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Complete Reversal of Democracy: Glenn Greenwald on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's Impeachment
Embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is slated to testify today at her impeachment trial—a trial that many are calling a coup by her right-wing political rivals. Rousseff has denounced the proceedings and called for early elections to unite the country. Rousseff’s impeachment stems from accusations she tampered with government accounts to hide a budget deficit. She was suspended earlier this year and has maintained her innocence, accusing her political opponents of spearheading the proceedings to shield themselves from prosecution and undo years of progressive policies. The Brazilian group Transparency Brazil says 60 percent of Brazilian lawmakers are currently under criminal investigation or have already been convicted of crimes ranging from corruption to election fraud. Rousseff’s opponents now need 54 votes, or two-thirds of the 81-seat Senate, to convict her of violating budget laws. Her impeachment would end 13 years of left-wing Workers’ Party rule in Brazil and bring to power interim President Michel Temer for the remaining two years of Rousseff’s term. Temer is also deeply unpopular and currently under investigation himself, accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions linked to the state oil company Petrobras.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is slated to testify today at her impeachment trial—a trial that many are calling a coup by her right-wing political rivals. Rousseff has denounced the proceedings and called for early elections to unite the country.
PRESIDENT DILMA ROUSSEFF: [translated] For that, we say that if the impeachment is confirmed, without proof of culpability, it will be a coup d’état. I give my full support of referendum, so people can decide to call for early elections and for political and electoral reform, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment stems from accusations she tampered with government accounts to hide a budget deficit. She was suspended earlier this year, has maintained her innocence, accusing her political opponents of spearheading the proceedings to shield themselves from prosecution and undo years of progressive policies. The Brazilian group Transparency Brazil says 60 percent of Brazilian lawmakers are currently under criminal investigation or have already been convicted of crimes ranging from corruption to election fraud. On Saturday, Senator Paulo Paim of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party challenged the impeachment as an attack on the democratic right of the Brazilian people to choose their president.
SEN. PAULO PAIM: [translated] This impeachment process against the president is an attack on democracy, an attack on the president, an attack on the Brazilian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Dilma Rousseff’s opponents now need 54 votes, or two-thirds of the 81-seat Senate, to convict her of violating budget laws. Her impeachment would end 13 years of the left-wing Workers’ Party rule in Brazil and bring to power interim President Michel Temer for the remaining two years of Rousseff’s term. Temer is also deeply unpopular and currently under investigation himself, accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions linked to the state oil company Petrobras.
Meanwhile, Rousseff’s mentor, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is also facing a rash of legal woes. Brazilian federal police are recommending corruption charges against him and his wife, Marisa Letícia. The police say the couple benefited from renovations to a seaside apartment made by a construction firm. The da Silvas deny owning the property, and their lawyer said Friday there’s no evidence linking the couple to the apartment.
All this comes as Brazilians are battling an economic recession, a massive Zika outbreak and the aftermath of the 2016 Olympic Games. Both pro- and anti-impeachment protesters have gathered in Brazil’s capital of Rio de Janeiro as the political future of Brazil lays in limbo.
For more, we go directly to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He recently helped launch The Intercept Brasil in Portuguese to cover Brazilian social and political news. Glenn Greenwald is also closely following the U.S. presidential elections.
Glenn Greenwald, let’s begin with what’s happening in Brazil right now, and welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.
GLENN GREENWALD: So, literally this very minute, at 9:00 a.m. local time, 8:00 Eastern, Dilma is arriving at the Senate, where she will confront her accusers, in essence, and give her final 30-minute speech as part of her impeachment trial. She doesn’t need to do it; she chose to do it. And it’s really quite a remarkable contrast with her former vice president, now the interim president, who’s about to become the country’s unelected president, Michel Temer. During the Olympics, Mr. Temer broke protocol by demanding that his name not be announced at the opening ceremony, because he was scared of being booed by the crowd. That’s how unpopular and hated he is. And yet, when the crowd actually saw him, even without his being announced, they did boo him, quite viciously. And then he hid during the closing ceremony by skipping that. And while he’s hiding, Dilma, who, of course, has a history as a fighter against this country’s former military dictatorship, who went to prison over that, who endured years of torture while imprisoned as a political prisoner, chooses to go and confront her accusers face to face and will give what, by all accounts, will likely be a very strong and aggressive and defiant speech consistent with her character and her political persona.
And it’s really quite remarkable, for so many reasons, including the fact that, as you said, the majority of the Senate, just as was true of the majority in the House that impeached her, the majority of the Senate sitting in judgment of her are people who themselves are extremely corrupt, if not outright criminals. They are either people who are convicted of crimes or who are under multiple investigations, including the president of the Senate, who in 2007 had to leave his position over a serious scandal involving lobbyist money to pay off his mistress, is now under multiple investigations, just like the president of the House that impeached her was found with millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts hidden away. So you have a band of criminals removing this woman who became twice the elected president of her country, in a country that had never previously elected a woman, only 19, 20 months ago with 54 million votes. It’s really extraordinary to watch it unfold, given what a young and vibrant democracy Brazil is and how this group of people in Brasília are literally trifling with the fundamentals of democracies before our eyes.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s turn to suspended President Dilma Rousseff in her own words this past May.
