In the midst of his campaign towards the November 19 presidential run-off, Javier Milei (La Libertad Avanza, LLA) gave an erratic interview on América TV network Thursday night, offering up bizarre metaphors to justify his recently confirmed alliance with Patricia Bullrich (Juntos por el Cambio, JxC) and complaining that people whispering in the studio were distracting him. 

In an hour-long talk with journalist Esteban Trebuq in which Milei looked in turns nervous and emotional, the most peculiar moment was arguably when the far-right presidential candidate offered his reasoning as to why he thought voters who supported him were pleased that he and Bullrich had joined forces. 

“After Bullrich made her announcement, I posted a meme,” Milei said, referencing a post he made on his social media channels that showed a cartoon image of a lion and a duck to symbolize their alliance. Milei’s followers call him a “lion”, and Bullrich’s nickname is “pato” (duck), a common shortening in Argentina for people named Patricia. 

“Did anybody see the metrics of that post? It has over 250,000 likes and almost 16 million views. On my personal Instagram, it has over 1 million likes,” he said. But when the interviews interjected that those numbers didn’t equal votes, seeming to ask what he meant by his reasoning, Milei offered a strange response.

“When a few idiots are commenting online, you know what? While they watch the woman on Internet, I’m laying on her sheets,” he said, a response that prompted at least one interviewer to say he “didn’t understand.”

Another peculiar moment came when Milei halted a segment of the interview where he was defending his dollarization plan to complain about what he said were people whispering in the studio. 

“Can the whispering please stop? These are very delicate topics to discuss, and people won’t stop talking despite my changes in tone”, he asked Trebuq. “I think its fair to say that there’s a noise level that is not adequate for dealing with these topics […] If I make a mistake, I will get publicly destroyed,” he said.