Brazil’s Bolsonaro Says He Doesn’t Want David Duke’s Support
Bolsonaro Says He Rejects ‘Supremacist Groups’ After David Duke Report
(Bloomberg) -- The right-wing front-runner in Brazil’s presidential race rejected support from supremacist groups after reportedly receiving praise from David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
“I reject any type of support coming from supremacist groups,” Jair Bolsonaro wrote in English on his Twitter account. “I suggest that, for consistency, they support my adversary the candidate of the left party, who loves to segregate the society.”
Duke, who endorsed U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, said on his radio show that Bolsonaro “sounds like us,” and called him a strong candidate, a nationalist, and of European descent, according to a report published by BBC News Brasil and matched by other local media.
After a long history of inflammatory rhetoric and political incorrectness, Bolsonaro more recently tried to reach out to minorities and called for unity, including among blacks and whites. Brazil’s public prosecutor filed charges of inciting racism against him that the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed.
Brazilians are “the most beautiful and mixed race people in the world,” Bolsonaro said in his Twitter post. He leads the leftist candidate Fernando Haddad by a wide margin ahead of the runoff election on Oct. 28.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Biller in Rio de Janeiro at dbiller1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vivianne Rodrigues at vrodrigues3@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt, Walter Brandimarte
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