Conceptual illustration of Donald Trump (left) with his arms crossed, and Lula da Silva (right) raising one arm, with a crowd gathered in the background. Photo: MintPress News.
By Alan Macleod – Aug 18, 2026
The United States is interfering in the Brazilian presidential elections, pressuring the Brazilian electorate into voting for right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of disgraced former president Jair Bolsonaro. If that does not work and President Lula da Silva secures a fourth term in office, the groundwork is already being laid for a potential military intervention. From sanctions and economic warfare to coaching influencers and journalists on how best to attack the left-wing government, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to overthrow Lula.
Meanwhile, the State Department’s recent decision to designate Brazilian gangs as “foreign terrorist organizations” just as it did with Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua signals a willingness to intervene militarily.
Brazil is Trump’s next target, and builds upon recent U.S. and Israeli interference in May’s Colombian elections, where pro-Trump candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won a razor-thin victory.
MintPress examines the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine Brazilian democracy and install another Bolsonaro back into power.
A Thumb on the Scale
Brazil’s October elections are rapidly approaching, and while thirteen people are standing for president, two principal candidates have already emerged: current left-of-center president Lula da Silva and far-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro. Flavio is the son of disgraced former president Jair (sentenced to 27 years in prison for leading a January 6th-inspired coup attempt) and the brother of Eduardo (convicted in absentia for lobbying the United States to intervene in his father’s trial).
It is obvious which candidate Washington prefers. The Bolsonaros are politically, ideologically, and personally very close to the MAGA movement, and Flavio has already promised that, if elected, his country will become one of the U.S.’ closest allies.
Lula currently holds a double-digit lead on Bolsonaro (40% to 28%, with no other candidate holding more than 10% of the public’s voting intentions). But Brazilian politics can change very quickly; in 2018, Lula held a 20-point lead over Jair Bolsonaro when the Brazilian Supreme Court blocked him from running. He was imprisoned on bogus charges in a case orchestrated by the U.S. government, leaving the path clear for Bolsonaro’s victory.
Lula has sounded the alarm that Brazilian democracy is once again under threat from Washington. “As far as I’m concerned, [Trump] can continue liking Bolsonaro, the father, the son, the grandson… There is no problem with that. It’s his problem. There’s no accounting for taste,” he said. “Now, don’t meddle in the Brazilian elections, because the Brazilian elections are a Brazilian problem, just as American elections are their business, not mine,” he added: “All I want is the same respect for Brazil that I have for the United States. That’s it.”
Washington, however, has other ideas. On May 26, Flavio Bolsonaro traveled to Washington to meet with Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to sell them on the concept of military intervention in Brazil. Two days later, the U.S. State Department designated two Brazilian gangs, Comando Vermelho and Primeiro Comando da Capital, as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” and “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” a decision that Brian Mier, an American journalist who moved to Brazil in 1991 and is now Brazil correspondent for TeleSur English, described as “a preemptive move to possibly invade if Lula wins reelection.”
In 2025, the State Department did the same with Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Just months later, the U.S. carried out an operation to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro, decapitating the Venezuelan government.
Free Speech or Hate Speech?
Mier noted that the United States government is also actively coaching Brazilian influencers in methods and techniques to best attack Lula and the government. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the U.S. Consulate in São Paulo held a series of workshops with selected prominent right-wing figures.
One of these is influencer Maria Fernanda Schmidt, who confirmed the validity of the reporting by posting a set of pictures of the event on her Instagram. “It was an excellent opportunity to share with diplomats the challenges faced by influencers, journalists, and content producers in the digital environment, in an enriching dialogue about the direction of freedom of expression in Brazil,” she wrote.
The U.S. Consulate has also arranged for visas and trips to the United States for local journalists. The objective was to entice them into attacking Lula and promoting Bolsonaro’s candidacy by promoting the U.S.-backed line that freedom of speech and freedom of expression is under attack in Brazil, thanks to Lula’s government.
