On July 28, President Donald Trump extended for another year the Executive Order he signed the year before declaring a “national emergency” over the “unusual and extraordinary threat … to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil.” The EO forthrightly declares that this absurd claim is issued in defense of former President Jair Bolsonaro and his family.
One of Jair’s sons, Flavio, is currently the leading opposition candidate running against President Lula da Silva in the October presidential elections. President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly back Flavio as “their” man, but the administration’s strategic interest is to stop President Lula from being reelected, one way or the other. U.S. officials have already been caught attempting to lay the groundwork for charging “vote fraud” and questioning the legitimacy of the election, should Lula win.
Brazil is not taking such plans lightly. On July 24, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry refused to grant visas to two State Department political appointees known for their political interventions into other foreign elections. The intent of the two, Riley Barnes, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and his Deputy Assistant Samuel Samson, was to examine the “integrity” of the Brazilian election process. According to a July 29 report in Correio Brazilense, the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia had asked the head of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party in the Chamber of Deputies, Sóstenes Cavalcante, to set up the agenda for the planned visit by the two officials.
