Trump says he approves of Bolsonaro coming to US

President Trump on Tuesday said he approves of former Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro entering the U.S. after his runoff election loss to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva earlier this week.

“Well, I would approve,” Trump told reporters outside Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews. “I think they’re fine people. The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible. It got bad reviews, and look what happened to their market.”

Trump added that he “didn’t take sides” and that he knows “Flávio a little bit” and Bolsonaro’s father, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing leader compared to his U.S. counterpart as the “Trump of the tropics.”

Trump told reporters that he had heard the younger Bolsonaro was in Argentina. The candidate fled to Argentina and then Ecuador before the Trump administration granted Bolsonaro and his family visas to enter the U.S.

The State Department aimed to tilt Brazil’s election in favor of Bolsonaro in the lead-up to the election, Reuters reported .

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his passports and barred him from leaving the country, The Guardian reported . The order stems from an investigation into Bolsonaro for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in two cases. Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo, said his brother should leave Brazil if he lost.

Bolsonaro lost to Lula as the president won an unprecedented fourth term. He and the incumbent requested Brazil’s electoral court to extend the election for two hours, both citing issues preventing voters from getting to the polls.

Bolsonaro called for the election’s results to be annulled and has not verbally conceded, though his Liberal Party accepted defeat on Monday. The Brazilian outlet Folha de S.Paulo reported that allies urged Bolsonaro to drop his calls for the results to be annulled.

Speaking from the capital Brasília, Lula, who turned 81 on Tuesday, said Bolsonaro should have remained in the country to prove his innocence in connection with the investigation.

“This act of leaving Brazil is shameful,” Lula told supporters, according to Reuters . “When I was asked to surrender my passport, I did so. He should have done the same. If the Federal Police suspected he was going to leave Brazil, he ought to have surrendered his. Regrettably, that is the Bolsonaro family for you.”

Bolsonaro’s father is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a postelection coup in 2022 before Lula returned to power, having previously served as president from 2003 to 2011.

Lula’s passport was seized in 2017 amid an investigation into the country’s massive Lava Jato, or “Operation Car Wash,” corruption scandal. The then-former president surrendered to federal authorities and was charged in connection with the scandal.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin overturned Lula’s nine-year conviction in 2021, allowing Lula to seek office again and become a vocal critic against Bolsonaro’s father.