President Trump used his Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night to open America's door to the man who just lost Brazil's presidency. Asked by reporters about Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the president said there are "no plans to meet, but I think he got treated very shabbily," then gave the answer Bolsonaro's supporters were hoping for: "He can stay here as long as he wants." Trump also delivered his verdict on the Brazilian vote itself: "The election was a disgrace."
Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, lost Brazil's presidential runoff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Rather than comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court order to surrender his passports, he left the country, landing in Miami on Wednesday aboard a private jet with his wife and two daughters, where the U.S. government granted the family entry visas. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the Trump administration did not help Bolsonaro flee Brazil — Washington's position is that it did not engineer his exit; the president's words on Saturday set out what happens now that he is here.
Bolsonaro himself has posted nothing about the president's remarks. But the offer now stands in public, from the president's own mouth, with no time limit attached to it — an open-ended American welcome for a defeated candidate whose own country's highest court wants his passports.
For Americans, the stake runs in two directions. A president deciding in public that a foreign election was "a disgrace" — and sheltering the loser from that country's courts — tells every government watching how Washington will treat disputed votes and defeated allies: the United States remains a refuge for leaders it judges wronged. It also puts the administration on a collision course with Lula's government in Brazil, the largest country in South America, where trade and diplomacy now run through a president whose election Trump has condemned on camera.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit: https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram
Get the news as it breaks — follow our Telegram channel for every story, first.
Follow @profilopoliticsnews