Bolsonaro’s treason backfired: a warning for Trump and Big Tech
Bolsonaro’s treason backfired: a warning for Trump and Big Tech
Brazil showed Americans we don't have to live like this.
What can we learn from news of Flavio Bolsonaro fleeing Brazil Monday after losing the presidential election there? Americans are famous for our indifference to international events, but I think this one tells us something about us.
The first thing to know is Bolsonaro fled Brazil and went to Florida after being ordered to surrender his passports. A justice of that nation’s Supreme Court ordered an investigation into money-laundering and other financial crimes the day after his defeat. It’s unclear how he left Brazil while under the order or whether he arrived with a passport. In any case, he requested political asylum and, according to the AP, his request was immediately granted.
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SubscribedThat’s the first thing to know, because here in America, we have been told for at least a decade that the integrity of our country depends on upholding our laws, securing our borders, getting rid of dangerous immigrants, and denying access to criminals who are exploiting the system. The result of this conviction has been asylum-seekers being denied entry by 94 percent, according to data compiled by Syracuse University.
But if you’re Donald Trump’s pal, no problem.
As the saying goes, “for my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
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Traitor knows traitor
That’s the second thing to know. Trump is invested in Bolsonaro. The administration was involved in a secret scheme to help him by sabotaging the campaign of his opponent, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. According to an investigation by Reuters, two officials from the US Department of State “advocated for punitive US government measures on Brazil designed to weaken Lula and boost the Bolsonaros.”
Reuters: “The policies included designating Brazilian gangs as terrorist groups and imposing US sanctions against the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice who was spearheading the investigation into [Flavio Bolsonaro’s dad] Jair Bolsonaro.”
I don’t really get the bromance between Trump and the Bolsonaros, but there’s clearly an affinity among them, one of character and personality more than discernible ideology. Jair Bolsonaro tried to mount an insurrection in 2022. So did Trump in 2021. Last year, the White House slapped 50 percent tariffs on Brazil in a bid to pressure authorities to drop charges against Bolsonaro. The move failed. Bolsonaro will die of old age in prison. Why did Trump bother? Traitor knows traitor? Enough said.
In any case, this year Lula warned Trump against violating Brazil’s sovereignty. He warned his opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro, there would be consequences for complicity. Neither heeded, so after the election, the Supreme Court justice who brought down the dad ordered the son to surrender his passports, pending an investigation.
The beginning of the end
That’s the third thing to know. The investigation is not trumped up. A donor network co-founded by Vice President JD Vance, called Rockbridge, is alleged to have interfered with Brazil’s election by Lula’s Workers’ Party and by another candidate who was knocked out in early rounds. In a case brought to Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court, Renan Santos said “Brazilians who claimed to represent Rockbridge had discussed providing US support with Bolsonaro campaign officials,” according to the Post.
The Post: “The representatives also approached Santos with offers of campaign help, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions.”
The investigation is wide-ranging. The justice, Flavio Dino, said it must “verify if there was the effective furnishment of resources — including human resources — services, or other measurable economic advantages, identifying its origin, its destination and its eventual use in the campaign.”
That makes room for a lot, including Lula’s allegation, made during his victory speech, that foreign attempts to violate Brazil’s sovereignty included those of big tech monopolies.
“This was an election in which we had to overcome outside interference coming in through digital platforms, which we are going to have to regulate,” Lula promised. “We cannot have monstrous companies earning billions, paying no taxes, and trying to steer this country’s electoral outcome.”
He was talking about Meta. It owns Instagram and Whatsapp. According to one report, they are “Brazilians’ most popular communication channels” and there were “1,200 reports of censored profiles, removed content, and restricted pages, most of them from the left. Lula’s own profile was the target of a series of restrictions and failures that hurt his reach, according to Meta employees. The company denied political interference and claimed that ‘technical failures’ resulted in the account restrictions that harmed Lula.”
Meta also blocked the accounts of Angie Nixon, the Democratic Senate candidate in Florida, and the No Kings protests. It cited “technical failures” for those temporary shutdowns, too. Meta is owned by Mark Zuckerberg. He famously paid $25 million to settle a phony lawsuit Trump brought against Meta to avoid future losses caused by a possible anti-monopoly government crackdown on his monopoly.
Helping Trump’s friends and hurting his enemies is part of Zuckerberg’s ploy. Everything rides on Trump’s “protection,” which is to say, Zuckerberg’s freedom as much as his fortune depends on the Trump administration continuing to look the other way. If the US government’s orientation pivots, and starts paying attention to his crimes, and starts enforcing laws already on the books, that’s the beginning of the end for Zuckerberg.
Lula models an alternative
Which brings me to the fourth and final thing to know. The story of Flavio Bolsonaro running from the consequences of betraying his country reminds us that another world is possible. The Brazilians do not have to accept the corruption of their elites. Neither do we.
We do not have to live in a world in which the Russians, for instance, poison the American public against the Democrats in order to help the Republicans win elections. We do not have to live in a world in which the billionaire owners of the planet’s largest social-media platforms stand by and let it happen, citing “free speech” as the reason they should.
What started in 2016 has happened every election cycle since, all the way up to yesterday, when the AP reported that the Russians are now using AI to create fake videos of Democrats to spread lies about them, and Twitter is their primary means of dissemination.
We do not have to live like this, but we do, because we have been taught to believe that punishing the bad guys will make us as bad as they are or worse: give the bad guys more reason to be bad. That belief was so ingrained that Merrick Garland slow-walked the investigation into Trump’s attempted paramilitary takeover. He lived in fear of being accused of “weaponizing the law.” The result was a president getting away with breaking it.
But Lula models an alternative. Though his opponent explicitly campaigned on vengeance – “to free his father, pardon supporters convicted in a Jan. 6-style assault on Brasília and impeach the Supreme Court justices involved in their prosecution,” according to the Post – Lula said tough cookies. Accuse me of weaponizing the law all you want, but facts are facts. We don’t have to put up with this and we won’t.
That model is powerful. It says that to stop the authoritarians it is first necessary to stop believing their lies. We are not as bad as they are. We should not fear them doing more bad things when we stand up for the rule of law. We should punish foreign governments for sabotaging our elections. We punish candidates for accepting their support. We should punish big tech monopolies for facilitating it all.
The bottom line is that the freedom of the authoritarians, as much as the wealth and power, depends on the lies. Stop believing them and suddenly, the way forward becomes very clear and with that, their freedom suddenly becomes very much in doubt. —John Stoehr
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© 2026 John Stoehr
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