Trump Calls Brazil Election a 'Disgrace,' Says He Won't Take Sides

President Donald Trump stood outside Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Thursday morning and told reporters he had stayed out of Brazil's presidential runoff — then spent the next several sentences describing the result as a national embarrassment.

"I watched the election. I didn't take sides. I let it be. I was asked not to take sides by the president, the current president," Trump said, according to Al Jazeera. "But when I watched what went down in Brazil, it was a disgrace…take a look at the market, I mean their market went down through the floor."

The comments landed a day after former Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro and his family touched down in Miami, having left Brazil in secrecy two days after losing the runoff.

What did Trump say about the Brazil election?

Trump told reporters he "thought the election was a great embarrassment to the people of Brazil," according to Al Jazeera, but he stopped short of disputing the outcome itself or endorsing Bolsonaro's claim that the vote was stolen. The current Brazilian president — Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who won the runoff by more than four million votes — had asked Trump not to weigh in, and Trump said he honored that request during the campaign.

"I watched the election. I didn't take sides. I let it be... when I watched what went down in Brazil, it was a disgrace." — President Donald Trump

How did Flavio Bolsonaro leave Brazil?

Brazil's Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports shortly after Sunday's runoff, an apparent effort to keep him in the country while prosecutors pursue embezzlement and money-laundering investigations, Al Jazeera reported. Bolsonaro left anyway, crossing by land into Argentina under cover of darkness with his wife and two daughters. Argentine President Javier Milei's government had granted the family visas, according to the outlet. From Argentina the Bolsonaros flew by private plane to Ecuador and then on to Miami, landing Wednesday morning.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Trump and his administration helped arrange the family's departure, and that US officials expect to grant the Bolsonaros permanent residency, Al Jazeera said in its account of the Times reporting.

What did Bolsonaro say after landing in Miami?

Bolsonaro issued a statement shortly after arriving calling himself "the true elected president of Brazil" and describing the investigations against him as "a politically motivated witch-hunt," per Al Jazeera. He asked the international community "not to normalise what is happening in Brazil" and said he intended to lead the country's opposition from the United States. He offered no evidence for his claim that the election was stolen, and his own Liberal Party said Monday that it was accepting the result.

How is Brazil's government responding to the exit?

Lula has called Bolsonaro's departure "shameful," according to a separate Al Jazeera report referenced alongside Thursday's story. The characterization puts Brasília and Bolsonaro's camp on opposite sides of a dispute that now plays out partly on US soil, with a sitting head of state abroad and a defeated opponent claiming the legitimacy he lost at the ballot box.

How did markets react to Brazil's runoff?

Trump pointed to the currency markets as evidence of turmoil following the vote. The Brazilian real fell 12 percent against the dollar in spot trading after Sunday's results, Al Jazeera reported — a figure Trump cited directly in his remarks to reporters.

By the numbers

• 4 million+: Margin by which Lula defeated Flavio Bolsonaro in Sunday's runoff, per Al Jazeera.
• 12%: Drop in the Brazilian real against the US dollar in spot trading after the election, per Al Jazeera.

What happens next for Bolsonaro in the US?

US officials told the New York Times, as relayed by Al Jazeera, that the Bolsonaro family would likely be granted permanent residency. Bolsonaro has said he plans to run Brazil's opposition movement from American soil, a posture that keeps him outside the reach of the Supreme Court order that sought to hold his passports and, by extension, his person inside Brazil pending the corruption inquiries. Whether Brasília seeks his return, and whether Washington facilitates that request or resists it, remains an open question the two governments have not yet addressed publicly.

For now, Trump's position is narrower than either side in Brazil might prefer: he will not say the election was stolen, but he will say, as he put it outside Air Force One, that what happened was a "disgrace."