PRESIDENT DILMA ROUSSEFF: [translated] It isn’t an impeachment; it’s a coup. I did not commit high crimes and misdemeanors. There is no justification for an impeachment charge. I don’t have bank accounts abroad. I never received bribes. I never condoned corruption. The trial against me is fragile, legally inconsistent, unjust, unleashed against an honest and innocent person. The greatest brutality that can be committed against any person is to punish them for a crime they did not commit. No injustice is more devastating than condemning an innocent. What is at stake is respect for the ballot box, the sovereign desires of the Brazilian people and the Constitution. What is at stake are the achievements of the last 13 years.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Dilma Rousseff speaking in May. She has been ousted, and she’s being impeached today, where she is testifying on her own behalf. Glenn, explain exactly what she is accused of and then what this—what the whole process will be, how long it will take and what this means for the country.
GLENN GREENWALD: So, the formal charge against her that they’re using to justify impeachment in Portuguese is called pedaladas, which really means pedaling. It refers to a budgetary maneuver where the government borrows money from a state bank and then delays repayment in order to make it appear that the government owes less money. So she’s essentially accused of using budgetary tricks to make the state of the government budget look better in order to win re-election—something that when you talk to Europeans or Americans, they react with befuddlement that something like that could justify the removal of a democratically elected president, given that that’s extremely common for political leaders around the world to do, and, in fact, prior Brazilian presidents have used this same—this same method. And, in fact, when the House actually impeached her, as a lot of people watched around the world, one after the other stood up to justify their impeachment vote, and virtually none of them even referenced fleetingly this charge against her regarding these budgetary maneuvers, because it’s so plainly not the reason she’s being removed. That is the pretext for the reason that she’s being removed.
The reason she’s being removed is because she is an unpopular president. The economy of Brazil is weak and is—a lot of people are suffering because of it. And as you indicated earlier in the opening package, the party to which she belongs, the Workers’ Party, has been in power for 13 years, and the reason they’ve been in power for 13 years is because they’ve won four consecutive national elections. And there is no way that the opposition, which is composed of oligarchs and business interests and media barons and conservatives and uber-nationalists—this opposition faction has concluded that they are incapable of defeating this party in the ballot box, meaning within the democratic process, and so they are opportunistically using her unpopularity and the serious mistakes she’s made to remove her undemocratically.
And I think the most important thing to realize about this process, Brazilian media elites, who are almost uniformly behind impeachment, and have been from the beginning, constantly say, "Oh, look, in the United States you have impeachment; in Europe there’s impeachment. This is a constitutional means of removing a president." But the big difference is that in the United States, if you impeach the president, if you had impeached Bill Clinton in 1997 or 1998, Al Gore would have become president, the Democratic Party would have continued to remain in power, and the agenda and ideology that the American people ratified would have been the same. In Brazil, it’s exactly the opposite. The vice president, who has now become the interim president, who’s about to become the president, is not part of the Workers’ Party. He’s part of the centrist party and has aligned himself with this right-wing party, the PSDB, that has continuously lost at the ballot box. Their candidates have been rejected. And yet, as a result of this impeachment process, the very party and the very ideology that the Brazilian people have over and over rejected, when asked to vote, when asked to consider their candidates, is now ascending to power. And their agenda of privatization and cutting social programs and keeping taxes low to benefit the oligarchs is now gradually being imposed, as is their foreign policy of moving away from BRICS and regional alliances, and becoming once again extremely subservient to the United States and to Wall Street and to international capital. And so, you can call it a coup, you can debate whether that word applies, but what it is is a complete reversal of democracy in a way that is ushering in an agenda that benefits a small number of people that the Brazilian citizens have never accepted and, in fact, have continuously rejected.
And the process now is that the Senate is nearing the end of its trial. It will likely vote within the next week to 10 days. There is almost no doubt that they have the votes in order to convict her. Already 52 senators have said they intend to vote yes, and only 54 are needed. And so, once this conviction happens, Dilma will be permanently removed from office, and the interim president, Michel Temer, will then serve out the remainder of her term through 2018, even though he is under far more investigation and implicated in far more corruption than she is, and even though the Supreme Court has said that you can’t divide them when it comes to impeachment—you have to essentially consider the impeachment of both, because they both participated in the same transactions. All of that law, all of those corruption issues are being completely ignored, for one reason and one reason only. And that is that the most powerful people in this country want this right-wing agenda. They know they can’t make it happen through the ballot box, and so they’re making it happen through brute force, which is exactly what’s taking place.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, earlier this year, you interviewed the former Brazilian president, Lula da Silva. Lula described the situation in Brazil as a coup.
LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA: [translated] I’ll tell you why it is a coup. It is a coup because while the Brazilian Constitution allows for impeachment, it’s necessary for the person to have committed what we call high crimes and misdemeanors, and President Dilma did not commit a high crime nor misdemeanor. Therefore, what is happening is an attempt by some to take power by disrespecting the popular vote. That’s why I think the impeachment is illegal. There is no high crime or misdemeanor. As a matter of fact, I believe that these people want to remove Dilma from office by disrespecting the law, carrying out, the way I see it, a political coup. That’s what it is, a political coup.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Glenn Greenwald, explain what’s happening to him right now, the most recent charges brought against him.
