After tweeting a pornographic video to denounce one of his country's biggest festivals, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had a follow-up question Wednesday: “What is a golden shower?”
His query, tweeted out to his 3 million Twitter followers, quickly went viral. Though it wasn’t immediately apparent, the message had its origins in Bolsonaro and his supporters’ distaste toward Carnaval, the annual festival marked with huge street parties — most famously in Rio de Janeiro — that’s long been one of the country’s biggest tourist draws.
Huge and boisterous, Carnaval — like Mardis Gras, it takes place just before the beginning of Lent — has a reputation for excess that cuts against Bolsonaro’s rhetoric. Last month a rumor spread that the president had decided to cancel the event entirely along with Rio de Janeiro’s LGBT pride parade. Bolsonaro’s office denied that was the case.
Despite the huge economic boost the festival provides, Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, Marcelo Crivella, isn’t exactly a fan either. An evangelical protestant, Crivella last month announced that he was slashing public funding for Carnaval. “Women will understand that. Carnaval is a big baby who needs to be weaned and walk with his own legs,” he said by way of explanation for why the many parades don’t need assistance from the city.
The festival has also been used this year to criticize Bolsonaro’s far-right administration, with many revelers shouting obscenities and gathering to protest outside of the president’s seaside home in Rio.
On Tuesday, Bolsonaro tweeted what he claimed was the new normal at Carnaval. In it, a long-haired man is seen teasing his anus with a finger while standing on a bus stop before a fellow partier then pulls out his penis and urinates in the man’s hair. The scene allegedly shot in São Paulo takes place in the daytime.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
“I don’t feel comfortable showing it, but we have to expose the truth to the population knowing and always taking their priorities,” Bolsonaro captioned the video. “This is what the Brazilian Carnaval has turned many street blocks into.”
The tweet did not draw the support that Bolsonaro seemed to hope it would though, with commentators on both the left and right condemning him. The Workers’ Party (PT) has already said that it would be taking the president to court for sharing pornography.
Journalists abroad and locals alike were equally puzzled by just what on earth Bolsonaro thought he was doing tweeting a piece of porn that even most aficionados of the art would say “no thanks” to viewing.
Meanwhile, witnesses who saw the scene captured in the now-infamous video told Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo newspaper that it was an isolated incident.
CORRECTION
São Paulo was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.