Reported by Al Jazeera
Comments come after Trump ally Flavio Bolsonaro fled to Miami in the US and claimed, without evidence, that vote was stolen.
United States President Donald Trump declined to say if he agreed with the outcome of Sunday’s presidential elections in Brazil , but said he thought the contest was a “disgrace”.
“I thought the election was a great embarrassment to the people of Brazil,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter on Thursday morning. “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,” he said. “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.”
More from the original report
Trump’s remarks came a day after former Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro and his family fled Brazil and landed in Miami, Florida, in the US on Wednesday.
Bolsonaro and his family were aided in their journey out of Brazil by Trump and his administration, the New York Times reported Thursday. Officials told the newspaper that the US government would likely provide the Bolsonaro family permanent residency.
On Sunday, Bolsonaro had lost a run-off election for Brazil’s president to the left-wing incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by more than four million votes. The Brazilian real dropped against the dollar by 12 percent in spot trading after the election.
Brazil‘s Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports shortly after the election, in an attempt to make sure the right-wing senator did not flee the country before he could be investigated for embezzlement and money laundering.
Bolsonaro left Brazil under cover of darkness, crossing by land with his wife and two daughters into Argentina, where the government of Trump’s right-wing ally President Javier Milei had granted them visas. The family then took a small private plane to Ecuador and later on to Miami, where they landed on Wednesday morning.
Shortly after landing, Bolsonaro issued a statement saying he was “the true elected president of Brazil” and the…