President Donald Trump said on Monday, October 26, that Brazil’s presidential election looked like it was “rigged,” without citing evidence. Leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the election.
“It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “I didn’t take sides, but it was a terrible look for the world. Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked really bad to me.”
On being asked if he would “do something about the election,” Trump responded, “I am not running Brazil, I’m running the USA.”
Trump never endorsed a candidate
Lula da Silva won a fourth term in office in a comeback over his right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro. While Trump never explicitly endorsed a candidate, he did embrace Bolsonaro at times, as did the broader MAGA movement, per Politico.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has refused to concede and called for the results to be annulled.
A Brazilian official said that they were confident that the United States would eventually recognize Lula’s victory. They noted that the voting numbers were hard to dispute.
The official added, according to Politico, “So what if Trump doesn’t recognize? At the most, we can break diplomatic ties, to the benefit of China, but the U.S. will not invade Brazil to impose a puppet government. We are not a Venezuela. Our government will stand.”
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Lula, in the past, defied Trump on issues such as tariffs. His win sparked backlash from some Trump supporters, including Steve Bannon, who called on the US President and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to cut off diplomatic relations, and “shut down everything with Brazil.”
Meanwhile, Lula vowed that dictatorship and fascism will never return to Brazil after his victory.
“This is God’s work – and it’s thanks to all of you,” Lula told supporters who had gathered in central São Paulo in the early hours of Monday to celebrate his comeback, per The Guardian.
“Today is a historic day,” Lula declared. “Democracy always, dictatorship never again. Democracy always, fascism never again.”