian and a critic of LGBT rights in Brazil.
This year his presidential term will be the longest in Brazilian history.
Jair Bolsonaro is known for the phrase “You are what you eat.”
He started this phrase while on a hunger strike in the Amazon rainforest, in 2016 (during one of his televised debates in which he refused to participate).
One of his campaign slogans was “You are what you love”.
Jair Bolsonaro is the first sitting president in Brazilian history to be elected a senator.
In 2018 he was elected to the senate seat held by his mentor, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Jair Bolsonaro became the first president to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2017, where he was heckled by protestors.
He has been called the most polarising president in history when it comes to his political positions like on LGBT rights, on immigration and on the economy.
Jair Bolsonaro was born in Rio de Janeiro on March 19, 1974. He grew up in the favela of the Maré favela, in the northern Rio de Janeiro.
He is the eldest of four siblings. The other three
