The strange reaction and the succession of comments by Javier Milei this week in a television interview enhanced the debate in Argentina about the personality of the ultra-liberal candidate who will seek the Presidency in three weeks. It happened on Thursday night, during an interview on the A24 television channel. When Esteban Trebucq, the interviewer, asks him about his recent agreement with former president Mauricio Macri and with the person who came third in the elections, Patricia Bullrich, and Milei lights up.
“In front of the Bullrich ad, I published a meme. Did anyone see the metrics of that tweet?” he said, while a particular rictus appeared on his face. “It has more than 250,000 likes, it has almost 16 million impressions.” “Only my Instagram account has a million likes. What I want to say is: just as there is a salami or three salami giving their opinion from a computer… You know what? While they look at the lady on the internet, I’m on in the middle of their sheets,” he added.
The disconcerting phrase had come after a moment of tension between Milei and the technical team on the A24 set, at a time when Argentine television unions are promoting protest measures over their working conditions.
“Can we ask that the murmuring behind the camera stop? Because it is very difficult to talk with so many people talking,” he claimed, visibly annoyed while trying to explain his economic plan.
“They are very delicate topics and I see that they do not stop talking, despite my changes in tone to ask them to do so implicitly. Let’s agree that we have an unconventional level of bustle for topics as complex as the ones we are dealing with. And if I make a mistake “They destroy me publicly and no one is going to say that behind it there was a murmur that was killing me,” he concluded.
In another part of the interview, Milei broke down when he was reminded that many accuse him of being a Nazi. The ultra-liberal populist candidate has a rabbi from the Argentine Sephardic community as an advisor and has been considering converting to Judaism for some time. Milei said those who call him a Nazi should visit the Holocaust Museum.
“If there is anything I can suggest to you, it is that you go and visit that museum. To get an idea of the horror that was,” he said, while refusing to respond directly to those who accuse him of being a Nazi. “That situation is so horrible that it doesn’t even belong anymore. It’s very painful… When you go to the museum, you see the horror that that was…”
Still, Milei admitted that he may have made mistakes on his part to be branded a Nazi: “Well, I must be wrong about something I do. If there are so many people who make that accusation against me, there must probably be something I’m wrong about.” “I’m wrong. I’ll have to try to understand why they accuse me of something so aberrant.”
Although in recent times he has moderated his slander, in different situations in recent years, Milei flirted with ideas such as approving a market for the free sale of human organs and the free sale of weapons. She even said that “maybe in 200 years we can talk about selling children.”
“His participation in A24 did not leave public opinion indifferent: his vehement way of expressing himself and some of his gestures drew attention, which at times were far from those he usually exhibits,” highlighted the newspaper La Nación.
MIlei defended himself against the comments. “Argentina upside down. If you ask for respect in a television studio, they call you crazy,” he said on the social network as Minister of Economy he has lowered taxes and distributed subsidies on a massive scale: “Anyone who raffles off three points of the GDP in his electoral adventure out of ambition for power is treated as sensible.”
Milei and Massa will face each other on November 19 in a second round that will define who settles in the Casa Rosada starting on December 10.