United States President Donald Trump said on Monday (26), without presenting evidence, that Brazil's presidential election "looked like a rigged election." In the same exchange with journalists, he said he likes reelected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and gets along with him. "I like Lula, I get along with him," he said, according to the Reuters news agency.
The remark puts Washington out of step with most world capitals. Since Sunday night (25), leaders of Russia, China, France, Mexico and Japan had congratulated Lula on his reelection, along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband. As of Monday afternoon, neither Trump nor Argentine President Javier Milei had officially commented on the result.
For Brazil, the episode suggests relations with Trump's second term will begin under suspicion, though without a rupture. As Folha de S.Paulo reported, the U.S. State Department had a draft statement congratulating the Brazilian people on the election, a routine practice, but held it back after Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, defeated at the polls, said he did not recognize Lula's victory and would seek to annul the vote. According to allies of the senator interviewed by the newspaper, members of the Trump administration reached out to Bolsonaro's circle to find out whether he would accept the result before deciding Washington's position.
What Trump said
Asked whether he planned to take any action regarding the Brazilian elections, Trump replied that he is the president of the United States, not of Brazil. He then said, according to Folha:
"I thought it was a very bad situation. I didn't take sides, but it looked like a rigged election. Frankly, I didn't take sides, but it was a terrible image for the world. Elections need to be beyond dispute, and that looked very bad to me."
According to G1, Trump also referred to the court decision that extended voting hours on Sunday: "I don't govern Brazil. I govern the United States. I like Lula. I get along very well with him, but the extension that was granted was very strange." At no point did the American president present any evidence of fraud.
The extension Trump mentioned was ordered by Justice Cristiano Zanin of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Brazil's top court, who kept voting open until 7 p.m. in polling stations that were still operating, after public transportation failures in cities such as São Paulo. Flávio Bolsonaro challenges the measure and claims it compromised equality among voters, although, as G1 noted, the senator's own campaign had requested longer hours in some locations. The result, 51.79% of valid votes for Lula against 48.21% for Bolsonaro, was confirmed on Sunday night by Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the body that oversees Brazilian elections.
Doubts about the count echoed beyond politics as well. Billionaire Elon Musk, owner of X and a Trump supporter, reposted an account comparing first and second round vote totals and wrote that "the math doesn't add up," according to BBC News Brasil. The post did not account for vote transfers from eliminated candidates or the drop in abstention in the runoff. So far, none of those questioning the result has presented evidence of irregularities, and the U.S. government has yet to officially recognize Lula's victory.