This idea is based largely on a 2024 spat between Brazilian authorities and U.S. billionaire Elon Musk. Musk refused to comply with a Brazilian court order to delete far-right accounts on Twitter (now officially called X) that broke the country’s hate speech and misinformation laws. Musk, a champion of far-right politics himself, and someone who has openly used his platforms to promote regime change around the world, refused to do so, leading to X’s temporary shutdown across Brazil.
“Powerful actors in the Trump administration and Republican Party as well as Silicon Valley tech allies and pundits who make up part of the integral U.S. state (Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Michael Shellenberger, etc.) have been working closely with the Bolsonaro family since Jair Bolsonaro first ran for President in 2018,” Mier told MintPress.
It’s no secret that the Brazilian right-wing are deeply influenced by the MAGA movement. Indeed, Brazil even had its own January 6 moment – on January 8, 2023. After he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula, Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro took to the airwaves denouncing the result, claiming irregularities, and calling for an insurrection. Thousands of people marched on the streets in Brasília, rioting and calling for the military to intervene.
Like the United States’ January 6, the rioters were unsuccessful. But unlike in America, Bolsonaro was held to account for his coup attempt, and was sentenced in 2025 to 27 years in prison.
There is little doubt of his guilt. During his trial, Bolsonaro admitted that he met with top Brazilian generals to discuss how to hold onto power, even after losing the election.
Trump, however, was incensed by the decision. “The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace,” he said, demanding the immediate end of the trial. Trump placed punishing economic sanctions on Brazil, and against the country’s Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes.
This decision was likely influenced by Jair’s son and Flavio’s brother, Eduardo, who heavily lobbied the Trump administration on his father’s behalf, demanding his country be sanctioned. Brazil considered this an attempt to pervert the course of justice, and sentenced Eduardo to four years in prison in absentia. He currently lives in a mansion in Texas and cannot return to his homeland. There, he plays a similar role to what Maria Corina Machado did in Venezuela, lobbying the U.S. to militarily intervene in his country to put his family back in power. In October, he publicly called for the U.S. military to bomb Rio de Janeiro under the guise of fighting drug trafficking.
Trump also commented on Eduardo’s trial, although he appeared to believe Eduardo is his sibling, Flavio. “I hear they arrested somebody that’s running for office today,” Trump said in June. “I heard that they arrested the Bolsonaro junior, who was doing well in the polls.” In fact, it is Flavio Bolsonaro who is running for president.
Economic and Diplomatic Warfare
If elected, Flavio has promised the United States considerable influence inside the country, offering the Trump administration control over his transition team. This would mean, according to some, that U.S. officials would take considerable power over Brazil’s economy and society, in a not too dissimilar way in which they controlled Iraq.
The upcoming elections between Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro are also taking place in a context in which the United States is actively trying to crash the Brazilian economy, in order to sink Lula’s chances. The United States has placed sweeping 40-50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, with more in the pipeline. These measures were quite different to the generalized tariffs placed on much of the world last year. For one, the U.S. actually maintains a healthy trade surplus with Brazil, unlike most other countries. Secondly, in his executive order, Trump explicitly stated that (emphasis added):
“Should the government of Brazil take significant steps to address the national emergency declared in this order and align sufficiently with the United States on national security, economic and foreign policy matters described in this order, I may further modify this order.”
The clear implication of this statement is that Brazil is being punished for being insufficiently loyal to Washington.
Diplomatic ties worsened earlier this month, after the United States revoked the visa of Brazilian Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, forcing her to return home. That same day, Brazil had instructed the Argentinian ambassador to leave the country.
“The Trump administration has been closely working with [Argentinian president] Javier Milei to delegitimize left parties, leaders, and administrations across Latin America,” Mier said, noting that Milei had traveled to São Paulo in July to attend the far-right Liberal Party’s national convention, where Flavio Bolsonaro was officially chosen as the party’s presidential candidate. Milei has been extremely vocal about his wish to see Lula’s demise, attending Bolsonaro rallies and calling Lula “corrupt,” a “thief” and a “convict.”
