Trump calls Brazil's presidential election 'rigged' after Lula defeats his preferred candidate
U.S. President Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of Brazil's presidential election after incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, a candidate Trump had supported.
"It looked like another rigged election," Trump told reporters on October 26, according to Bloomberg.
"I just think it had a very bad look, the election, the way it was tabulated. The extension given was very strange," he added, referring to a Brazilian court decision to extend voting by two hours.
Trump did not say whether he intended to take any action over the result, instead saying he got along "very well" with Lula.
Lula won a historic fourth presidential term in the October 25 runoff, defeating Bolsonaro by more than four million votes, according to Reuters.
Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, refused to concede and called for the result to be annulled, arguing that the court had changed election rules by extending voting hours.
However, Reuters reported that Bolsonaro's own campaign had also requested an extension because of heavy rain in conservative-leaning regions. Analysts said an annulment was highly unlikely given Lula's substantial margin of victory.
The result was a political setback for Trump, whose administration had supported the Bolsonaro family's return to power. A Bolsonaro victory would have given Washington another close ideological ally in Latin America's largest economy.
Lula's reelection also comes just over a week before the U.S. midterm elections, in which Trump's Republican Party faces a difficult contest.
Brazil's electoral court has declared Lula the winner. Neither Trump nor Bolsonaro presented evidence of vote-counting fraud in the statements reported.