Probably, Baby Etchecopar be the famous media personality you know best Manuel Adorni. The link dates back several years before the current official’s emergence into national politics, when the accountant was still developing his profile as an economist and media analyst. The initial contact occurred on the radio, where the host began to call him as a columnist to provide views on the situation in a format of direct and confrontational opinion. That space functioned as a first media showcase for Adorni, who found there a discursive tone similar to the host’s editorial style.
During that period, Adorni participated in the radio cycles broadcast by Radio Rivadavia and later in other channels where the journalist maintained his presence. In these interventions, which lasted for several years intermittently but steadily, the current Chief of Staff consolidated a media profile based on criticism of state interventionism, defense of economic liberalism and a provocative style. Over time, this participation also led to appearances on television, especially on the program “Enough Baby”where he was invited on multiple occasions as a panelist.
Etchecopar was key to Adorni’s public projection, in a stage prior to his incorporation into the political scheme of La Libertad Avanza and was one of the most influential figures in his initial media installation, by offering him continuity, an audience and a discursive framework compatible with his positioning. In that sense, the communicator appears as one of the main amplifiers of his figure in the media, in a process that would later be consolidated with his jump to public service.
Because of this past, the figure of Baby Etchecopar is under the media spotlight since he learned about the media journey of the current official and what his work and financial needs were at that time. On the streaming platform Blender, the host was interviewed and referred to his former collaborator with anger and irony. “Now I’m going to have lipo, I’m going to remove fat from my waist and put it on my buttocks,” the communicator recalled about the comments that Adorni made to his colleagues and concluded: “I had a very big problem with aesthetics.”
Hours before Blender’s streaming report to the television host, Etchecopar himself made a furious editorial after Adorni’s latest media statements given to José Del Rio on the LN+ program Mesa chica. The current Chief of Staff presented for the first time a comprehensive explanation about the origin of the funds that are being investigated and acknowledged that he had omitted to declare part of his assets. Furthermore, during the interview, the official revealed that he presented corrective affidavits to the Anti-Corruption Office corresponding to 2023 and 2024, incorporating assets that did not appear in his original presentations.
According to his own explanation, the asset difference would be around $500,000, an amount whose origin he attributed to a combination of savings accumulated over years and profits obtained through investments in cryptocurrencies. “We save in black like all Argentines,” highlighted the coordinator of ministers. When Del Rio asked him why those funds had not been declared in a timely manner, he responded: “We did not declare it because the way to escape the old policy was to have savings in the black,” and maintained: “It would never have occurred to me to save in the black in those years.” “I built my assets before entering the Government,” he concluded.
Even another sensitive aspect in the LN+ interview was precisely the explanation about Bitcoin and other digital assets by the main spokesperson for Casa Rosada. The libertarian official stated that he had invested approximately $200,000 in cryptocurrencies and that these operations would have generated profits close to $300,000, an argument used to justify a good part of the asset growth observed in recent years.
After hearing these statements, in front of the camera in his A24 program and with notable virulence, Etchecopar pointed out: “When Adorni came to work with us he didn’t have a single coin. He came to work because he had to pay the department fee. What 500 thousand dollars of shit are you talking about? You were a laucha who didn’t have a coin, your wife had all her teeth crooked,” he highlighted and closed: “Do you think that’s all of us? idiots?”
