WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he approved of Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro coming to the United States after losing Sunday’s presidential election, a departure that has raised questions in Brazil because Bolsonaro left after refusing a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports, according to Reuters.
"Well, I would approve," Trump told reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on his return from a campaign trip to Texas, adding that he had heard Bolsonaro was in Argentina. Bolsonaro, who has yet to concede to leftist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, left Brazil after refusing to comply with the court order, Reuters reported on Tuesday, and a senior U.S. State Department official said the United States would grant entry visas to him and his family.
Lula secured 51.79 percent of valid votes in Sunday’s runoff, against 48.21 percent for Bolsonaro, according to the reported count. Trump called the Brazilian election "very strange" and "terrible," saying: "I think they’re fine people. The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible. It’s gotten bad reviews. You look at what happened to their market." He added: "I didn’t take sides, you know. I know them both. I know Lula. I know Flavio a little bit. I know the father very well."
Trump was referring to former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro’s father, whom he has previously alleged to have been a victim of judicial persecution in Brazil. "The father was treated really badly. I thought, but I wasn’t involved," Trump said. "That’s Brazil. It’s a different country." Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing in the money-laundering investigation in which the passport order was issued, according to reporting on the case, and his precise whereabouts were not immediately confirmed by all sources.
The departure has sharpened a confrontation between the defeated campaign and Brazil’s Supreme Court. Allies of Bolsonaro in Brazil have denied knowledge of any plan by the senator to flee the country, according to reports from Brasilia, while opponents ask how he was able to leave despite the court order and what role, if any, foreign governments played in facilitating the trip. The State Department’s visa statement means the dispute now extends to Washington, where the Trump administration has repeatedly criticised Brazil’s judiciary over its treatment of the Bolsonaro family.
At the same appearance, Trump also looked ahead to diplomacy on other fronts, saying he hoped to soon meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and that he thought a lot of progress had been made towards resolving the war in Ukraine. Putin has said Russia was ready to resume U.S.-mediated talks with Ukraine next month, according to Reuters.
What happens next depends on whether Bolsonaro seeks to remain in the United States, whether Brazil’s Supreme Court escalates its orders against him, and whether Washington’s visa decision becomes a formal diplomatic dispute with the Lula government, which has not yet publicly responded to Trump’s remarks. For Lula, who begins a new term after a closely divided vote, the early test is whether the transfer of power proceeds on schedule while his defeated rival contests the result from abroad. Read the Reuters report at reuters.com.