GLENN GREENWALD: So, Lula is involved in several very serious scandals, including allegations of criminality. The most recent case is one where the federal police, who investigated, have recommended that he be indicted on claims that he received many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements to a triplex apartment that the police say that he owned, and that this was intended to be a gift from a large construction giant here in Brazil that has been close to the Workers’ Party, that has received a lot of contracts, lucrative contracts, from the Workers’ Party, and that they claim is illegal, that he intended to hide these assets, that they were intended essentially to constitute bribes. He vehemently denies that he ever owned the apartment, that it’s not—that it’s his. He has not been convicted. But those allegations should play themselves out. They should be investigated, and the process should be permitted to run its course.
I think that one really important thing to note is that a lot of people in Brazil, including people who have favored impeachment, including the nation’s largest newspaper, Folha of São Paulo, have long said that you should remove Dilma, but you should also remove Temer and have new elections, which is the obvious thing to do. If the vice president and the president are both implicated in wrongdoing, if there’s serious unpopularity that they both share, which they do, why let the people in Brasília, who are corrupt, choose the leader? Why not have new elections, as lots of people have called for? And the reason is, is that they’re petrified that if they have new elections, the person who’s going to win is Lula. He leads in all polls, when polls show—when ask people who their preference is in new elections. They’re also petrified that even if they wait until 2018, he’ll run again. And so, there’s a lot of people who believe that these investigations are about rendering him incapable of running, by charging him with crimes, by convicting him of something, not trying to put him in jail, just making it so that he can’t become president again, so they don’t go through this whole process of removing Dilma only to end up with Lula again.
But, you know, look, he’s somebody who is involved in lots of possible scandals. And he’s subject to the law like anybody else, and these processes should be allowed to take their course. The problem is that there are lots of people in Brasília who are also implicated in very serious corruption allegations, who are currently being protected in all sorts of ways by virtue of the fact that they hold political office, including people extremely close to the interim president himself. And one of the things that you played in that clip of my interview with Lula was him talking about how this is a coup. And only two months ago, there were recordings released, secret recordings that were made by a police informant with one of the closest senators to the current president, Temer, who was originally one of his ministers, who had to resign after this tape was revealed, in which he said that the reason that Dilma was being impeached and the motive for doing this was to shut down the investigation against the officeholders in Brasília, and that the Supreme Court and the media and the military of Brazil were all on board, that he had spoken to all of those institutions, and they were all on board. So, when you look at that tape, which, to me, is the most significant evidence about what’s taking place in Brazil, you have the leading institutions of Brazil, including the court and the military, secretly conspiring to remove the elected president as a means of protecting all of the other officeholders in Brasília from ongoing corruption investigations. And I think that really bolsters the claim that Lula made in that interview, regardless of whether he’s also guilty of wrongdoing.
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Greenwald: Journalists Should Not Stop Scrutinizing Clinton Just Because Trump is Unfit for Office
Media outlets have launched massive investigations into Donald Trump’s business and tax history, as well as probes into the lives and past work of his current and former campaign managers Steve Bannon and Paul Manafort. But are these same outlets and journalists refusing to scrutinize Hillary Clinton? For more, we speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we’ve talked a lot about Hillary Clinton, and she did get a lot of negative attention this past week over these—the revelations of the Associated Press, but not as much as she would have, because of all that Donald Trump has been saying and tweeting and representing. Glenn Greenwald, what are your comments on Hillary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump?
GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, Donald Trump is—I mean, the tactic of the Democratic Party in the last 25 years—they know that ever since they became the party of sort of corporatism and Wall Street, they don’t inspire anybody, so their tactic is to say the Republican Party is the epitome of evil. Even when they have conventional nominees like Mitt Romney or John McCain, they demonize them and say they’re this unparalleled threat to democracy. In this election, just by coincidence, it happens to be true.
The person that the Republican Party has nominated, on a personal level, is extraordinarily unstable and vindictive and dangerous and narcissistic, in a way that you really wouldn’t trust him to occupy any minor political office, let alone command the military of the United States and the entire executive branch. The rhetoric that he’s been embracing over the past 18 months is extraordinarily frightening, because, even if he loses, he is emboldening extremist nationalism, racism, all kinds of bigotry. He’s giving license for its expression. He is serving as a galvanizing force for these very dangerous elements, not just in the American political culture, but in Europe and elsewhere throughout the right. And it’s just unthinkable to allow him anywhere near the White House, given the things that he wants to do, from deporting 11 million people to barring all Muslims from entering the country, and so many of the other things that he’s said. Even though he’s so unstable you don’t know if he would do any of them, the instability itself is so risky.
And so, this has become the real problem, is he is such a kind of dangerous presence on the American landscape that a lot of people have become afraid of doing their jobs and scrutinizing his opponent. And I think that that also is quite dangerous, even though I understand the motives behind it.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Glenn, about a piece you just recently wrote. It’s headlined "As Israel Prospers, Obama Set to Give Billions More in Aid While Netanyahu Demands Even More." Explain.
GLENN GREENWALD: You know, one of the things that happens during the election campaign is that all the focus of the media, and therefore the American public, goes to the personalities of the two candidates, and the U.S. government does incredibly important things, consequential things, that get ignored. And that’s a perfect example.
So, the United States already is by far the biggest benefactor of the Israeli government. We already give $3 billion a year in taxpayer money, in military aid, all sorts of other forms of aid, including diplomatic cover as they bomb Gaza, as they occupy the Palestinians, as they violate international law. It’s because the U.S. government enables this. And we transfer all this money to Israel, even though, in many ways, Israel is more prosperous and thriving and its citizens enjoy more benefits than American citizens do, including universal healthcare and free college, which Israelis enjoy but the U.S. doesn’t, as we transfer billions of dollars to them.
