'Drunkard,' 'redneck,' a few of the milder insults in Brazil runoff

President Jair Bolsonaro has called his election opponent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a "thief" and a "drunkard." Lula counters that the Brazilian leader is a "butcher," and a "redneck."

The insults are flying between the two candidates before the second round of presidential elections.

Here is a timeline of some of the put-downs:

Bolsonaro on Lula: 'swindler'

"I talk dirty, but I'm not a thief," Bolsonaro said at a September 7 campaign event on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, referring to Lula's 2017 conviction on charges of accepting bribes for public contracts while president. A Supreme Court judge annulled the conviction last year.

"Liar, ex-convict, traitor," Bolsonaro said of Lula in the last televised debate on TV Globo on September 28.

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"If you put a drunkard to run Brazil... who has a trail of corruption, of debauchery, toward the Brazilian family, of attacks on priests and pastors, on the armed forces, on the police, do you think it will work?" Bolsonaro said at a news conference on October 7 at his official residence in Brasilia.

"He is a great liar, a swindler, a corrupt person, a lawless bandit... Lula has surpassed Al Capone. Poor Al Capone, he was just a pickpocket next to Lula," Bolsonaro said on October 9 in an interview with the Pilhado channel on YouTube.

Lula on Bolsonaro: 'Jester'

"This butcher who rules this country is not received by anyone and no one wants to visit this country. He is a denialist who doesn't believe in things," Lula said during a campaign event in Campina Grande, Paraiba, on August 2.

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"Bolsonaro is a hostage of the national congress... Bolsonaro looks like the court jester," Lula said on August 25 on the TV Globo evening newscast.

"Bolsonaro's event looked like a Ku Klux Klan meeting. The only thing missing was the hood," Lula said on September 8 at a meeting on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. "There were no black people, no brown people, no poor people."

"We are facing a man without soul, without heart, a man who did not have the sensibility to shed a single tear for any of the more than 680,000 victims of Covid," Lula said on October 7 in Sao Paulo. Brazil, a country of 210 million, was one of the hardest-hit nations in the world.

"That's what he is, a little ignorant. That rough way of being, that redneck way from the countryside of Sao Paulo, you know?" Lula said on September 22 on the nightly Ratinho TV program.

Source: AFP