The Madman and the Statesman

By Atilio Boron – Aug 5, 2026

The truth is, I had promised myself I would avoid the temptation to analyze the statements and behavior of Argentina’s president. The reason: to keep myself as far away as possible from a figure as despicable as the occupant of the Casa Rosada. A toxic individual who can poison even those who examine him, like a researcher dissecting a filthy rat and, in doing so, contracting the hantavirus. But his most recent verbal attacks on a man of integrity and a dignified social activist like President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva crossed every line and prompted me to write these few lines about the incident and the man himself.

His unforgivable statements when he attended the Brazilian Liberal Party Convention—which officially endorsed Flávio Bolsonaro’s candidacy—reiterated for the umpteenth time that Argentina is governed by a man who lacks the most basic sense of reality. This is someone who navigates a turbulent sea of delusions and fantasies in which the essential distinction between truth and lies vanishes completely. It is a deeply alarming condition for ordinary people, but it is extremely grave when the one suffering from it is a head of state. To Milei’s supporters, it seems normal for presidents to insult and disparage one another, just as Milei does with Lula, Pedro Sánchez, Gustavo Petro, Díaz Canel, and, in general, any “shitty leftist.” For the rest of the world, it is not. In international relations, not even the heads of state of deeply divided countries exchange that sort of abuse. To the accusations he made on that occasion—that Lula is a “corrupt, thieving convict”—he has now added that Lula “is not innocent” and that if he is free, it is due to a procedural error. This is because Milei has not the slightest idea what it means to be president of a republic or what responsibilities that office entails. He has not—and never will—step outside the microcosm of those third-rate television panels that turned him into a colorful and appealing phenomenon because of the absurdities he spouted. Nor has he stepped outside the undignified chorus of pseudo-journalists incapable of asking him a substantive question or following up on his stammering and fanciful answers.

But furthermore, insulting his Brazilian counterpart constitutes an unforgivable lack of respect toward a country of fundamental economic, political, and geopolitical importance to Argentina—a country with which Argentina founded Mercosur, shares a natural gas integration project, and with which it has established a virtuous level of productive interdependence. Such behavior is detrimental to national interests; but if there is one thing Milei is unaware of (aside from the most basic norms of courtesy and good manners), it is those very interests—because in the strange, ethereal world in which he lives, they do not exist. And the national interest, like social justice, is a malicious invention of the leftists. Only markets exist.

With his outbursts, Milei has discredited this country as few presidents have done, with the exception of those from the military dictatorships that, with some interruptions, seized power between 1930 and 1983. With his brutal disregard for the most basic ethical standards, he has degraded the language of politics like no one before him. His is a thuggish, violent, aggressive slang that diminishes and humiliates him in the eyes of almost everyone (“Who is this guy?” said Lula, a statesman, with subtle irony, referring to the puppet who insulted him) and that also degrades the presidential institution and, by extension, those of the republic. His insults, hurled left and right, have made it acceptable today for any ordinary citizen to refer to their president as “a fucking fascist”—something that would have been unthinkable before this troglodyte’s unfortunate irruption into Argentine political life. If fewer people believe in democracy today, it is because of Milei—and, let’s not forget!—the “red circle” of the country’s wealthiest elites and foreign interests who benefit from his policies. Let’s remember that it was he who defined his mission as lining the pockets of business owners and destroying the state from within.

In pursuit of a fanciful fiscal balance or surplus—one based on failing to meet its basic obligations as a government—what he has done is cut public spending on health care and destroy the public hospital system. This results daily in the deaths of chronically ill patients who cannot access their medications, children who cannot receive care, and older adults deprived of their medications or medical treatments—which they cannot afford due to the meager size of their retirement benefits and pensions. He has also cut spending on public education, science and research, public works essential for economic growth, and the fight against poverty—whose figures fluctuate wildly from one day to the next depending on the president’s hormonal imbalance. He has released ridiculous poverty figures that reveal this man lives in another galaxy: 29%, he said just the other day. A multidimensional measure of poverty—one that isn’t limited to simply calculating household income but takes into account access to “a set of environmental and housing rights, as well as employment, health, education, and services”—shows that in this country, the poor account for 67% of the population.