And so, one of the things that President Obama is doing, with almost no attention, is he has negotiated a deal with Israel to significantly increase the amount of money that Israel gets for 10 years, so no government, no future Congress can even reverse it, to give them many, many billions more than we’re already giving them. And the position of the Israeli government is "We’re angry that it’s not even more." There are some nuances there, such as questions about how much of that money has to be used to buy weapons from American manufacturers, but the idea is to keep Israel militarily superior to its neighbors to ensure that they can continue to dominate the region without challenge, and also domestic political reasons, for the Democratic Party to show voters who care about Israel, namely evangelical and Jewish voters, that they are doing even more for Israel. And it’s incredibly consequential. Given what Israel does to the Palestinians, it’s incredibly immoral. And yet it’s all being done with almost no debate, no bipartisan dispute and virtually zero media attention.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, we have to break, then we’re going to come back to wrap up this discussion. Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, speaking to us from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he lives. Stay with us.
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Greenwald: "Why Did Saudi Regime & Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to Clinton Foundation?"
Questions surrounding Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation continue to grow. On Sunday, Democratic National Committee interim chairperson Donna Brazile defended Clinton’s meetings as secretary of state with Clinton Foundation donors, saying, "When Republicans meet with their donors, with their supporters, their activists, they call it a meeting. When Democrats do that, they call it a conflict." Donna Brazile’s comments come in response to an Associated Press investigation revealing that while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, more than half of the private citizens she met with during the reporting period had donated to the Clinton Foundation. The AP investigation comes after a three-year battle to gain access to State Department calendars. The analysis shows that at least 85 of 154 people Hillary Clinton had scheduled phone or in-person meetings with were foundation donors. We speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. His most recent piece is headlined "Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to the Clinton Foundation?"
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. As we continue our conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, we turn to the U.S. presidential elections and the growing questions surrounding Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. On Sunday, Democratic National Committee interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile defended Clinton’s meetings as secretary of state with Clinton Foundation donors on CBS’s Face the Nation.
DONNA BRAZILE: When Republicans meet with their donors, with their supporters, their activists, they call it a meeting. When Democrats do that, they call it a conflict. It’s not pay to play, unless somebody, you know, actually gave someone 50 cents to say, "I need a meeting." No, in this great country of ours, when you meet with constituents, when you meet with heads of states, when you meet with people like Bono, who I love, you meet with them because they have a—they want to bring a matter to your attention. That’s not pay to play. It’s called that when Democrats do it; it’s not called that when Republicans do it.
AMY GOODMAN: Donna Brazile’s comments come in response to an Associated Press investigation revealing that while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, more than half of the private citizens she met with during the reporting period had donated to the Clinton Foundation. The AP investigation comes after a three-year battle to gain access to State Department calendars. The analysis shows that at least 85 of the 154 people Hillary Clinton had scheduled phone or in-person meetings with were foundation donors, not including meetings Clinton held with U.S. or foreign government workers or representatives, only private citizens. And these 85 donors contributed more than $150 million to the Clinton Foundation combined.
The AP investigation has faced criticism for excluding Clinton’s meetings with U.S. and foreign government officials, which some say present a skewed view of her activities while secretary of state. But in a statement, the Associated Press defended the investigation, writing, quote, "It focused on Mrs. Clinton’s meetings and calls involving people outside government who were not federal employees or foreign diplomats, because meeting with U.S. or foreign government officials would inherently have been part of her job as secretary of state," unquote.
This all comes as a federal judge has ordered the State Department to set a timetable for the release of 15,000 additional emails the FBI has collected during the agency’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server.
For more, we continue our conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. He has been closely following the U.S. presidential elections. His recent piece, "Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to the Clinton Foundation?" So, Glenn, your response?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I mean, the problem here is that the context in which this is all taking place is that the Republicans have nominated this truly unstable, dangerous and often terrifying person who obviously should never get anywhere near the White House. And so, there seem to be a lot of people, including in journalism, who think that because that’s the case, the Democratic nominee, who has all kinds of flaws and vulnerabilities and ethical clouds surrounding her, should sort of get to waltz into the White House free of challenge or questioning, because somehow it’s our civic and moral duty to make sure that Donald Trump loses the election. And although I do think that Donald Trump getting anywhere near the White House is very dangerous, I also think it’s very dangerous to allow someone to gain extraordinary amounts of political power, even more than they already have, without being challenged or questioned by an adversarial media. The role of journalists should be to shine a light on both of them. And there’s a lot of light to be shined on what Bill and Hillary Clinton had been doing in terms of unifying private wealth and oligarchical financing and enormous amounts of political power in ways that blur every single conceivable ethical line.
And what Donna Brazile said in that video that you played is nothing short of laughable. It’s not questioned when Republicans do favors for their donors? Of course it is. In fact, it’s been a core, central critique of the Democratic Party, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for years, that Republicans are corrupt because they serve the interest of their big donors. One of the primary positions of the Democratic Party is that the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court has corrupted politics because it allows huge money to flow into the political process in a way that ensures, or at least creates the appearance, that people are doing favors for donors.
