Asked Who Legitimately Won Brazil, Trump Won't Name Lula: 'It Was a Disgrace'

A reporter asked President Trump a simple question Thursday: who, in his mind, is the legitimate winner of Brazil's presidential election? He did not say Lula. "I don't want to comment right now, but I thought the election was a very great embarrassment to the people of Brazil," Trump said at Joint Base Andrews, on his way to a rally in South Carolina.

Then he went further. "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, meaning President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. "But when I watched what went down in Brazil, it was a disgrace." And he pointed to the money: "Well, the market says it. Just take a look at the market. I mean, that market went down through the floor. I thought it was a very disgraceful situation for Brazil."

Moments earlier, another reporter told Trump he had questioned the election and asked, "Do you now recognize Lula as the President? Do you have any intention to talk to him and congratulate him?" Trump's answer: "I'll talk to him. I think the election was a disgrace in Brazil." Notice what he offered. A conversation, yes. Congratulations, no.

Three days, three steps up

This is the third time in four days Trump has gone after Brazil's runoff, and each time he has gone harder. On Monday, the day after the vote, he said it "looked like another rigged election, frankly," and called the two-hour voting extension "very strange," as we reported then.

On Wednesday, as Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro was escaping to Florida, a reporter asked whether Trump would approve of him coming to the United States. "Well, I would approve. I think they're fine people," Trump said. "The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible." He added that Flávio's father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, "was treated really badly, I thought." On Thursday, "strange" became "a disgrace."

What the market is saying

Trump's market point is not spin. It's in the numbers. Brazil's main stock index, the Ibovespa, closed at 205,083 on Friday, Oct. 23, the last trading day before the runoff. On Monday it fell 13.88%, so fast that the São Paulo exchange, B3, halted all trading for 30 minutes. It kept falling Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, ending Thursday near 169,186, according to B3's daily closes.

That is a 17.5% drop in four sessions. Picture a retirement account losing about a sixth of its value in one week, with no recession and no war, just an election result. Investors had bet on a Bolsonaro win and a government that would rein in spending. Lula's fourth term starts with that bet unwound.

The questions Trump keeps pointing at

The official result: Brazil's election court, the TSE, declared Lula the winner on Sunday night with 51.79% of valid votes to 48.21% for Flávio. But the way the night ended is still raising questions that officials have not answered.

The extension. Polls were set by law to close at 5 p.m. At 5:01 p.m., one minute after the legal close, an order from Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin reached the court system extending voting by two hours. Zanin was Lula's personal lawyer before Lula put him on the Supreme Court in 2023, and he does not sit on the election court.

The court that runs elections said no rule allowed it. TSE President Kassio Nunes Marques said afterward that no regulation authorized an extension and that nothing like it had happened before in the court's history. Officials have not explained why a justice outside the election court changed the rules after polls had closed, or how voters in places where machines were already sealed were treated differently from voters where polls were still open.

The runner-up has not conceded. Flávio refuses to accept the result and is seeking to have it annulled. Now in the U.S., he has called himself "the leader of Brazil" and vowed to lead the opposition "by all peaceful and legitimate means."

Washington still hasn't sent congratulations

Trump's words line up with what his government is doing. The State Department had a statement on Brazil's result drafted and ready the night of the vote, as it does after elections around the world, but staff were told to hold it and "assess" the situation after Flávio said he would not recognize the result, Folha de S.Paulo reported. In 2022, the Biden administration was among the first governments to congratulate Lula.

As of Wednesday, no member of the U.S. government had contacted Brazil's government to recognize Lula's win, Foreign Ministry sources told Valor Econômico. Lula, meanwhile, is thanking world leaders one by one on X. On Thursday it was Ireland's prime minister, Micheál Martin.

What happens next

Trump says he will talk to Lula but gave no date. The TSE has until Dec. 18 to certify the result, and Flávio's camp has said it will file a case at the court for abuse of economic power, aiming to strip the Lula ticket of its win. Lula is due to start his fourth term on Jan. 5, 2027.

Until then, the most powerful man in the hemisphere is saying out loud what millions of Brazilians are asking, and the U.S. government still hasn't said the word Lula wants to hear: congratulations.