A few days before a new Mercosur Summit in which they are expected to meet, the president Javier Milei On Friday he again called his Brazilian counterpart “corrupt and communist”, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and he stressed that he will not apologize.
“Do those who lied demand an apology because one told them the truth? We must rise above these trivialities, because the interests of Argentines and Brazilians are more important than the inflated ego of some leftist,” Milei lashed out after the Brazilian president demanded an apology from him.
Milei was questioned in an interview on the LN+ channel about Lula’s remarks, who had stated that Milei has to apologize to him and to Brazil.What’s the problem with me calling him corrupt? Wasn’t he imprisoned for being corrupt? I told him a communist, isn’t he a communist?” Milei redoubled the bet.
And he continued with his criticism of the Brazilian president: “Since when do we have to ask for sorry for telling the truth? Or are we so sick of political correctness that nothing can be said to the left even when it is true?”
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The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stated that Javier Milei must apologize to him and his country.
For Milei, Lula’s position is similar to that of the Colombian president Gustavo Petro and that of the president of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez. “Do you believe that Lula did not do similar things by getting involved in our electoral campaign? The things I said above are true,” said the libertarian leader.
Insisting on the comparison with the diplomatic escalations with Colombia and Spain, Milei stressed that Petro and Sánchez “also demanded apologies.”
“Don’t you think that the negative campaign that Massa made against me from Brazil was not aggressive? Are they going to apologize to me for it?” the number of lies they told me in the campaign“?” Milei added in the same tone.
The president also considered that the tension over the relationship with his Brazilian counterpart “is a small discussion” and even “seems a discussion of pre-adolescent creatures“.
Milei points to Lula (and also Petro and Sánchez) for having publicly asked Argentines to vote for Sergio Massa during the campaign that finally brought him to the Casa Rosada.
Last Wednesday Lula da Silva said that Milei should apologize to him and his country because he said “a lot of nonsense.”
“Argentina is a country that I like a lot, it is a very important country for Brazil and Brazil is very important for Argentina and it is not a president of the republic who is going to create a gap between the two countries,” said the Brazilian president in statements to the UOL portal.
However, minutes after Lula da Silva’s statements became known, the Government rehearsed a response that was in line with what Milei said this Friday. Manuel Adorni, presidential spokesman, said that “the President has not committed anything that he has to regret.”
