What did Donald Trump do today?

He offered sanctuary to a kindred political spirit.

On Sunday, Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won re-election over Flávio Bolsonaro. Lula had trailed Bolsonaro in the first round of voting, but a massive mobilization of his supporters horrified at the prospect of returning to the corruption of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro—Flávio's father—carried the day in spite of overt attempts by Bolsonaro loyalists to disrupt the election.

If he had been elected, Flávio Bolsonaro would have been in a position to do what Trump did on returning to power: use his familiarity with the office to orchestrate a far more effective purge of law-abiding civil servants and install loyalists to seek revenge against his political enemies, or anyone who tried to enforce the rule of law against him. 

Instead, he is now likely to face charges that he was part of a conspiracy to sabotage Sunday's election, among other serious allegations against him. Supporters of his in key government positions shut down the buses that poorer Brazilians—who mostly supported Lula—rely on to reach polling places. Many voters in urban, pro-Lula, working-class districts also had their polling places moved without warning.

Today—still insisting that he had won the election—Flávio Bolsonaro fled to the United States with his family. The Trump administration issued them visas, in spite of legal orders by Brazilian authorities for Bolsonaro to surrender his passport. Trump had spoken out on Bolsonaro's behalf, declaring the election "rigged," which is how he has described literally every election since 2016 where he doesn't like the result.

Fleeing to the United States is, by now, a well-established Bolsonaro family tradition. Flávio's brother Eduardo was convicted in absentia by a Brazilian court for illegally lobbying the Trump administration after he, too, fled to the United States. Prior to Sunday's election, Eduardo publicly encouraged Flávio to seek the protection of the Trump administration if he lost. 

More notably, Flávio Bolsonaro's father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, also fled Brazil for Florida on his last day in office in 2022 ahead of certain prosecution for crimes he committed while in office. These included a January 2023 coup attempt he orchestrated from the safety of the United States, in an uncanny parallel of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt in the United States. He was forced to return when it became clear that the Biden administration would not ignore extradition requests from the lawful government of Brazil, and was eventually convicted of fraud, abuse of power, and plotting a coup d'état.

Trump has a long history with the Bolsonaro family, who share his right-wing authoritarian approach to governing. Last year, Trump tried to force Brazil's lawful government to abandon attempts to prosecute Jair Bolsonaro by imposing a 50% tax on Americans who imported Brazilian goods. (This kind of overt political meddling is why Trump's original tariff scheme, which was supposedly about an economic emergency, was struck down.)

It now appears that Trump will shelter Flávio Bolsonaro from Brazilian justice, much as he did for the people who attempted to overthrow the 2020 United States presidential election on his own behalf.
 

Why does this matter?

• Sheltering dictators is bad. 

• There doesn't appear to be any reason for Trump's fondness for the Bolsonaros except that they're corrupt authoritarians who think they're above the law.