It’s up to Americans to stop the Trump administration from using U.S. power to strong‑arm Brazil and interfere in their elections.
Originally published in Diplo Darius.
Brazil, you in danger girl…
As an American, I tread very lightly when I say that Brazil’s politics is already a mess. I’d venture to say that theirs is almost as fucked up as ours except they have more than two clown ass political parties and their institutions are clearly stronger than ours (these days). Brazil’s former president jair bolsonaro weirdly branded himself the “trump of the tropics,” copying trump’s style, rhetorical talking points, and attacks on elections, sometimes almost word for word. His son flávio is now running for president with open backing from trump and his sleazy maga sycophants, and they’re not shy about perverting our foreign policy to their desired ends. The illegal scheme coordinated by trump for January 6 (2021) is the same one bolsonaro’s goons used to storm Brazil’s capital on January 8 (2023), and they’re getting ready to keep that same energy in Brazil’s election this October. If trump can tilt the scales in Brazil and get away with it, it marks a new era in the way the U.S. uses its power to pick winners and losers in elections across Latin America, the rest of the world, and here at home. The winners in their book are rich, cis, white people. And, in order to hold onto their beloved false sense of supremacy, they kill themselves (often literally) trying to make those who they view as losers (the rest of us) feel perpetually degraded, defeated, and destitute….of course to no avail.
Who tf is bolsonaro?
The bolsonaro kclan is more of a political brand than a family - a brand built on white rage, racism, and nostalgia for Brazil’s old military dictatorship. Just like trump and maga, they don’t give a damn about using the government to improve the lives of their citizens – not even their most fervent bootlickers: the poor whites. Former president, jair bolsonaro, was a fringe congressman and ex‑army captain who praises Brazil’s former military dictatorship and told opponents they should have been killed. Then, just like trump in 2016, rode the culture‑war outrage to the presidency in 2018. Just like trump’s slithery spawn, bolsonaro’s sons flávio, eduardo, and carlos turned politics into a family business, using social media and right-wing talking points to blame everything on “Marxists,” feminists, Black movements, and queer people. Like maga, “bolsonarismo” with one hand, stirs fallacious emotions by telling white and conservative Brazilians that they are the “real people” under attack, while they gut labor protections, essential public services, and environmental regulations with the other hand. As one of my favorite Brazilian lawmakers, Erika Hilton, points out, they can’t win by offering anything useful…so they lean on lies, threats, and foreign interference to stay to prop them up.
Functional democratic institutions? Must be nice…
Like trump SHOULD be, jair bolsonaro is in prison because he, too, was willing to tear down his country’s democracy rather than give up power. After losing the 2022 presidential race to President Lula, jair spent months pushing a “stop-the-steal”‑style lie that Brazil’s electronic voting machines were rigged. On January 8, 2023, thousands of his deranged supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace in Brasília. The thugs smashed windows, destroyed offices, and demanded the military to take power. After that, Brazil’s justice system (currently more functional than that of the U.S.) gathered evidence that bolsonaro and his cabal of crooks planned a broader coup attempt, including draft orders to overturn the vote and pressure the military to get involved. But last fall, he was rightfully convicted for leading a criminal plot to overthrow Brazil’s democracy and is now serving a multi‑decade sentence. And of course his base still insists (like maga) that he is a victim of a “witch hunt.” For a bunch of law-and-order types, these folks sure do hate accountability.
But unfortunately, one monkey don’t stop no show…
That blackface stunt that fabiana “bolsonaro” pulled last week shows how deep the racism and transphobia run in this movement, and how far its supporters will go to defend it, even with jair behind bars. (Her legal name is fabiana de lima barroso…from an evangelical political family in São Paulo, but she adopted the “bolsonaro” surname to signal loyalty to Jair’s project and appeal to his base) If you didn’t see it, she walked onto the São Paulo state assembly floor and painted her face and arms dark and asked if she was “Black now,” which was an intersectional attack because the tacky vitriol was directed at trans lawmaker Erika Hilton’s new role in the federal women’s ministry. Her transphobic, racist, strawman “argument” was that if white people can’t “feel” Black, then trans women can’t “feel” like a woman. While many of Brazil’s lawmakers and rights groups condemned the hateful mockery, but far‑right groups celebrated it online, just as maga’s corny ass enjoyed that racist video trump posted depicting the Obamas as apes.
These people are cut from the same cloth, and they’re working together. The same forces that led bolsonaro fanatics to storm their own Congress on January 8 (like trump’s flunkies on January 6) are now being channeled to leverage U.S. tariffs, sanctions, and projected military might to rig Brazil’s upcoming election in October.
