Presidency (2019–2023)
Bolsonaro was sworn in as president on 1 January 2019, succeeding Michel Temer. Bolsonaro began to get his cabinet together before his inauguration, choosing the economist Paulo Guedes as his economy minister and the astronaut Marcos Pontes as his science and technology minister. Bolsonaro said his cabinet would have 15 members; in December when he announced Ricardo Salles as a minister, the total was 22. (His predecessor, Michel Temer, had a 29-member cabinet.)
Bolsonaro's initial cabinet was composed of 16 ministers, two cabinet-level positions, and four presidential secretaries, including Chief of Staff Onyx Lorenzoni. Bolsonaro's ministers included Operation Car Wash judge Sergio Moro as Justice Minister and congresswoman Tereza Cristina as Minister of Agriculture. Bolsonaro placed many army officers in key positions in his cabinet. Before his inauguration, he said he would fill positions in his government based only on technical qualifications and skills rather than ideological sympathy; however, many appointees clashed ideologically with the government during his presidency and fell out of favor with Bolsonaro. By June 2020 the ministers of Justice and Education, the Secretary of Government, the head of the postal service and other government officials had already resigned.
Early in his administration, Bolsonaro focused primarily on domestic and economic issues, ranging from tax reform to changes in social security, but he faced an uphill battle with Congress. Bolsonaro stripped the indigenous affairs agency FUNAI of the responsibility to identify and demarcate indigenous lands, arguing that those territories have tiny, isolated populations who would be controlled by NPOs, and proposed to integrate them into the larger Brazilian society. Critics feared that such integration would force Brazilian Amerindians to suffer cultural assimilation. Argentine President Mauricio Macri was the first foreign leader Bolsonaro received on a state visit to Brasília after he became president.
The second inauguration of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela took place nine days after Bolsonaro's inauguration. The disputed results of the 2018 Venezuelan presidential election led to the Venezuelan presidential crisis, as the National Assembly rejected the results, considered Maduro an illegitimate ruler since his first term of office ended, and appointed Juan Guaidó as acting president. Bolsonaro did not attend Maduro's inauguration and recognized Guaidó as the legitimate ruler of Venezuela, alongside Mauricio Macri from Argentina and Donald Trump from the US, among others. He said that "We will continue doing everything possible to re-establish order, democracy and freedom there".
After his first year in power, Bolsonaro's popularity steadily declined. A Datafolha survey, published on 21 May 2019, showed that 28.6% of respondents described Bolsonaro's administration as "excellent" or "good", 31.3% as "average", and 36.2% as "bad" or "terrible"; 3.9% did not respond. This was the first poll in which more Brazilians disapproved of Bolsonaro's government than approved of it. Meanwhile, after allegations of campaign-finance fraud, Bolsonaro fired Gustavo Bebianno, a top adviser and general secretary for the president. The party that they both belonged to was accused of diverting public campaign funds to candidates who did not run for office. In November 2019, Bolsonaro left the Social Liberal Party due to conflicts with its leadership. He attempted to form his own party, Alliance for Brazil (Portuguese: Aliança pelo Brasil), but it failed to gather enough signatures to register at the Superior Electoral Court for the 2020 municipal elections or the 2022 general election, leaving Bolsonaro without a party until 2021.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, Bolsonaro and his administration were accused of downplaying the crisis while the number of Brazilians infected by the virus climbed exponentially by mid-2020. Bolsonaro claimed that COVID-19 was no deadlier than "the flu" and that his priority was the nation's economic recovery rather than the health crisis. In fact, as at early 2021, the Brazilian economy was bouncing back, albeit somewhat slowly and inconsistently, as the pandemic was still threatening to undo any economic recovery. Bolsonaro continually accused political opponents and the press of exaggerating the threat of the virus and called it a "fantasy" created by the media.
In August 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Bolsonaro's approval rating showed signs of recovery, reaching its highest level since his inauguration. In November 2020 he said he would not take a COVID vaccine if it became available, but he later said he would support any possible vaccine if the Brazilian Health Agency deemed it safe. In the same broadcast, he called face masks "the last taboo to fall". In 2020 the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international non-governmental organization that investigates crime and corruption, gave Bolsonaro its Person of the Year Award, which "recognizes the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption". Bolsonaro received the award for "surrounding himself with corrupt figures, using propaganda to promote his populist agenda, undermining the justice system, and waging a destructive war against the Amazon region that has enriched some of the country's worst land owners".