“A Gift From the CIA”
Milei’s use of the word convict refers to Operation Car Wash, a U.S.-backed scheme that saw Lula imprisoned on corruption charges. Lula had been leading Jair Bolsonaro by over 20 points in the polls for the 2018 general election, but was incarcerated and forbidden from running for office, even from his prison cell.
The prosecution worked closely with Washington to ensure Lula remained behind bars and unable to contest the election, paving the way for Bolsonaro’s rise. Bolsonaro later appointed Sergio Moro, the judge that sent Lula to prison, as his justice minister.
It later transpired, however, that Moro had been coordinating the whole time with the prosecution, including chief prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, who remarked that Lula’s arrest was “a gift from the CIA.” Shortly after his election, both Bolsonaro and Moro flew to Langley, VA, for meetings at CIA headquarters.
In Washington’s eyes, the affair was a massive success. Leslie Backschies, then-FBI liaison and later head of the bureau’s international corruption unit, boasted that her organization had “toppled presidents in Brazil.”
Thus, what was sold to the Brazilian public as an “anti-corruption” crusade was actually a prime example of modern lawfare, one that Lula described as “having the hands of the United States on it.”
The brazen corruption of the case drew widespread domestic and international outrage, with Lula becoming the world’s most well-known political prisoner. After huge public pressure, he was released from prison, and his convictions annulled. In 2022, he swept to power in an election the Bolsonaros worked hard to overthrow.
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Life in America’s Backyard
Lula is now seeking an unprecedented fourth term in office. And even though he has been a major political figure since the 1980s, he has maintained a significant level of popular support. Born into a lower working-class family, he worked as a shoeshine boy and a metalworker, losing part of his left hand in an industrial accident while still a teenager. He entered politics as a metalworkers’ union leader in 1969, under the repressive U.S.-backed fascist military dictatorship. Once in power, his party’s innovative social programs lifted tens of millions out of poverty and strengthened his support base among Brazil’s working class.
It is his international moves, however, that have led to so much outrage in Washington. Lula has regularly attempted to block or at least refused to fully support U.S. imperial ambitions in the region. But it is Brazil’s leadership of the BRICS economic bloc and its increasing cooperation with Russia and China (the “R” and “C” of the BRICS acronym) that is perhaps the key reason why Trump wants him gone.
In recent years, BRICS has moved from a nondescript economic alliance to one threatening U.S. hegemony throughout the world, principally through their contestation of the U.S. dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency – a position that gives Washington extraordinary power and influence over global economics.
BRICS is at the forefront of de-dollarizing global trade. And that effort is being spearheaded by Brazil. Last year, the organization held a successful summit in Rio de Janeiro. The head of the BRICS Development Bank (now called the New Development Bank or NDB) is Dilma Rousseff, a key Lula ally and former president of Brazil herself. Focusing on funding large development projects in poorer countries, the NDB could become a serious challenger to the U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund. “Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar,” Lula said in a speech at the NDB in Shanghai, “Why can’t we do trade based on our own currencies? Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?” he added.
“The president is pissed every time he looks at the BRICS de-dollarization effort,” Trump advisor Steve Bannon revealed. Trump has stated that BRICS could “destroy the dollar,” and, if they are successful in doing so, it would be “like losing a war, a major world war; we would not be the same country any longer.”
Trump implemented extra tariffs on BRICS nations, including Brazil, stating: “They have to pay 10% if they’re in BRICS. Because BRICS was set up to hurt us. BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar, and take our dollar as the standard, take it off as the standard.” “The dollar is king, and we’re going to keep it that way,” he concluded.
When asked why is Trump so involved in the upcoming elections in Brazil, Mier responded:
“Hegemony. Brazil is arguably the last sovereign left of center government in South America, but it also has the second-largest economy after the U.S. in the Americas and is home to roughly half of the population of Latin America. In accordance with Trump’s new Monroe doctrine, the US wants a completely subordinate Brazil, free of Chinese influence.”
