For starters, unlike Trump, former President Jair Bolsonaro was not present at the protests, nor was he nearby. In fact, he wasn't even in Brazil. While his supporters stormed the Planalto Palace, vandalized priceless works of art, smashed furniture, and broke windows, Bolsonaro was in Florida, eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and wandering aimlessly around a Publix. On the advice of his lawyers, Bolsonaro had fled Brazil for Orlando to stay at the home of former UFC fighter José Aldo. One Brazilian newspaper pointed out that one of Aldo's bedrooms is Minion themed, raising the very real possibility that on the night of the failed coup, Bolsonaro rested his weary head on a pillow shaped like a Minion.

In addition to questions about the shape of his pillow, Bolsonaro's lack of physical presence raises questions of his criminal culpability. On Jan. 6, Trump stood on the Ellipse and egged on a crowd of thousands to "fight like hell," before they seemingly answered his call with a forward march to the Capitol to which he personally directed them. While many scholars contend that the First Amendment protects political speech, even when it leads to violence, others, including Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein and Fordham law professor Jed Shugerman, believe that Trump could still be held criminally liable for inciting the riot. 

Making the same case against Bolsonaro, who was nearly 3,800 miles away in Orlando at the time of the incident, might prove a bit trickier--though Brazil does not have the First Amendment and instead has its own protections over freedom of speech. After months of spreading conspiracy theories of a rigged election and refusing to concede to the victor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, few would doubt Bolsonaro's political culpability--but proving criminal liability is a different matter entirely. Trump's inciting remarks on Jan. 6 may ultimately prove more damning than Bolsonaro's relative silence, however damaging it was in its own way.  

But Bolsonaro wasn't the only one absent from Brasília on Jan. 8. As editor in chief of America's Quarterly Brian Winter pointed out on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the riots, the Brazilian Congress was not in session. Unlike U.S. lawmakers--and in some cases their families--who fled from the incoming insurrectionists, Brazilian legislative leaders were not present. This meant, as Winter pointed out, that unlike in the U.S., "the lives of Brazilian Congressional leaders [were] not in danger, nor [was] the transition of power which [had] already taken place in Brazil." 

One interpretation of this difference is that the Brazilian rioters lacked the same clear goal that animated the U.S. insurrectionists. While the date may have taken on an entirely new significance after the riots, the date was chosen for a reason: Jan. 6 was the constitutionally designated date for the certification of the votes in 2021. And as haphazard as it may have seemed, the Jan. 6 rioters were united in attempting to block the official certification of the results of the 2020 election. 

In Brazil on Jan. 8, by contrast, Lula had already been in office for more than a week. Rather than disrupting any ceremony or electoral process in particular, the Bolsonaristas seemed intent on disruption in general. "It was an expression of frustration and outrage," political scientist Jennifer McCoy told the Times, "[b]ut without the possibility of stopping anything, because the inauguration already happened." Max Fisher dismissed Jan. 8 as "more tantrum than full J6."