Brazilian Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, the conservative frontrunner in this year's presidential election, said the results showing socialist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated him were "impossible" and questioned whether Lula would even allow a presidential election in 2030, in his first major interview since escaping to Florida.
The interview, conducted with American journalist Glenn Greenwald, was published in full and unedited on Friday. Bolsonaro told Greenwald he had declined requests from other outlets that insisted on editing their content, contrasting their approach with Greenwald's agreement to publish the exchange in its entirety.
Bolsonaro, the son of imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, won the first round of voting in early October but lost the second round as left-wing turnout surged. While his political party accepted the certified results, Bolsonaro pointed to a move by Supreme Federal Tribunal Justice Cristiano Zanin, who issued an edict extending polling station hours by two hours at the request of the Lula campaign.
"The STF does not have the power to issue such an order — much less any individual justice," Bolsonaro said, noting that Zanin published the decree at 5:01 p.m., after most polling stations had already closed to voters.
On the night the results were certified, Bolsonaro declared it impossible to accept the outcome and said he would mount a legal challenge. Minutes later, another STF justice, Alexandre de Moraes, ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his passports to prevent him from leaving the country.
By early November, Bolsonaro was in Miami, where he recorded the interview. He told Greenwald he would not go so far as to declare himself president-elect, but insisted Lula could not claim that title either given the irregularities.
"Without an official investigation, the public will never know if manipulation occurred," Bolsonaro said.
Brazilian analysts told The Guardian that by skipping the country after an election in which he received 59 million votes, Bolsonaro abdicated leadership of the opposition and sabotaged his political future. He will lose parliamentary immunity early next year when his term ends, at which point he could be prosecuted. He faces federal police investigations for money laundering and corruption.
Bolsonaro also contradicted reports that he was helped in his departure by Trump adviser Jason Miller and Santiago Caputo, a close aide to Argentina's right-wing President Javier Milei. "It was all me," Bolsonaro told the New York Times, adding he would "take to the grave" the full story of how he fled.
His brother, former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, also lives in self-imposed exile in the U.S. and will have to serve a four-year sentence for coercion if he returns to Brazil. Four other members of the Bolsonaro family were elected to congress in last month's election, including brothers Carlos and Jair Renan and stepmother Michelle Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro made his first major public appearance since arriving in the U.S. at a right-wing gathering at Mar-a-Lago, where he told a gala dinner at CPAC's four-day "gathering of visionaries" that "great things" were still to come. "I know this wasn't the end for Brazil and I know it wasn't the end for America," he said.
Lula mocked Bolsonaro on a live stream that drew more than 600,000 simultaneous viewers on YouTube, calling him a "pé-frio" — Portuguese for a person who brings bad luck — and linking his flight to the U.S. to the Republican Party's collapse in Tuesday's midterm elections.
"While I was doing that, my opponent was grabbing the American flag and kissing it. And then he ran over there — pé-frio. He jinxed Trump. He arrived in the United States, Trump lost," Lula said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Lula added that Bolsonaro had gone to seek "protection" but would have to return to Brazil and answer to pending judicial proceedings.
Our Take
Flavio Bolsonaro is doing what too few Republicans here at home have had the courage to do: refusing to accept a rigged outcome when the evidence of irregularity is staring everyone in the face. A Supreme Federal Tribunal justice unilaterally extended voting hours after most polls were closed — a power no single justice possesses under Brazilian law. That is not a conspiracy theory. That is a documented fact that one branch of Brazil's judiciary pulled strings to hand Lula a second round.
The same Alexandre de Moraes who ordered Bolsonaro's passports seized is the same justice who has spent years weaponizing Brazil's courts against conservatives. Now Bolsonaro is in Miami, telling the truth in an unedited interview because he knows the legacy media back home would slice and dice his words to protect the regime.
And notice how Lula responded — not with a legal filing proving the election was clean, but with a juvenile YouTube livestream mocking Bolsonaro as bad luck. That is not the response of a leader confident in his mandate. It is the response of a man who knows the votes were counted in a backroom.
Americans should watch Brazil carefully. The playbook — courts extending hours, justices seizing passports, media refusing to air dissenting voices — is the same playbook the Left here tried in 2020 and will try again. Bolsonaro's question about whether Brazil will even hold elections in 2030 should send a chill down every patriot's spine. Because the answer, if Lula's judicial allies get their way, may be no.
