Flávio Bolsonaro Uses 2021 Hunger Footage to Attack Lula as Presidency Demands Retraction

Overview

• Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and presidential hopeful, posted a video on Sunday criticizing Lula while showing people searching a garbage truck for food.
• Reporters traced the scenes to Fortaleza’s Bairro Cocó in 2021, filmed by app driver André Queiroz outside a supermarket.
• Guilherme Boulos, who leads the Presidency’s Secretariat, called the post deceptive and asked for a retraction, and the video remains online with no retraction reported.
• The post tied the images to a discussion of household debt, citing a trade group’s finding that about 80% of Brazilian families owe money, and blamed PT fiscal policy, high interest rates, and the new betting law.
• Long-run data from the same trade group show indebtedness has risen for about a decade across different administrations, a trend that complicates efforts to pin today’s hardship on a single government.