And so, here you have Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton having this Clinton Foundation, with billions of dollars pouring into it from some of the world’s worst tyrannies, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and other Gulf states, other people who have all kinds of vested interests in the policies of the United States government. And at the same time, in many cases, both Bill and Hillary Clinton are being personally enriched by those same people, doing speeches, for many hundreds of thousands of dollars, in front of them, at the same time that she’s running the State Department, getting ready to run for president, and soon will be running the executive branch. And so, the primary defense of Democrats, which is, "Look, there is no proof of a quid pro quo. Yes, Hillary Clinton did things that benefited these donors, but you can’t prove that the reason she did them is because she got—the Clinton Foundation got this money or her husband got this money," this is an absurd standard. That has been the Republican argument for many years. Of course you can’t prove a quid pro quo, because you can’t get into the mind of somebody and show their motives. That was the argument of Antonin Scalia and John Roberts in Citizens United, and Anthony Kennedy. They said, "Look, you can’t prove that big money donations are corrupting. Maybe it creates an appearance of it, but you can’t prove it."
And so, the problem here is that the Clintons have essentially become the pioneers of eliminating all of these lines, of amassing massive wealth from around the world, and using that to boost their own political power, and then using that political power to boost the interests of the people who are enriching them in all kinds of ways. And of course questions need to be asked, and suspicions are necessarily raised, because this kind of behavior is inherently suspicious. And it needs a lot of media scrutiny and a lot of attention, and I’m glad it’s getting that.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Paul Glastris, who is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Monthly, and he was President Bill Clinton’s chief speechwriter from ’98 to 2001. I want to go to his comments.
PAUL GLASTRIS: The reason the Clinton State Department and the entire Obama administration was willing to give a lot of arms to the Saudis and the Bahrainis was that they were tubing the Saudis and the Bahrainis by trying to open negotiations with Iran. Everybody knows this. It’s not—we don’t need to kind of find some nefarious payoff in order to understand the policy. You can agree with the policy or disagree with the policy, but if you’re in favor of the opening of Iran, it’s hard to say they shouldn’t have sold these arms to the Sunnis. They were trying to keep a balance of power going in order to bring some kind of peace and resolution of these nuclear issues.
AMY GOODMAN: So that was Paul Glastris, when he had a debate at the time on Democracy Now! last week with David Sirota of International Business Times. But your response, Glenn?
GLENN GREENWALD: What an intellectually dishonest hack that guy is. Just think about what you just heard. So this is a former Democratic operative, who now is the editor-in-chief of a liberal magazine, the Washington Monthly, and what he is doing is he’s looking into the camera and speaking into his microphone and justifying selling arms to the worst regime, or one of the worst regimes, on the planet, which is the Saudi regime, because he needs to do that in order to defend the Clintons. That is what the Democratic Party has become. He is in the position of having to justify extraordinarily immoral behavior. The Saudis are currently using those arms, that were funneled to them by the United States government, approved by Hillary Clinton, to obliterate Yemeni children and Yemeni civilians for over two years now with the direct help of the United States government. And he is justifying that as some sort of magnanimous desire on the part of the Clintons to bring about world peace by forging a deal with Iran.
The reality is, is that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have been funding the Saudis for decades, long before that nonsensical excuse was even available about trying to facilitate the Iran deal, and at the very same time, the Saudis are feeding millions and millions and millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, enriching and empowering the Clintons in all kinds of ways. It’s a case of the Clintons and the world’s worst despots scratching each other’s back and doing favors for each other, while Democratic propagandists, like the one we just heard from, justify it as some sort of magnanimous gesture.
And this has really become the problem, which is, you have—there was all this talk over the last two weeks about the dangers of letting the media merge with a political campaign, when Donald Trump hired the chairman of Breitbart. And yet what you have is huge numbers of media outlets that are liberal media outlets, that are—exist for no reason but to serve the Democratic Party and their political leaders. They justify every single thing they do. They defend them from every single criticism that exists, without any kind of scruples or even pretense of independence. And overwhelmingly, the American media is completely on the side of the Clintons and Hillary Clinton in this campaign, and the liberals in the U.S. media are more propagandistic in defending Hillary Clinton than even her own campaign spokespeople are. And that clip proves that so, so potently.
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As Bernie Sanders Condemns "Coup" in Brazil, Why Have Obama & Clinton Been So Silent?
Earlier this month, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders strongly denounced the impeachment of Brazil’s democratically elected president. In a statement posted on his Senate website, Sanders laid out his position as "calling on the United States to take a definitive stand against efforts to remove Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from office." He added, "To many Brazilians and observers the controversial impeachment process more closely resembles a coup d’état." We speak to The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald in Rio.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders strongly denounced the impeachment of Brazil’s democratically elected president. In a statement posted on his Senate website, Sanders laid out his position as, quote, "calling on the United States to take a definitive stand against efforts to remove Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from office," unquote. He added, "To many Brazilians and observers the controversial impeachment process more closely resembles a coup d’état." So talk about the timing of Bernie Sanders’ statement, the content of his statement. And then, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, have they weighed in, and also President Obama?
