Conservative former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, currently banned from leaving his country, said on Wednesday that he will request the nation’s Supreme Federal Tribunal’s (STF) permission to attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January should he receive an invitation.
STF Minister (Justice) Alexandre de Moraes banned Bolsonaro from leaving Brazil this year and ordered Brazilian police officers to seize Bolsonaro’s passport from his office, effectively trapping him in Brazilian territory.
The travel ban, imposed on the former president in February, stems from an ongoing probe spearheaded by de Moraes into a purported “coup” plot that Bolsonaro was allegedly staging after he was narrowly defeated by current socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s October 2022 election.
Bolsonaro spoke on Wednesday with the left-wing Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. During the interview, Bolsonaro said that de Moraes has denied three requests for international travel, pointing out that the last request sought to allow him to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to await the results as one of Trump’s guests on Election Day.
“If Trump invites me, I’ll petition the TSE [Superior Electoral Tribunal], the STF. Now, with all due respect, the strongest man in the world … do you think he’s going to invite Lula? Perhaps as a matter of protocol,” Bolsonaro asserted.
“Who will he invite from Brazil? Maybe only me. Is he [de Moraes] going to say no to the most powerful man in the world? I’m an ex [president]. Is the guy going to get into trouble because of his ex?” he continued.
Bolsonaro was among the first politicians in the region who publicly congratulated Trump on Tuesday’s victory, describing it as “historic” and a milestone that “rekindles the flame of freedom, sovereignty, and true democracy.” Bolsonaro explained to Folha that he always had a good relationship with the President-elect who, according to Bolsonaro, was worried that Brazil would turn into Venezuela.
“He [Trump] was interested in making Brazil the radiator of democracy in South America,” Bolsonaro claimed. “That was his main intention.”
While Bolsonaro claimed to the newspaper that de Moraes denied his travel authorization request to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago this week, his son, lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, visited the United States this week instead.
“Eduardo has a huge friendship with him [Trump]. So much so that, out of 85 guests [at Mar-a-Lago], he went and brought in two more, Gilson [Machado, Bolsonaro’s former Tourism Minister] and Gilson’s son,” Bolsonaro said. “He has me as someone he likes, it’s like falling in love with someone for free, right? This passion came from the way I treated him, knowing my place.”
After leaving office in January 2023, Bolsonaro has become the target of several probes, police raids, and indictments led by de Moraes, a self-styled “anti-fake news” crusader who also banned Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years after Bolsonaro expressed concerns about the security of Brazil’s electoral system in a meeting with foreign ambassadors in 2022.
The former Brazilian President told Folha that he considers Trump’s victory a “very important step” towards his prospective return to the Brazilian presidency in the upcoming 2026 election despite his active ban.
“It’s like walking a thousand steps, you have to take the first, you have to take the tenth. And Trump is a very important step,” Bolsonaro said.
Asked how he thinks Trump’s victory will reflect on Brazil, Bolsonaro responded that it will impact “the world” and described the United States as the country with the largest democracy in the world, “that has asserted its strength.”
“We had no conflict in the world while Trump was there,” Bolsonaro said.
Bolsonaro appealed the court rule that forced him to relinquish his passport and a gag order that prohibits him from communicating with any other individual being investigated by Brazilian authorities over the ongoing purported coup probe. The STF unanimously denied the appeal request in late October.
De Moraes, acting as the case’s rapporteur, argued that there is a possibility that Bolsonaro “may try to leave the country” should the Brazilian Federal Police advance with its investigations.
“They’ve been trying to frame me as a coup plotter for two years — fuck you,” Bolsonaro said with regards to the ongoing coup plot probe.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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