It was a “f–k you” which echoed around the world.
Brazil’s first lady Janja Lula da Silva, 58, set off a diplomatic firestorm after she delivered an expletive comment to Elon Musk at a panel on disinformation and regulating social media at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday.
After a ship’s horn sounded, she made what was apparently meant to be a quip, saying: “I think it’s Elon Musk. I’m not afraid of you, f–k you, Elon Musk.”
The comments reminded her audience of the bitter battle waged between the tech billionaire and Brazil’s Supreme Court over free speech on Musk’s X platform earlier this year, which saw it banned in the country between August and October.
With world leaders, including US President Biden and China’s Xi Jinping, attending the G20 economic conference until Tuesday, Brazilian opposition figures denounced da Silva’s insult, with some of the country’s diplomats worried the comments could stand in the way of establishing a working relationship with president-elect Donald Trump, according to the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.
Trump nominated the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to join his administration as head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency.
“We already have another diplomatic problem,” said former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro this weekend on X, referring to Janja’s comments.
A video of the incident was uploaded Saturday to X by conservative federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira, who noted that “Janja da Silva, the wife of Lula said ‘f—k you’ @elonmusk during a panel. This is the ‘tolerant left.’”
Musk, the world’s richest man, responded on X by reposting the video of the Brazilian first lady with laughing emojis and said: “They will lose the next election.”
But government officials and supporters of Brazil’s Marxist president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva continued to pile on.
Paulo Teixeira, Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture backed up the Brazilian first lady in an X post Sunday: “The truth is that @janjaLula said what was stuck in our throats. This reflects the sentiment about Elon Musk and his negative interference in international politics.”
Social media influencer and philanthropist Felipe Neto posted a photo of himself with Janja and repeated the expletive in a post to his 17.1 million followers on X with the comment, “They’re not going to win.”
The Brazilian government’s fight with Musk began earlier this year when Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes banned Musk’s X platform in August, over “disinformation” being spread through it in Latin America’s largest country.
Musk had refused to crack down on Brazilian X users who the government said were spreading misinformation about the 2022 presidential election in the country, where da Silva beat Bolsonaro by a narrow margin of votes.
Bolsonaro contested the vote and his supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court on January 8, 2023. Bolsonaro was later found guilty of abusing his power, and was barred from running for public office for eight years.
At the height of the X ban in Brazil, Musk called Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accused him of “trying to destroy democracy in Brazil.”
But by September, Musk began to comply with the court’s orders and agreed to pay a $5 million fine and appoint an X representative in the country, which boasts more than 20 million users on the platform.
By October, Moraes ordered the “immediate return” of X’s activities.
“X is proud to return to Brazil,” said a statement from its Global Government Affairs department.” Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process. We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”
Over the weekend, Brazil’s president tried to downplay his wife’s outburst when he told a crowd of supporters at a talk on hunger at the G20 summit “this is a campaign where we don’t need to offend anyone.”
Diplomats worried that Janja Da Silva’s comments could get in the way of the Brazilian government’s attempts to reach consensus at the G20 and increase friction with Argentina’s president Javier Milei, a supporter of Trump’s and a friend of Musk’s, the Folha de Sao Paulo said.
Still, many X users in the country were critical of the outburst against Musk.
Brazilian journalist Patricia Lelis posted in Brazilian: “Not liking Elon Musk is a personal opinion, another thing is the first lady telling someone to f—k off publicly. Want to speak your mind? Don’t be the first lady. Simple.”
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