GLENN GREENWALD: So, it’s been fascinating to watch, because originally the perception of this process was shaped by Brazil’s domestic media, which is an oligarchic media. They’re owned by a tiny number of extremely rich families, all of whom are united against the Workers’ Party and in favor of impeachment. Reporters Without Borders, the global media group, said that these media organizations were not acting as journalists; they were agitating against democracy in pursuit of the interests of their owners. And so, the perception originally was that this was the people rising up against a corrupt government. But as more people started looking at what was happening in Brazil, as more international journalists who aren’t beholden to these domestic interests started reporting on it, international opinion started radically changing. Just this weekend, Le Monde, the largest and most influential paper in France, one of the most influential in the world, denounced impeachment. They said if it’s not a coup, it’s a farce. You have international transparency groups, as you referenced earlier, denouncing it; the Organization of American States, members of the European Parliament, the British Parliament, and now Senator Sanders. So you see this growing awareness of what’s actually taking place in Brazil, this attack on democracy.
I do think it’s a little disturbing because, unfortunately, throughout the campaign that he ran, foreign policy was a very, you could say, ignored, but certainly deprioritized, part of Bernie Sanders’ challenge to Hillary Clinton. Even though her foreign policy needed so many objections and questions and attacks, he seemed to have very little interest in it. Now that he’s done, he’s willing, I guess, to be a little bit freer about commenting on foreign policy. And so it’s kind of a case of better late than never, but I wish that statement had been issued a lot earlier.
The United States government has been remarkably silent about what’s taking place in Brazil, for the obvious reason that they got caught in the 1960s having participated in and helping to plan the coup against the left-wing, democratically elected government. After vehemently denying for years that they were involved, documents surfaced showing that they were critical participants in that coup and in also supporting the military dictatorship that followed. And so, Brazilians are very sensitive about whatever role the United States might be playing in their internal affairs. And so, the president and the State Department have been very kind of muted about what it is they’re willing to say. But the United States government, for decades, has always preferred right-wing governments to left-wing governments in Latin America. They’ve certainly proven that over and over. As I said earlier, the right-wing faction that is now taking power in Brasília wants to become subservient again to the United States. And so I think it stands to reason that President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the State Department and Pentagon, to the extent they care, are pretty happy about the developments that have taken place here in Brazil, in terms of a government that wasn’t elected but that is much more favorable to American interests.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, we’re going to break and then come back to this discussion, both what’s happening in Brazil, the aftermath of the Olympics, the—you starting your own Intercept in Brazil with a group of people covering Brazilian politics. We’re talking to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald. We’ll be back with him in a moment.
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Greenwald: The Olympics May Be Over, But the Anger, Disillusionment Among Brazilians Remains High
The Olympics have wrapped up in Rio, leaving Brazilians with a massive debt from the Games and an ongoing financial crisis. For more on the current situation, we speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-founder of The Intercept. He has recently helped launch a new Intercept bureau in Brazil.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re speaking with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept, recently helped launch The Intercept Brasil in Portuguese to cover Brazilian social and political news. Why, Glenn?
GLENN GREENWALD: So, as I indicated earlier, Brazil, one of their principal problems is that they have a dominant media that is incredibly homogeneous. It’s owned by three or four billionaire families, who are very close to the government, who have very similar political views. They’ve been condemned by Reporters Without Borders as a threat to democracy. And when we started doing reporting on the impeachment process and the political crisis eight or 10 months ago at The Intercept, the reason was to fill that gap.
And the response was extraordinary. The number of people reading the articles we were writing was very large, and that’s because there’s a hunger for independent and adversarial journalism. It exists in Brazil. There’s a lot of good independent bloggers, but they don’t have the institutional resources that we were able to bring. And so we decided, going forward, to continue doing that kind of journalism. We created a team of about 10 to 12 Brazilian journalists and editors and columnists, and we hope to continue to expand the coverage. And the idea is to shine a light on the perspectives and stories and voices that are typically ignored by Brazil’s dominant media.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, can you talk about the aftermath of the Rio Olympics, everything from the Lochte scandal to the protests around the Olympics that so few people got to see, though there was massive coverage, of course, of the Games?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, it really remains to be seen what the fallout will be. Obviously, there have been some infrastructure improvements in Rio as a result of the Olympics. There are subway lines that have been built that didn’t previously exist. But by and large, most of the money was spent to improve the areas and neighborhoods where upper-middle-class to the wealthiest people of the city live and will be able to use, and the nation’s—the city’s poorest residents were essentially ignored, not entirely, but overwhelmingly. There was—there’s a massive crime problem in Brazil, and especially in Rio, that was sort of kept under control during the Olympics. But now that the tens of thousands of military troops occupying the city are mostly gone, the question is, what will happen with that?
And most of the residents of the city, who live without even minimal services, watched billions and billions of dollars being spent on stadiums that won’t be used and buildings that will now be sold at great profit, while their minimal, meager social programs will now be cut by a government that was never elected. And so there’s a lot of anger and a lot of disillusionment and a lot of resentment about what the aftermath of the Olympics will likely entail for the people who are in the greatest need.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, I want to thank you for being with us. I want to ask you to stay for just five minutes after the show; we’ll do a post-show and post it online at democracynow.org. Glenn Greenwald is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept, recently helped launch The Intercept Brasil in Portuguese to cover Brazilian social and political news.
