President Trump says Brazil's presidential runoff "looked like another rigged election," while adding that he did not take sides. He told reporters it looked very bad to him and that elections have to be indisputable, but he offered no evidence for the claim. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won an unprecedented fourth term with 51.79 percent of the vote to Flávio Bolsonaro's 48.21 percent, a margin of more than four million votes. Part of the controversy centers on a last-minute Supreme Court decision to extend voting by two hours, which Trump called "very strange."

Flávio Bolsonaro first refused to concede and said he would seek to annul the result, but his Liberal Party later acknowledged Lula's win in a statement. Brazil's Vice President Geraldo Alckmin defended the country's electoral system and called Trump's remarks "totally wrong" and "unfounded." The exchange echoes Trump's own claims about his 2020 loss and the refusal of Flávio's father, Jair Bolsonaro, to accept his 2022 defeat, after which Jair received a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup. Reuters has also reported that officials at the US State Department led a campaign to return the Bolsonaros to power, even though Trump did not formally endorse a candidate before the vote. The key questions now are whether Flávio Bolsonaro will press a legal challenge and how the dispute could shape relations between Washington and Brasília.