The Far Right Lost a Foreign Election and MAGA Sees Only One Solution

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If you are not a supporter of right-wing authoritarianism, then Brazilian social media was the place to be today. Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, shocked the world with his underdog victory Sunday night, after lagging behind Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round of voting earlier this month. Pollsters and pundits had expected the supporters of the candidates who were eliminated in the first round to shift to Bolsonaro, a Donald Trump ally. Few predicted what actually happened: Lula won by about 4 million votes, securing a fourth term.

On social media, the gleeful Portuguese-language memes escaped containment. You needn’t speak the language to enjoy them. There were compilations of hot Brazilians flashing their support for Lula with “L” hand gestures, and A.I.-generated videos of the 80-year-old Lula in stacked heels and glam bodysuits dancing to Lady Gaga. The “Call an Ambulance” meme got a lot of play. And there was a lot for Brazil’s leftists to celebrate: This wasn’t just a blow to the global right-wing movement but to the Bolsonaro family in particular. The younger Bolsonaro ran as a proxy for his father, Jair, who is under house arrest for plotting a Jan. 6–style coup after losing to Lula in 2022. Lula’s win means the elder Bolsonaro will not walk free. It’s a blow to a political dynasty, and a lot of fodder for jokes.

If you are a fan of right-wing authoritarianism, however, political social media looked quite different today. On the right, influencers spoke darkly of Lula’s win as a danger to global democracy. This narrative came about thanks to right-wing influencers’ intentional misrepresentation of a last-minute ruling by Brazil’s Supreme Court that extended voting by two hours. Bolsonaro’s supporters have described this ruling as election interference, as Lula’s team had requested the extension, worried that bus shortages in some areas would prevent voters from getting to the polls on time. But Bolsonaro’s team had also made the extension request, concerned about heavy rain in some of the regions where he polled well. Bolsonaro’s boosters seemed to have conveniently forgotten this fact. Bolsonaro himself has already called for the election to be annulled. (This is not likely to succeed.)

Conservatives in the U.S. joined in the outcry, complaining about the voting extension and claiming, without evidence, that there had been significant voting fraud. Elon Musk posted about the election several times, implying to his 241 million followers that the election had been rigged and that the “math doesn’t add up.” Kari Lake, who claimed fraud after losing her own 2022 bid to be governor of Arizona, posted that “Brazil elections remind me of Arizona elections.” One political account, in an X post with more than 2 million views, wrote, “insane man… the world just watched an election be stolen in real time.” Even President Trump gave credence to this idea. “It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” he told reporters.

And as with the 2020 presidential election here, right-wing pundits moved swiftly from grouching to talk of action. Some spoke of the need for the U.S. government to do something. Steve Bannon suggested on his podcast that the Trump administration needed to “cut off diplomatic relations, and shut down everything with Brazil” because “if we don’t take action, it’s happening here next Tuesday.” (The “it” here being “election stealing.”) Others backed the idea of refusing to recognize the outcome of this election and forcing Brazil to redo it. “This is FAR from over!” wrote one pro-Trump activist who appeared to favor a mass uprising from Bolsonaro supporters.

But soon enough, it seemed like one very particular solution rose to the top: sending the U.S. military into Brazil. As the disgraced former New York Rep. George Santos wrote so eloquently: “Fuck Lula it’s time we give him the Maduro treatment!”

Santos wasn’t alone in comparing Lula to Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian Venezuelan president whom the U.S. military captured in a raid in January under charges of drug trafficking. Maduro has been accused of human rights violations and other dictatorial behavior; Lula, while not entirely clean of corruption allegations, has no such history of abuses. (Lula was imprisoned on corruption charges in 2018, but the charges were later annulled.) But in the narrative of the online right, “Lula = Maduro,” as the Utah Sen. Mike Lee wrote. And so influencers are urging Trump to send in a team to kidnap Lula. As the commentator Alex Jones said, “Brazil must be liberated.”

Perhaps because the elder Bolsonaro already failed to pull off a successful coup despite being Brazil’s president at the time, these influencers don’t seem confident Flavio can do what they want. Instead, they’re looking to another entry in Trump’s playbook—not for Brazil to copy, but for Trump to play out his moves again. This idea might give Trump supporters hope, but there’s a downside to this argument: It sure seems like a bad sign for the global authoritarian movement if American right-wingers can only trust their own strongman leader to get the dirty work done.

OK, let’s shift gears from international relations to something closer to home—like what else you should be reading this evening:

Make sense of a MAGA mystery: What on earth is going on with Nicki Minaj? If you’re confused about why the rapper joined Donald Trump at a political rally this weekend (at which the president also talked about her butt …), Luke Winkie can help fill in the details. Back in March, he laid out why Minaj decided to hop on the Trump bandwagon.

Ponder the first lady’s foray into diplomacy: Melania Trump is an enigmatic figure in Trumpworld. What is she doing during Trump 2.0? Apparently, she’s been busy brokering a ceasefire between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the occupied city of Oleshky. Heather Schwedel explains what the first lady has been up to.

Discover the truth about You Can See Everything: Nathan Fielder’s reality-bending documentary has prompted an explosion of discourse about Elizabeth Holmes’ trustworthiness and whether the convicted fraudster is actually a victim. Slate editor Shannon Palus analyzes the movie’s astonishing magic trick.

Indulge in some workplace schadenfreude: Some people despise their jobs, but, for whatever reason, refuse to leave. Alison Green, the advice maven behind Ask a Manager, explores what makes some employees so resistant to quitting a toxic job.

That’s it for today. Ian Prasad Philbrick will be back tomorrow.