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In Yemen, a suicide car bomb explosion killed at least 50 members of a pro-government militia earlier today. A witness said the attacker drove his vehicle into a crowd of new recruits in the port city of Aden. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombing.Yemen: Saudi Airstrikes Kill 11 Civilians, 1 Day After Kerry Visits Kingdom
The attack follows U.S.-backed, Saudi-led airstrikes on Friday that killed 11 civilians in northern Yemen. The strikes came just one day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Saudi foreign minister, where he urged a "political solution" to the war in Yemen. Despite the request, the U.S. continues to supply Saudi Arabia with arms. Earlier this month, the State Department approved a more than $1 billion deal to supply battle tanks and other weapons to the kingdom. Meanwhile, ISIS has also claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on a wedding in southern Iraq on Sunday which killed at least 15 people.Syria: Turkish Airstrikes Kill Dozens of Civilians
Turkish airstrikes and shelling reportedly left dozens of civilians dead in northern Syria, as the Turkish military and its allies pushed deeper into the war-torn country. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 35 civilians died in separate attacks by Turkish forces over the weekend. Turkey’s military claimed in a statement that it had killed 25 Syrian Kurdish militia members. Turkey’s invasion of Syria has further complicated the five-year war in Syria. Both Turkey and the Kurdish militias are U.S. allies.Pentagon Confirms ISIS Leader Was Held by U.S. at Abu Ghraib in 2004
The U.S. military has confirmed that the leader of ISIS was held as a U.S. prisoner at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. An investigation by The Intercept found that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, now the leader of the so-called Islamic State, was held at the prison for eight of his 10 months in U.S. custody that year. His detention coincided with revelations of widespread torture at Abu Ghraib. At the time of his release, al-Baghdadi was designated a low-level prisoner. Many analysts believe he was radicalized while in U.S. custody.Colombia: Ceasefire Between Gov't and FARC Goes into Effect
In Colombia, a ceasefire between rebels and the Colombian government has gone into effect, formally ending hostilities in a 52-year-old civil war that claimed an estimated 220,000 lives. Early this morning, FARC leader Timoleón Jiménez ordered his followers to lay down their arms.Timoleón Jiménez: "In my position as commander of the FARC-EP, I order all of our leaders, all of our units, every and each one of our combatants, to cease fire and hostilities in a definitive manner against the Colombian state from midnight tonight."
Brazil: Dilma Rousseff to Take Stand in Impeachment Trial Today
In Brazil, suspended President Dilma Rousseff will take the stand today to defend herself in an impeachment trial that’s expected to lead to her ouster. Lawmakers voted to suspend Rousseff in May, in what many consider a coup by her right-wing opponents. Leaked transcripts show at least one official plotted to oust Rousseff in order to end a corruption investigation targeting him. The group Transparency Brazil says 60 percent of Brazilian lawmakers are currently under criminal investigation or have already been convicted of crimes ranging from corruption to election fraud. After headlines, we’ll go to Rio de Janeiro and speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.German Minister: Free Trade Talks Between U.S. & EU Have Failed
Germany’s vice chancellor says that talks aimed at forging a massive trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union have failed. Sigmar Gabriel, who also serves as Germany’s economy minister, said Sunday that the stalemate could spell the end of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, orTTIP, which would be the largest free trade agreement in the world. It’s faced massive resistance on both sides of the Atlantic, including a 35,000-person protest in Germany ahead of Obama’s visit in April.Chicago: Brothers Arrested in Murder of Nykea Aldridge
Chicago police have arrested a pair of brothers and charged them with murdering the cousin of basketball star Dwyane Wade. Thirty-two-year-old Nykea Aldridge was shot dead on Friday afternoon as she pushed a baby stroller near an elementary school in the Parkway Gardens neighborhood. Her baby was not injured. Brothers Darwin and Derren Sorrells face first-degree murder charges in the killing. Both had felony convictions and were on parole. Aldridge leaves behind four children. Her cousin, Chicago Bulls star Dwyane Wade, spoke out on Twitter, writing: "The city of Chicago is hurting. We need more help & more hands on deck. Not for me and my family but for the future of our world. The YOUTH!" Chicago is on track to see its highest homicide rate since 1997. This is Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson.Superintendent Eddie Johnson: "This tragedy isn’t just noteworthy because Ms. Aldridge has a famous family member. It’s noteworthy because these two offenders are the prime example of the challenge we face here in Chicago with repeat gun offenders that don’t care who they shoot, don’t care whose life they take, and clearly, clearly don’t fear the consequences of their actions."
Trump Under Fire for Politicizing Nykea Aldridge's Death
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump is facing widespread criticism for attempting to use the killing of Nykea Aldridge to appeal to African Americans, writing on Twitter: "Dwayne Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!" He was met with immediate backlash for politicizing Aldridge’s death and misspelling Dwyane Wade’s name in the tweet. A message posted on Trump’s Twitter account later offered condolences to Wade and his family.Black Woman Denied Housing by Trump Family Speaks Out
Meanwhile, former victims of racial housing discrimination at units operated by the Trump family are speaking out. In 1973, the Nixon Justice Department sued Donald and his father Fred Trump for discriminating against African Americans in New York. One African-American woman who was denied an apartment at Fred Trump’s Wilshire Apartments in Queens spoke to The New York Times. This is Mae Wiggins.Mae Wiggins: "It was 52 years ago. My friend and I applied for an apartment in the Wilshire in Queens, New York, and we were both told that there were no vacancies. I realized that there were vacancies, because they still had the ads running, and I was pretty sure it was because of the color of our skin. I have always felt that the Trump Organization was biased. And I will go to my grave with that thought."
According to The New York Times, the very first time Donald Trump was mentioned in the paper was in 1973 in a front-page article headlined "Major Landlord Accused of Anti-Black Bias in City." The 1973 article quoted Donald Trump responding to the charges. He said, "They are absolutely ridiculous. We never have discriminated and we never would." The Trump family settled with the Justice Department in 1975 with a consent decree that they were later accused of breaking.