Sure enough, on Tuesday, the State Department released a statement reading: “The Monroe Doctrine has shaped U.S. foreign policy for over two centuries. American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
First declared in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine (and subsequent corollaries) suggest that the entirety of the Americas belong to the United States alone, that no other foreign powers are welcome in the region, and that the United States can intervene militarily in any country in the hemisphere if and when it wants.
Generations of academics, politicians, and pundits have downplayed the doctrine, attacking scholars who claim that this policy is still active as misguided or conspiracy theorists. But the Trump administration, with its ongoing tendency to say the quiet part out loud, has openly embraced the Monroe Doctrine and declared it official U.S. government policy.
Mier also explained what he saw as Washington’s ultimate goal for Brazil:
“Looking at the U.S. as an integral state and taking into consideration the history of the U.S. State Department as an agent of U.S. corporate interests, it is clear that the Silicon Valley tech fascists want chaos. These powerful transnational actors want a completely unregulated environment for crypto, social media brainwashing operations, A.I. and online betting.”
“This is what they are getting right now in El Salvador and Argentina,” he concluded, “and they want it in Brazil,” too.
Meddling Across the Continent
The Trump administration has certainly been attempting to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, and has been openly meddling in the political affairs of nations across the hemisphere. President Trump publicly gave his “complete and total endorsement” to far-right candidate (and U.S. citizen) Abelardo de la Espriella in May’s Colombian presidential elections, a contest de la Espriella narrowly won.
Outgoing president Gustavo Petro accused both the United States and Israel of interfering in the elections. Petro had been a target of Washington for some time; in December Trump said he was “next” on his list for regime change operations and that a military operation “sounds good” to him.
In response, Petro warned that “a clan of pedophiles wants to destroy democracy” in Colombia. To keep the Epstein List from coming out,” he explained, “they send warships to kill fishermen…and invade our brother country [Venezuela]… Epstein’s list, his friends, they want to start violence here so that the people of the U.S. don’t think about their government.”
In the end, Washington got its way without a single shot fired.
New president de la Espriella immediately moved to recognize Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, and announce that he would open an embassy in Jerusalem, even as his country suffered a devastating earthquake that has killed at least 265 people.
On Cuba, Trump has turned up the pressure with a new campaign of economic warfare, including putting the country on the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, shutting down remittances to the island, enacting a fuel blockade, and stopping foreign businesses trading with Cuba. As a result, the economy has nosedived. “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon,” Trump predicted in March.
A MintPress News investigation also found that the U.S. government is quietly bankrolling a host of supposedly independent media on Cuba, all of whom are laying the groundwork for a potential U.S. military operation against the Caribbean nation.
The optimism on Cuba is no doubt influenced by the success of Trump’s Venezuela coup. In January, elite U.S. forces stormed Caracas, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores and bringing them to New York.
Trump described the attack as a successful and lucrative “48-minute war.” Since then, the U.S. has been illegally profiting off the country’s resources. Trump, however, was unrepentant: “We’re taking a lot of oil from Venezuela,” he said, adding: “To the victor belong the spoils.”
The far-right has been surging in Latin America, with victories in Peru, El Salvador, and a recent strong showing for Milei in legislative elections. The latter was thanks in part to Trump explicitly announcing that $20 billion in U.S. economic aid would only be granted if the people voted the right way. We will not “waste our time” if Milei loses, Trump warned.
Things, therefore, are looking good for the United States in Latin America. Brazil, however, stands in their way. The largest and most populous country in the region remains as a bulwark against Trumpism. While the far-right is advancing across the region, polls show that the Brazilian public still put their faith in the 80-year-old Lula and largely reject Flavio Bolsonaro.
Brazil, then, is blocking a U.S. clean sweep of South America. With nearly two months to go until polls open, nothing about its result is written in stone. What is certain, however, is that the United States will continue to meddle and try to dominate the region Trump describes as America’s own backyard.
Alan MacLeod
Alan MacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group and a Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
