Buenos Aires Herald 
Argentine President Javier Milei’s ongoing feud with his Brazilian counterpart Lula da Silva seemingly added a new chapter on Monday with the news that Milei would be stepping down from the Mercosur summit to be held on July 8 in Paraguay. The event would have been the first official meeting the two would have shared.
Milei, however, will visit Brazil over the weekend, his first trip to the neighboring country since winning the election, and meet with former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Argentine president is set to speak at an ultra-conservative event, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Brazil. The event will take place on July 6 and 7, just days before the Mercosur summit. Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, confirmed the two would meet on Monday in a post on X.
However, Milei will not meet the country’s sitting president during his visit. Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni claimed Monday that the “astronomical” ideological gap between the two South American leaders was not the reason they would not get together. “We would never miss an event because of that,” he said.
Foreign Minister Diana Mondino will replace Milei at the Mercosur summit due to “scheduling issues,” Adorni said.
Milei has turned Da Silva into one of his main punching bags ever since he was on the campaign trail. He doubled down on his attacks on Tuesday with a post on X titled “perfectly idiotic dinosaur,” in which he defended his previous criticism of Lula as “corrupt” and “communist.”
He also accused the Brazilian leader of “interfering” in Argentina’s 2023 election campaign. In the post, Milei does not specify by name who he is referring to as the dinosaur.
“Lula […] complains because I respond with the truth (he has been in jail for corruption, and he is a communist),” he wrote. Lula was imprisoned in 2018 after being sentenced to eight years and 10 months for allegedly accepting bribes from engineering firms in return for public contracts. He was freed in 2019 and the Brazilian Supreme Court annulled all evidence presented by the now-defunct Lava Jato task force, calling his imprisonment a “historical mistake.”
Lula said last week that he believes Milei owes him and Brazilians an apology for having said “a lot of stupid things” about Brazil, grains-producing Argentina’s top trade partner.
Milei’s criticisms of other leaders have gotten him into hot water recently, including a public spat with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and presidents Gustavo Petro (Colombia) and Luis Arce (Bolivia). All of those countries have recalled their ambassadors in Argentina, although Colombia’s has already returned.
In the same post he criticized Lula on Tuesday, Milei claimed an attempted coup last week in Bolivia was a “fraud,” repeating recent comments from his office that led Bolivia’s government to recall their ambassador on Monday.
Reuters/Herald
