Does Bolsonaro Have Munchausen’s?

Brazilian fascist dictator, savvy businessman, and Wall Street Journal darling Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalized for “chronic hiccups” this morning, according to Reuters. I’m no expert on any of the Americas nor do I have a medical degree with a specialized certificate in hiccups (I’m being modest; I am and I do), but I’m starting to wonder if this guy is doing all this for attention.

Does Bolsonaro have Munchausen’s syndrome?

I will not deny that, of course, Bolsonaro was stabbed on the campaign trail in 2018. There’s filmic evidence of that incident, and that’s technically hard to fudge. On the other hand, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on video, and my colleagues and I over at the Zapruder Institute for Contextless Screenshots have of course found many inconsistencies in that whole thing.

Here is a run-down of Bolsonaro’s various health maladies post-stabbing:

In 2019, he was hospitalized for complications involving a colostomy bag removal and pneumonia. The Brazilian government released a thirst trap of Bolsonaro alongside this news, wherein he exposed just one pert nipple while flashing a “thumbs up” signal.

Then, while downplaying the threat of Covid-19 as the virus ravaged Brazil (“Stop whining. How long are you going to keep crying about it?” he said as the death toll in his country hit 260,000 in March), Bolsonaro tested positive for it once, twice, and maybe three times for antibodies. In the words of James Cromwell in Babe, “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

Later, Bolsonaro Mommy Dead and Dearested an emu at the presidential palace in Brasilia when he tried to approach it with anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, and then the bird bit him. On his home turf! Even I heard about the scandal, and I’m not one of those people who got really into birding over the past year.

And now, Bolsonaro is hospitalized for hiccups. This man is crying out for attention on a national stage.

What’s next for the Brazilian president? Chronic lyme with a comorbidity of margarita photodermatitis? The Gay Cold, but he calls it the F-Word Cold? Gout from eating too much Emmental cheese at boarding school like fellow drama queen Kim Jong-un?

Whatever it is, I don’t wish him well. Though, as they say, jealousy is a disease, too. Suddenly, I have a cough.