An insult traded across the border
Javier Milei again attacked Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, over remarks the Brazilian leader made during the most recent presidential debate in his country, calling him a thief and a liar. The Argentine president's words heighten a diplomatic crisis with Argentina's principal commercial partner and arrive one day before voting in Brazil, where Milei has thrown his support behind the opposition candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro.[S1][S2][S3]
The Argentine head of state, who describes himself as a libertarian, seized on Argentina's economic record to challenge the model put forward by his preferred candidate's rival. According to the report, Lula argued during the debate that poverty in Argentina had reached 40 percent and that some people there eat donkey meat, before asking whether his opponent wanted to copy Milei's approach.[S1][S4]
Milei's reply and the donkey-meat episode
Milei answered by repeating the thief-and-liar label, taking his cue from a social media post that relayed the Brazilian president's criticism. He went on to say that Lula's negative-campaign team, which he described as devoted to inventing falsehoods about adversaries, ought to advise him against using fabricated data to smear opponents, arguing that doing so proves he lies and that he is the source of the lie.[S1]
The donkey-meat reference traces back to a controversy that took hold last April, when a butcher in Chubut put a cut of that animal on sale as an alternative to beef. The offering was made in the Trelew area, where the meat was priced at 7,500 pesos per kilogram.[S1]