Without a doubt, Milei has been the greatest serial impoverisher in modern Argentina. And if he truly wants to end poverty, let him go to China, where poverty has indeed been eradicated thanks to state policies conceived and directed by the “shitty leftists” of the Chinese Communist Party.

The hot-headed, quarrelsome madman who governs us has no idea about the real world. He doesn’t speak with real, flesh-and-blood people, but rather with the sycophants in his inner circle. He lies systematically—as I’ve rarely seen a head of state lie in my life—and sincerely believes his own lies. To claim that this is the government that has done the most to advance negotiations with the United Kingdom regarding the Falkland Islands is utter nonsense. He may be an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, but that doesn’t budge the nearly two-century-old British colonial ambition regarding our islands by even a millimeter. To think that Trump will demand that London sit down to negotiate the issue with our country is utter folly.

Brazil Withdraws Ambassador From Argentina Following Milei’s Insults

To claim that our economy is growing at 10% in a country where, since Milei took office, 26,000 businesses have closed—2% of which were large companies—and where commerce, construction, and industry are in free fall, with more than 250,000 newly unemployed and nearly two-thirds of the working population saying they “can’t make ends meet” on their wages, is yet another sign of his complete disconnect from reality. In short, our president, aside from insulting his opponents, confesses through his statements that he does not live in Argentina but is stuck in the ramblings of Murray Rothbard or Friedrich von Hayek.

I could hardly conclude these lines without addressing the international counterpart to the extreme cruelty with which Milei treats his weakest and most vulnerable compatriots. I am referring to his unconditional admiration for two perpetrators of genocide: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The former ordered the extrajudicial execution of 221 people killed simply for sailing on so-called “drug boats”—an issue on which the traditional guardians of Western values maintain a complicit silence. Not only that, but they are also unmoved by the criminal military attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of the legitimate president, Nicolás Maduro Moros—whom recently declassified CIA documents confirm as the winner of the last presidential election.

Trump and Marco Rubio are also guilty of the slow, creeping genocide they are perpetrating through the comprehensive blockade of Cuba—a country deprived of fuel for transportation, of supplies for its aging thermal power plants, unable to receive tourists, and subjected, despite its unparalleled solidarity, to criminal pressure—with no one in this world possessing the qualities that Fidel had in abundance to send an oil tanker to the aid of the Cuban people in defiance of the imperial order. Yet Milei declares himself an unconditional admirer of the other great perpetrator of genocide in our time: the Israeli prime minister, who is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, shooting defenseless children and women—homeless, without water, without anything—attacking ambulances rushing to aid the victims of Zionist brutality, and displaying a cowardice comparable only to that of the Nazi leadership and troops during the Holocaust. An unstoppable neo-Nazi regime that is now descending upon southern Lebanon and also attacking the population of the West Bank, stealing land and burning the homes of the Palestinians who live there. Milei takes pride in his affinity with these two great criminals, which makes it unnecessary to dwell further on criticism of him personally.

It is worth adding that, in addition to his mental instability—which leads him to insult a statesman like Lula—he is also driven by sheer stupidity: Argentina, along with the United States and Israel, was one of only three countries in the UN General Assembly to oppose a resolution proposed by Ghana declaring that the transatlantic slave trade, which lasted for three centuries, was “the most serious crime against humanity in history.”

There were 123 countries that voted in favor of that resolution, 52 abstentions—largely the old European colonial powers and their satellite states—and only three countries that voted against it, including Argentina. Milei’s obsession with being “Trump’s biggest bootlicker” in the world led him to commit a monumental error: the Falklands issue will soon be addressed by the UN Decolonization Committee, where African countries hold a majority of seats. Hopefully, they will understand that the infamous vote legitimizing the slave trade was the outburst of a man who, solely due to a disastrous combination of circumstances, became president of this country and who in no way represents the sentiments of the Argentine people.

 

(Resumen Latinoamericano – English)