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Dilma Rousseff's second term as president of Brazil, slated to run from 2015 to 2019, was curtailed by her impeachment amid a systemic crisis in which the São Paulo business elite, represented by the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP), the major Brazilian business association, played an active political role. In order to understand FIESP's behavior, its official notes and releases were assessed by political discourse analysis with regard to actors and institutions, both mobilized and articulated, as well as elements of interest and opinions. Our findings indicate FIESP's leading role in the pro-impeachment movement, the strengthening of institutionalized state-corporate channels, the strategic use of different discourses to co-opt political capital, the demonization of the progressive Workers' Party (PT), and the promotion of distrust in all that is political. Our analysis also revealed social manipulation by business elites through their control of the mass media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]