“Amateur morons”: Flávio Bolsonaro’s short-lived claim as “president-elect” was ridiculed | Brazil

Flávio Bolsonaro hoped that by Sunday evening he would be called the next president of Brazil.

Instead, the far-right politician’s decision to flee to the United States after losing the election and – for 58 minutes – to declare himself “the true president-elect of Brazil”, made him a laughingstock, with Brazilian newspapers and commentators raining a barrage of contemptuous adjectives on the conquered candidate.

“If it served any purpose, Flávio’s stupidity freed the democratic right from a family of putschists who held it hostage for too long to their reckless madness and their irremediable contempt for Brazil,” thundered the conservative newspaper Estado de São Paulo on Friday.

Bolsonaro fled to Miami on Tuesday evening, 48 hours after being defeated by his left-wing opponent, incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by 4.4 million votes. Lula’s victory was recognized by right-wing leaders around the world, including El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, not to mention Bolsonaro’s own party and many key allies.

But on Wednesday, after arriving in the United States, Bolsonaro published a farcical letter – allegedly written with the help of ChatGPT – in which he declared himself “the true president-elect of Brazil” and made false claims about electoral fraud.

Perhaps most bizarrely, he said he would continue to lead the Brazilian opposition from abroad, comparing himself to Charles de Gaulle, who in the 1940s led a French government in exile against the Nazis from London, and to the 19th-century hero of Cuban independence, José Martí, who challenged the Spanish empire from New York.

“They were all treated as criminals by the regimes they faced. History called them otherwise,” Bolsonaro said, also comparing himself to Venezuelan Nobel laureate María Corina Machado and Rui Barbosa, a Brazilian politician who went into exile in London in the late 19th century after challenging an authoritarian president known as the “Iron Marshal.”

A little less than an hour after Bolsonaro’s proclamation was first posted on social media, a corrected version was released, changing his claimed status to that of “leader of Brazil” — apparently after being reprimanded by Trump administration officials eager to avoid a full diplomatic break with Brazil’s current leaders.

The amended letter also updated the outdated Brazilian coat of arms that was mistakenly used in the header of the first version referring to the “United States of Brazil” – a name the South American country has not used since 1967.

Bolsonaro’s flight – and his brief but false claim to be “president-elect” of one of the world’s largest democracies – sparked a wave of opprobrium and ridicule.

“(This letter) seems to have been written by a reckless and crazy idiot,” Flávia Oliveira, a prominent political commentator, told the GloboNews network.

The Estado de São Paulo’s top editors said, “Flavio’s letter is not worth the ink of this newspaper, but it is impossible to ignore the embarrassment,” before lashing out at a man they called a “crook of the highest order.”

Rio newspaper O Globo said Bolsonaro’s “shameful and devious” decision to flee laid bare the “pathetic” nature of his political movement, Bolsonarismo, while Folha de São Paulo said it exposed the true nature of the “authoritarian, ignorant and incompetent” Bolsonaro family.

José Casado, columnist for the conservative magazine Veja, wrote: “The comic storyline has already secured him a place in the pages of political satire. »

Merval Pereira, a conservative columnist for O Globo, called Bolsonaro a “crazy Napoleon.”

Even Silas Malafaia, a combative televangelist close to Bolsonaro’s imprisoned father, Jair Bolsonaro, had harsh words. “Bolsonaro’s children are morons… A bunch of amateur morons,” Malafaia said, as quoted by O Globo.

Some observers see Bolsonaro’s flight after defeat as proof that his discouraged movement is dead. “I think Bolsonarismo has been defeated once and for all,” Lula’s top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, said this week, calling the result “the last gasp of a radical, irrational and lying right.”

The Estado de São Paulo editorial board agreed. “Flávio is a thing of the past and will soon disappear into the basement of political uselessness from which he should never have emerged,” they predicted, urging conservatives to abandon Bolsonaro and support his ally Tarcísio de Freitas, the governor of São Paulo.

Others warned that Bolsonarismo would remain a powerful political force, even if the Bolsonaro family’s leadership of the far-right movement was now in doubt.

Social media users also reacted ruthlessly to Bolsonaro’s brief assertion as “president-elect.” One meme urged supporters to attend its grand opening in January – at Cinderella Castle in Walt Disney World, Orlando. Another parodied his movement’s fascist-inspired slogan “God, Fatherland and Family”, which became “Goodbye, Fatherland and Family”.

Donald Trump refused to publicly acknowledge the result of an election that he called “a great embarrassment for the Brazilian people.” But a US diplomatic cable obtained by Folha de São Paulo called Lula’s victory “surprising but definitive.”

Asked if he considered Bolsonaro the “legitimate” leader of Brazil, the US president replied: “I won’t get involved. »