Trump Campaign CEO Faces Allegations of Sexual Abuse & Anti-Semitism
Donald Trump’s new campaign chief Steve Bannon is facing questions about domestic abuse, alleged anti-Semitic comments and apparent voter fraud. Steve Bannon was charged in 1996 with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery and dissuading a witness. A Santa Monica, California, police report said Bannon grabbed then-wife Mary Louise Piccard "by the throat and arm" and threatened to leave with the couple’s twin daughters. Bannon pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were dropped later that year when Piccard did not appear in court. Piccard claimed in divorce proceedings that Bannon pressured her not to testify. Piccard also said in a sworn 2007 court filing that Bannon made anti-Semitic comments when the two argued over whether to send their daughters to a private school. According to one document, Piccard said, "He said that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be 'whiny brats' and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews." Meanwhile, Bannon changed his voter registration over the weekend, after The Guardian reported he was registered at an empty home where he does not live. The house in Miami-Dade County, Florida, is vacant and due to be demolished to make way for a new development. Following the report, Bannon re-registered to vote in Florida’s Sarasota County at the single-family home of a former colleague at the right-wing website, Breitbart News. Bannon was the head of Breitbart until two weeks ago, when he took over at the helm of Donald Trump’s election campaign.Judge Aaron Persky Will No Longer Hear Criminal Cases
California Judge Aaron Persky will no longer hear criminal cases, following outrage over lenient sentences he handed down to sexual offenders. Persky became the subject of a recall campaign after he sentenced Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to a six-month prison term for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. In 2015, Persky gave a four-day sentence to a man found guilty of possessing child abuse images. He will be reassigned to a civil court in San Jose, at his own request.Hawaii: Obama Creates World's Largest Marine Reserve
President Barack Obama has expanded a national monument near the Hawaiian islands, creating the world’s largest marine reserve. The designation quadruples the size of the protected habitat, making it more than twice the size of Texas. The area is home to some 7,000 species.Maine Gov. Under Fire for Calling People of Color "The Enemy"
Lawmakers in the state of Maine are considering holding a special session to censure Republican Governor Paul LePage, who recently described African Americans and Latinos as "the enemy" and suggested they need to be shot.Gov. Paul LePage: "A bad guy’s a bad guy. I don’t care what color it is. When you go to war, if you know the enemy—the enemy dresses in red, and you dress in blue—you shoot at red. Don’t you? Ken, you’ve been in uniform. You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy. And the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color, are people of Hispanic origin."
Maine Governor Paul LePage is also facing criticism for leaving an obscenity-filled voicemail for a Democratic lawmaker.
Gov. Paul LePage: "Mr. Gattine, this is Governor Paul Richard LePage. I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you [expletive]. And I want to talk to you. You want—I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people, and you little son of a [expletive], socialist [expletive], you—I need you to just friggin’—I want you to record this and make it public, because I am after you. Thank you."
LePage was the second governor to endorse Donald Trump.
Oklahoma: Police Pepper-Spray 84-Year-Old Woman in Her Home
Police in Oklahoma have released body camera video showing an officer pepper-spraying an 84-year-old African-American woman in her own home. The video shows Muskogee officers kicking in the door of Geneva Smith’s residence on August 7 as they pursued her son for allegedly running a stop sign and fleeing from police. The son, Arthur Paul Blackmon, is seen holding his hands up as an officer shoots him in the torso with a Taser while he’s standing inside the house. The video also shows police ordering his elderly mother to turn around, who appears confused about why police are in her home at 2:45 a.m. After 40 seconds, police pepper-sprayed her in the face. Smith told Tulsa TV channel FOX23 she is planning a lawsuit.Geneva Smith: "I just came out and asked them what was going on, and they just pepper-sprayed me. They handcuffed me and dragged me out to the car and put me in there. They carried me to jail."
Geneva Smith says she was first taken to jail, but was later hospitalized after she became ill from the pepper spray.
49ers Quarterback Refuses to Stand for National Anthem in Protest
A star quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers refused to rise for the national anthem before a preseason NFL game on Friday in a protest against police brutality and in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Colin Kaepernick remained seated while his teammates stood for the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" ahead of a match against the Green Bay Packers. Explaining his protest to NFL.com, Kaepernick said, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder." In a news conference, Kaepernick also vowed to continue to sit during the national anthem.Colin Kaepernick: "I’ll continue to sit. I’m going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed. To me, this is something that has to change. And when there’s significant change and I feel like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent, and this country is representing people the way that it’s supposed to, I’ll stand."
Beyoncé Brings "Mothers of the Movement" to MTV Video Music Awards
The legendary singer Beyoncé wowed audiences of the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, performing a 15-minute medley of songs from her album "Lemonade." Beyoncé invited to the gala several mothers of African-American men killed by police or vigilantes, including Wanda Johnson, mother of Oscar Grant; Lesley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown; Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner; and Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin. McSpadden and Fulton appeared in the video for Beyoncé’s song "Freedom" holding pictures of their deceased sons.Legendary Mexican Singer Juan Gabriel Dies at 66
And the legendary Mexican singer Juan Gabriel has died at the age of 66. Known as the "Latino Elvis," he sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the most popular stars in Latin America.-------
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