In early 2021 Bolsonaro's approval ratings fell again, mostly due to the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination controversies, and the concurrent economic crisis that evolved under his watch. Days after Brazil surpassed Russia as the country worst hit by COVID, Bolsonaro held a political rally in Brasília; his supporters and his own security guards wore masks, but he did not. In June 2021, nationwide protests erupted against Bolsonaro's response to the pandemic; in São Paulo alone there were estimated to be 100,000 protesters on the streets. In July, YouTube removed videos posted by Bolsonaro for spreading false information about the virus. YouTube has reportedly removed 15 videos altogether; one that was removed had shown Brazil's former health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, comparing the virus to HIV. In other videos, Bolsonaro criticized efforts to stop the spread of the virus, such as wearing masks or taking the vaccine.
By the end of June 2021, more members of the opposition started to call for his impeachment over his handling of the pandemic and spreading misinformation. The opposition signed a document with multiple accusations, such as blaming Bolsonaro for the deaths of 500,000 Brazilians from COVID-19, stating that his government had blatantly turned down expert advice on tackling the virus, and at least 20 other grievances. In July 2021, Bolsonaro claimed on Brazilian radio that his government's greatest achievement was "two and a half years without corruption". In the same month, a scandal dubbed "vaccine-gate" emerged. After months of denying offers of vaccines and bartering the costs, Bolsonaro's government made a deal to buy the unapproved Covaxin vaccine from the Indian company Bharat Biotech at a very high price. It was found that the government paid ten times the amount agreed by Bharat Biotech for the vaccine, and that the irregularities were found not in the price of the vaccine, but in a payment of $45 million to a company in Singapore. In response, the Supreme Court authorized a criminal investigation of Bolsonaro.
In March 2021 Bolsonaro dismissed Fernando Azevedo e Silva as defense minister and replaced him with Walter Souza Braga Netto; like Bolsonaro, Netto lionized the 1964–1985 military dictatorship. The day after Netto was appointed, the leaders of the army, air force, and navy all resigned. In April, Bolsonaro claimed that the Brazilian armed forces would "go into the streets" if he ordered them to. In mid-August, the military conducted a ten-minute tank parade in Brasília, with Bolsonaro in attendance. The parade had been held annually in the last 30 years, but tanks had never been sent to the capital before. The parade was announced only a day in advance, and passed by the national congressional building, where lawmakers were due to vote on Bolsonaro's proposed election-related changes hours later. The lawmakers ultimately rejected the changes.
On 28 July 2021 Bolsonaro appointed Ciro Noguiera, a senator who was implicated in the Odebrecht corruption case, as his chief of staff. In early August 2021, Bolsonaro threatened to respond with unconstitutional measures to an investigation over his baseless allegations of fraud vulnerabilities in Brazil's electronic voting system, because he deemed that investigation unconstitutional. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had approved the investigation. In mid-August 2021 Bolsonaro warned of a potential "institutional rupture", while urging the Senate to charge de Moraes and another Supreme Court Judge, Luis Roberto Barroso, the leader of the electoral court. On 26 October 2021 a Senate committee approved a report calling for Bolsonaro to face criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Without a political party, Bolsonaro began to negotiate his entrance into one in preparation for the 2022 general election (as the 1988 Brazilian Constitution does not allow independent politicians). He negotiated with the Progressistas (PP), of which he was a member from 1995 to 2003 and from 2005 to 2016, and the Social Christian Party (PSC), of which he was a member from 2016 to 2018, the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), Brazilian Woman's Party (PMB), Christian Democracy (DC), Party of National Mobilization (PMN), the Republicans and Patriot (PATRI). On 30 November 2021 Bolsonaro and his son Senator Flávio Bolsonaro joined the Liberal Party (PL). According to political analysts, the choice represented the consolidation of the alliance of Bolsonaro with the Centrão, a large bloc of parties without consistent ideological orientation that supports different sides of the political spectrum to gain political privileges—PL being one of them. Bolsonaro previously made deals with the Centrão for support in Congress. On 23 June 2022 Bolsonaro defended his former education minister, Milton Ribeiro, after the latter was arrested on corruption charges.