Cheaters are gonna cheat…
The trump administration is already using U.S. power to boost flávio bolsonaro and twist the arm of Brazil’s current government. After bolsonaro was charged and convicted, trump called the trial a “witch hunt” and imposed steep tariffs on key Brazilian exports… Oh, he also slapped sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The White House is currently weighing whether to label Brazil’s two biggest drug gangs as terrorist organizations, something bolsonaro’s sons asked for to help justify increased U.S. pressure and military pressure that threaten Lula’s government…and Brazil’s democracy. And trump‑aligned actors have tried to be in direct contact with jair in prison. The trump administration’s message to Brazilians is brazen and simple: back Lula and we’ll do our best to ruin your lives economically, socially, and politically… or get behind bolsonaro and we’ll let yall chill.
Nepo babies are the worst…
flávio bolsonaro is trying to ride a “law and order” wave into the presidency with trump’s help, using fear of crime as cover for interference – flavio’s dad is in prison and trump is a convicted felon 34 times over. With his crooked father’s blessing, flavio launched his 2026 campaign promising tougher policing, longer working hours, and more cuts to social protections. Now ask yourself, “who in the world would want that?” White people – that’s who. And while they know these policies will hurt them, they also know that they hurt Black and poor communities more. If trump agrees to label Brazilian “gangs” as terrorists, it’ll help flávio by turning security into the topic du jour and framing President Lula as “soft on crime.” These terror designations would also make it easier for the U.S. to justify sanctions, pressure local police, and coordinate directly with right‑wing state and local governments in Brazil, circumventing Lula’s team.
We’ve seen this play so many times…
Brazil is only one of the latest examples of a long history of U.S. political interference in Latin America. Just a few months ago, in Honduras’s 2025 election, trump explicitly endorsed a conservative challenger, threatened to withhold U.S. funding, and was later accused by the outgoing president of “interference” and helping engineer an “electoral coup.” The White House rushed to legitimize that Honduran election as calm and legitimate, even while the opposition and other observers were sounding the alarm about irregularities and blocked recounts. This follows decades of U.S. involvement in regime change – we backed coups in places like Guatemala and Chile, we’ve support dictatorships, and we have hand‑picked candidates who support exploitative capitalism. Hell, even Brazilians can attest to this history. In 1964, the U.S. government backed the military coup that overthrew a constitutional government and brought in two decades of dictatorship. Today’s pressure campaign against Lula and lovefest with the bolsonaros is just a continuation of of a relationship between the U.S. and Brazil’s far-right coalitions. The only thing new is the unabashed mix of tools (tariffs, sanctions, military threat, and erroneous gang and terror designations) that are now doing out in the open the work that the U.S. military and CIA used to try to do covertly.
Chickens always come home to roost…
Here’s what I know for sure. For Black, brown, Muslim, working‑class, queer, migrant communities, and people with disabilities in the U.S., whatever happens in Brazil’s election will boomerang right back into our lives. When our government backs far‑right leaders abroad, it strengthens a global network that shares tactics, money, and media strategies with the same forces attacking our voting rights, bodies, and communities here. A far‑right government in Brazil would most certainly double down on police violence against Black people. There’d be more state-sanctioned destruction of the Amazon. There’d be more murders of Indigenous leaders, and there’d be an uptick in anti‑LGBTQ laws. These policies will be sold as a model of “toughness” in U.S. debates ahead of our 2028 election (if we have a 2028 election). Not that they need the permission to shit on domestic law, international law, and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, but it would also make it easier for U.S. leaders to say “everyone is doing it” when they ignore courts, threaten opponents, and use economic pain as a weapon against political rivals. Put simply: if trump can help elect another bolsonaro without pushback or consequence, it becomes that much harder to protect our own democracy – currently hanging on by a thread.
Yall better tap in…
As I’ve argued before, the only real counterweight to this cross‑border authoritarian network is a cross‑border democracy‑and‑justice network led by everyday people. People in the U.S. have to demand that our government publicly commit to non‑interference in Brazil’s election and roll back tariffs, sanctions, and talks of “terror” labels that are clearly being used as political weapons. U.S. movements (Black, labor, feminist, queer, climate, migrant, etc.) should be partnering with Brazilian civil society organizations to monitor U.S. interference, expose it in real time, and pressure tech platforms to combat far‑right disinformation in Portuguese. Brazilian civil society must keep calling out foreign meddling, like Erika Hilton did, and use English‑language platforms to make sure U.S. audiences see what’s being done in their (our?) name. If we’re singing from the same sheet of music, then in unison we can demand adherence to a basic principle: no president, king, or oligarch no matter how powerful, has the right to decide who governs someone else’s country.
“...it is like a knee-jerk reaction in the U.S – this consistent, insistent and persistent anti-Caribbean policy in the U.S. from 1776 to the present.”
Most of the world would be at greater ease if Iran had a nuclear bomb.
The ceasefire brings a sense of relief but not safety. Iran showed that the empire is not invincible, but the US commitment to the doctrine of hegemony has not changed.
