In a hard-fought presidential election in Brazil yesterday, leftist Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva defeated South America’s “Trump of the Tropics,” hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro, https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/30/americas/brazil-election-polls-open-intl/index.html.
In a reprise of Trumpist tactics of denying election defeats, Bolsonaro has yet to concede the election.
For some years now, we here at AP have been supported by numerous associate solitary reporters, especially associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones, who repeatedly finds herself embedded in Donald Trump’s orbit, a position she does not relish, as she is an undercover operative for the Democratic National Committee. “Somebody has to do it,” she says.
Which is why we know, from ASR Jones, that when Brazil’s electoral authority announced that Lula had won a narrow victory, that Trump immediately called his close personal friend, Bolsonaro, and urged him never to concede.
“Jair,” Trump told Bolsonaro, “never give up, never concede. See how it worked for me, ‘cause the election was stolen from me.”
ASR Jones’ account was confirmed by our Chief South American correspondent, associate solitary reporter Sylvania Juguete.
For more insight into the friendship between Trump and Bolsonaro, see the brilliant account by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, p. 433.