Gaffe? Call it a vice instead.

Gaffes are to politicians what typos are to newspapers and magazines: no one is immune to them. But just as a media outlet can't build a news story based on a typo, a politician must also be prevented from developing a piece of propaganda and making decisions based on a translation error or an inadvertent mistake. This is why leading media outlets employ proofreaders and various levels of text reading to reduce the occurrence of typos, while, similarly, the parliamentary groups of political parties receive public subsidies to staff a considerable number of advisors and counselors, supposedly hired to help leaders make the most informed decisions and be as immune to gaffes as possible.

It is for these reasons that André Ventura's confusion with the President of the Republic's trip to Germany to participate in the Bürgerfest, which the Chega leader translated as "burger festival," is not a gaffe. It could be if it had occurred in the heat of an argument or during one of his usual improvisations, mixing together a series of facts and falsehoods to create a negative perception of an opponent. That's not what happened. It was, rather, a thoughtful and planned action—though, of course, executed with the usual levity, to have the usual incendiary effect.

Much worse than the video circulated on social media—which, fortunately, ended up revealing to the country the hidden reality of a one-man party where no one warns the leader in time to prevent a blunder—was the consequence of the ignorance and arrogance of Chega's leaders: their vote against the President of the Republic's participation in an initiative in a country central to our relations, and where, what's more, Portugal was the guest nation. In other words: a decision without the slightest consideration or consultation with anyone outside the leader's inner circle, and intended solely to create confusion, open a new battlefront with a worn-out President at the end of his term, and, along the way, help destroy the credibility of democratic institutions.

Confusing Bürgerfest with a burger festival isn't a gaffe. It's simply a sign of the vice André Ventura and Chega are steeped in: creating confusion for any and every reason and brandishing arguments based on fabricated facts... knowing that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, none of this will have any consequences for their image or the party's electoral growth. That's why, in his usual escape-from-the-hip maneuver, Ventura immediately threw out the "scandalous" number of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa's more than 1,550 trips abroad—which would be impossible to fit into the approximately 3,300 days he's been president, considering the average length of each trip. But it's also the same logic that led Ventura, in the previous election campaign, to claim in a debate that he lived in a house measuring "30 square meters," when he knows perfectly well that the condominium where he lives doesn't have apartments that small.

Gaffes? No, this is a deliberate strategy used for decades by populist politicians, who are never interested in anything other than "their truth," the one they convey to their supporters as if it were the only authentic one.

That's why, unfortunately, reporting these cases rarely has any impact on the popularity of populist leaders. Just as, as we've seen, there's no point in calling them fascists, racists, xenophobes, or authoritarians. For a simple reason: these attributes are precisely what make these leaders attractive to many voters. Because they believe that, despite these "flaws," they provide concrete and quick answers to everyday problems and, more importantly, speak with the same anger and indignation as those who feel marginalized and unprotected.

The gaffes Ventura makes would be fatal for any politician, but they barely bother him because they are consistent with the image he has created of himself: excessive, incendiary, combative and... indifferent to the official truth.