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Javier Milei He began to raise his voice until he reached the threshold of a shout: “Are you it seems fair to execute an honest person? “I am not going to execute an honest person on the altar of the ego of journalists who felt touched because he told them the truth, that they are just journalists!”
That night of May 6, the President connected from Los Angeles to LN+ to defend his chief of staff, Manuel Adornito whom the senator Patricia Bullrich He had just demanded in an interview that he peremptorily present his sworn statement. Milei burst in with the urgency of someone who wants to nip an internal discussion in its tracks. He said that Adorni is “an honest person” and that their numbers were “in order”. He accused journalism of maliciously wanting to harm him and emphasized: “There’s no way he’s leaving!”
It was the climax of three and a half months of gestures, photos and words to shield the main official of his government in the course of his political collapse, following the revelations about his unexplained wealth growth since he assumed a position in the State.
Milei went from minimizing the complaints against Adorni to demanding that all his ministers give him unconditional support.
The Adorni case broke out on Sunday, March 8, when it was discovered that his wife, Bettina Angelettihad traveled on the presidential plane to the United States. It was hours after they had gone on vacation in February to Punta del Este on a private flight. And on Thursday the 19th it was confirmed that they had an undeclared house in the country Indio Cua. That day, Milei gave his first explicit ratification to his coordinating minister. He let Adorni publish a photo of the two with this ironic expression: “The President of the Nation with the brand new Chief of Staff who will replace the current Chief of Staff this weekend. End.” They later traveled together to Tucumán, where Milei denounced a “media carnage” against the Government.
With the crisis escalating, Adorni gave a press conference on March 25, in which he said he had nothing to hide, but refused to give details about his assets. As soon as he finished, there was an outcry in which all the ministers expressed their blind trust in the official. Karina Milei He led it with this message: “My support, intact. Beyond the operations of journalism and old politics, I know who you are and your integrity.”
On March 27, the President went to inaugurate the Human Capital training center and highlighted the figure of the minister Sandra Pettovelloafter remembering the difficult days in which he had faced the picketing organizations. He paused, looked at Adorni, and said: “So, Manuel, at some point later it will be time to thank you.”.
On April 2, at the event in the Falklands, she hugged Adorni profusely in front of the cameras so that the gesture would not go unnoticed.
Seven days later, in an interview on Public TV, he mentioned Adorni again. He referred to him as “what a wonderful chief of staff I have”. The following week Karina Milei took her protégé on a trip to Vaca Muerta, in another sign of closure.
Anger with journalism
As suspicions about the official accumulated, Milei’s level of aggression towards journalism and the media grew at the same time. “95 percent of Argentine journalists are criminals and they write financed by other countries or with media that have conflicts with the government because they want perks or respond to businessmen. “They are contaminated and they are dedicated to poisoning people,” he said on Public TV.
That hostility was evident on April 29, when he accompanied Adorni to the control session in the Chamber of Deputies. “Jerks! Corrupt are you”he shouted at a group of reporters who asked him in a hallway his opinion on the presentation of the Chief of Staff.
Adorni had said on the premises that all his asset declarations had been presented, “without any concealment.” A statement that condemned him a month and a half later, when he confessed that he had saved “in the black” for 25 years and that he had not included a substantial part of his assets in his presentations to the Anti-Corruption Office. “Come on, Manuel!” Milei had bellowed from the main box, while standing applauding, at the moment the debate began.
Previously, he had filmed a video with all his main collaborators surrounding Adorni set to music with the song “Eye of the Tiger”, from the film Rocky.
The attempt to turn the page failed miserably on May 4 when the contractor Manuel Tabar declared in court that Adorni paid $245,000 to renovate Indio Cua’s house. Milei did not hesitate. The next day he joined a meeting at the Casa Rosada with entities from the international Jewish community. With photo and everything.
But the internal pressure began to become unbearable in the face of what seemed like a permanent box of surprises that weakened the Government’s story. Bullrich whitewashed him when he urged Adorni to give explanations and unleashed Milei’s reaction.
“If his fingers were dirty he would leave. But I am perfectly calm that Adorni is an honest person and a good person. “The numbers are in order and they will be presented. We are not worried because you have all the numbers in order“Milei said on the night of May 6, in that television intervention from Los Angeles.
He argued that Bullrich had “spoiled” Adorni because he knew that he was about to present the affidavit in which everything would be clear. “He already has all the things ready and was about to present the numbers in advance.”
Outraged by what Luis Majul and Esteban Trebucq asked him, he insisted: “Political wear and tear doesn’t matter to me because I deal with human beings. With noble, honest human beings who came to make Argentina great again. Journalism cannot violate the principle of presumption of innocence as they regularly do, who act as prosecutors, judges and carry out very summary trials.”
The contractor Tabar was treated “liar” and described it as “Kirchnerist militant” with a “very dubious record.” He even allowed himself to ignore a detail that caught popular attention about the works that Adorni made: “They talked about a waterfall and then it turned out that they were two little water pipes.”
-Did he present the papers to you? -they asked him.
-What he presented to me was in order. “I know it’s clean,” he responded.
Getting worse
The support did not stop. On Friday the 8th Milei met the Cabinet and demanded a monolithic support for Adorni. He even crossed Bullrich with an energetic tone when she tried to insist on the need to explain without further delay the details of the official’s patrimonial evolution. Then he left, leaving Adorni in charge of the meeting.
On May 22, the President spoke before the Grain Exchange, where he celebrated the political success of having sanctioned the labor reform. “The only ones who could do that in history were us. Thanks to that enormous team we have with Manuel Adorni, with Karina Milei, with Santi Caputo, with Colo Santilli, who are the ones who handle the political issue.” Wow, we are good at managing and generating results.”
Adorni’s misfortune continued and a question arose: why do they support him? The political noise became deafening when Adorni confessed on LN+ that he had saved money and that he was going to rectify the sworn statements that, until then, he had defined as pristine. That night Milei limited himself to retweeting a tweet full of praise for Adorni from a minor official, Santiago Oria.
The political table met the next day. They took a photo with Patricia Bullrich and a birthday cake. Adorni stood to the side, as if he wanted to facilitate future editions of that image.
The countdown was already running. In the Senate, the process had been activated that could end in a traumatic and unprecedented dismissal. The armor was beginning to break.
On Friday the 19th, a new presidential spokesperson (Adrián Ravier) and a new Media Secretary (Fabián Fernández) were announced. The limited Chief of Staff remained an insoluble problem.
The Government wasted political capital to delay a process in Congress that seemed inevitable. On Thursday, upon arriving in Madrid, Milei spoke again about Adorni: “If Justice considers him guilty, I will kick him out, but I believe in his honesty. I will bench my ministers to the last consequences”. It was the final gesture. Adorni’s fate was cast.
