Former Trump Spokesperson Approaches Bolsonaro and Wants to Expand Gettr Social Network in Brazil

by

Jason Miller doesn’t want to say who he’s rooting for in the Brazilian election. Spokesperson and senior adviser to Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential campaigns, the American says he prefers “to be a little more reserved in commenting on elections”.

“If not, my great friend Alexandre de Moraes can attack me again”, he explains, with irony, in an interview with Sheet. The republican political strategist refers to his first visit to Brazil, in September 2021, when he was detained at Brasília airport to testify to the Federal Police in the investigation that investigated anti-democratic acts, by order of the minister of the Federal Supreme Court.

Moraes wanted to know if Miller, still close to Trump and other controversial figures on the US right, such as Steve Bannon, was somehow involved in movements to challenge the legitimacy of the institutions — the American traveled to participate in the Brazilian version of the CPAC, a conference which brings together personalities from the conservative field.

“If I had known that being detained for three hours would bring me 100,000 new followers in Brazil, I would have been detained for six hours,” he says.

Not that it’s too hard to find his favorite candidate. The former Trump adviser was at Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) lunch with supporters at a Brazilian steakhouse last week in New York and went to Rio de Janeiro for the Bicentennial of Independence, converted into a campaign act for the president’s re-election.

In the last year, Miller has traveled to Brazil three times — the first two for CPAC, in Brasília and Campinas, and the third for 7 de Setembro. During this period, he became close to the Bolsonaro family and made friends such as Jovem Pan commentators Ana Paula Henkel and Paulo Figueiredo, grandson of the last president of the military dictatorship, João Figueiredo.

Miller’s interest in Brazil, however, goes beyond the ideological sphere. The country is now the second main market for Gettr, the social network of which he is executive director. The platform sells itself as a pillar of the absolute defense of freedom of expression and promises that no user will be “persecuted” for political opinions – which means that there will be no exclusion of publications or accounts for spreading fake news, for example.

According to Miller, of the 6.5 million Gettr users, about 900,000 are Brazilians. The figure leaves Brazil behind the US, which has half of the total accounts, and ahead of the UK, with 10%. The site is now fully translated into Portuguese and was given the green and yellow colors on the 7th of September. At the event in Rio, a giant inflatable totem was erected on Avenida Atlântica, in Copacabana, with the publicity of the platform.

Founded not by chance on July 4, 2021, Gettr took advantage of the US Independence holiday to promise autonomy from big techs such as Facebook, Google and Twitter – which are, according to Miller, one of the main threats to freedom of expression. . The proposal is similar to Truth Social, created by the president himself, but much smaller.

To explain why he decided to create the network, he cites what he considers censorship of a story by the conservative New York Post about one of the sons of then-candidate Joe Biden less than a month before the 2020 presidential election. Emails indicated possible business irregularities. by Hunter Biden in Ukraine, but the report was deemed “Russian disinformation” and its sharing was limited on networks such as Facebook and Twitter. After the lawsuit, investigations showed that the material obtained by the tabloid was true.

The main motivator for creating the “unsubscribe-free” network, however, was Trump’s expulsion from the main platforms after the invasion of the US Congress, inflated by the then president, on the grounds that his online speech could incite more real violence. .

“I fundamentally believe that free speech is a divine right,” says Miller. “The ability to communicate, to share opinions, is what separates us from animals and what makes us unique. It’s also what separates democracies from authoritarian states.”

In just over a year of operation, Gettr organized in a headquarters with around 50 employees in New York, in addition to a few more outsourced workers around the world, including in Brazil, responsible for activities such as moderation of comments.

Moderation is not even seen as censorship by Miller. He states that the platform does impose limits on the conduct of users. It is not allowed, for example, to make threats or extort users. In addition, according to the creator, no form of incitement to terrorism, such as the defense of Nazism or the Islamic State, is tolerated, and terms considered racist in the English language are also prohibited.

Gettr is still far from profitable and is maintained with contributions from two financiers; Miller does not reveal names or numbers. In October, however, the company will launch an ad platform that allows monetization for content creators and that should be the first step towards becoming profitable.

Bolsonaro and his family are active users on Gettr – the president had publications deleted on other platforms when he encouraged the use of ineffective drugs against Covid or questioned the integrity of electronic voting machines.

The doors are also open for Bolsonaro’s main adversary, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). “He’s welcome,” says Miller, who dismisses the view that Gettr only has right-wing users. “I think he’s wasting time, he could connect with a lot of voters there.”

You May Also Like

Recommended for you