Comedian spoofs Brazil’s Bolsonaro with banana joke

Brasília (AFP) – Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is known for making an obscene arm gesture at journalists that is known in Portuguese as the “banana.”

So a comedian spoofed him Wednesday by bringing bunches of bananas to the presidential press corps — though journalists were not laughing.

With Bolsonaro’s apparent blessing, comic Marvio Lucio arrived at the presidential palace in Brasilia in an official-looking black car, just as the president does each day. Then, dressed in a suit and presidential sash, he offered the bananas to journalists waiting to question the man known as the “Tropical Trump.”

The gag was a reference to Bolsonaro’s repeated use on the press corps of the arm gesture widely known as an “F-U,” “Italian salute,” “Iberian slap,” “bras d’honneur”… or, in Brazil, “banana.”

The real Bolsonaro then arrived, laughing, and posed for pictures with Lucio, who works for TV Record, a broadcaster owned by an evangelical mega-church that is close to the president.

The spoof was broadcast live on the president’s Facebook account.

But journalists, the frequent target of attacks from Bolsonaro, were not amused.

“The journalists who were present withdrew in the face of this skit,” wrote newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, which the president has virulently criticized.

In the video, Lucio tries to hand out his bananas, but no journalists take them.

The imitator then turns to a crowd of Bolsonaro supporters nearby, handing out a banana there and eating one himself.

When Bolsonaro arrives, the journalists try to ask him a question about economic growth figures published Wednesday that showed the economy slowed in his first year in office.

The president declines to answer the question and refers it to the comic, who replies: “Paulo Guedes, Paulo Guedes” — the name of Bolsonaro’s aggressively free-market economy minister and go-to guru for all economic questions.

Bolsonaro last made the “banana” gesture at journalists outside the presidential palace on February 15, when he was asked about a controversial project to build a new office for his wife in the presidential library.

“You people are only interested in rubbish,” he said, then let the gesture fly as he left.