Right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro attracts foreign support, but struggles in polls ahead of matchup with President Lula.<\/p>\n
Published On 26 Jul 202626 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
Flavio Bolsonaro<\/a> has inaugurated the official beginning of his Brazilian presidential campaign, touting support from right-wing figures such as Argentinian President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro and long considered the presumptive candidate of Brazil\u2019s political right, launched his formal bid challenging President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n \u201cThis is more than a party convention,\u201d Bolsonaro said in remarks to his father\u2019s Liberal Party.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the beginning of the toughest battles of our life. A fight between good and evil.\u201d<\/p>\n Recent polls have shown Bolsonaro trailing the left-wing Lula, as his bid for the presidency struggles to right itself after a number of setbacks<\/a> and scandals.<\/p>\n While Saturday\u2019s event included endorsement remarks from right-wing heavyweights such as Milei and Netanyahu, few prominent Brazilian politicians were in attendance.<\/p>\n Centre-right parties have largely kept their distance, and Flavio\u2019s father \u2013 currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for a coup attempt following his loss to Lula in 2022 \u2013 was present at the convention only in the form of a video made with AI.<\/p>\n Milei delivered \u200ca fiery speech criticising Lula and declaring that Bolsonaro can \u201csave\u201d Brazil from socialism.<\/p>\n The Argentinian president flew to Brazil the night before the event and met on Saturday with Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue offering our testimony everywhere against the lies of socialism,\u201d Milei said.<\/p>\n Netanyahu offered support via a short video message.<\/p>\n \u201cFlavio, my friend, I want to congratulate you on the official launching of your campaign,\u201d Netanyahu said in the recording, according to the Brazilian outlet Metropoles. \u201cYou\u2019re a great champion of Brazil, you\u2019re a great champion of the friendship between our peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n Lula\u2019s Workers Party is set to hold its own convention on August 2, confirming the 80-year-old president\u2019s re-election bid.<\/p>\n Bolsonaro and his allies have also suffered from criticisms that they have tried to use their ties to the administration of US President Donald Trump<\/a> to boost his campaign, inviting US intervention<\/a> in a variety of issues that many Brazilians see as a form of foreign meddling.<\/p>\n Like his father, Flavio has also raised alarm by repeating false claims about the reliability of Brazil\u2019s election infrastructure, seen as a pretext for possible efforts to deny the legitimacy of the voting process in the event of a loss to Lula.<\/p>\n The AFP news agency reported on Saturday that Brazil had denied visas to a pair of Trump administration officials who sought to meet with the country\u2019s election authorities to discuss \u201cfreedom of expression related to the elections\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro attracts foreign support, but struggles in polls ahead of matchup with President Lula. Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1083,4410,42,88767,16632,43,238,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-559842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-brazil","tag-elections","tag-headlines","tag-jair-bolsonaro","tag-latin-america","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}