Brazil

President Donald Trump’s MAGA ally has defied a travel ban to escape Brazil after his embarrassing defeat in a closely watched election.
Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, headed to the U.S. on Tuesday after losing the presidential election to left-wing candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over the weekend, sources told CNN and The New York Times.
Brazil's Supreme Court banned Bolsonaro from leaving the country and ordered him to hand over his passports amid investigations into accusations of corruption, money laundering, and currency evasion. Bolsonaro left anyway in fear of getting arrested, a source close to him told CNN.
An administration official said the State Department will issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the U.S.
Speculation about Bolsonaro’s whereabouts mounted after Argentine news outlet Infobae reported that he left Brazil through Argentina. The Argentine government said it had “no record” of Bolsonaro entering the country.
Bolsonaro initially sought to annul the election result but backed off after President Donald Trump signaled he would not intervene.
“I wasn’t the one who lost; the system won,” Bolsonaro said, claiming that he would “organize the opposition to build a fortress against barbarism.”
Though Trump stopped short of intervention, he claimed without providing evidence that the Brazilian election was “rigged.”
“It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” he previously told reporters.
“I didn’t take sides, but it was a terrible look for the world,” Trump added. “Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me. I watched the election. It looked so corrupt, so terrible.”
When asked if he planned to “do something about the election,” however, Trump replied, “I am not running Brazil, I’m running the USA.”
Bolsonaro appeared to be the favorite after leading Lula by more than 2.2 million votes in the first round of voting. But Lula staged an unprecedented comeback to become the first candidate in Brazilian history to clinch the presidential election after placing second in the opening round.
Trump did not endorse Bolsonaro, though he called him “a smart young man who loves his country” after a visit to the Oval Office in June. In 2022, Trump endorsed Bolsonaro’s father Jair, who was later convicted for leading a military coup after his election defeat.
In contrast, Lula ran ads accusing Trump of wanting to “colonize” Brazil to exploit its natural resources and warned against American efforts to sway the polls.
“People went to vote because we convinced them it was important to preserve democracy,” he said. “This country doesn’t accept being anybody’s colony.”

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