Freshly Humiliated Flavio Bolsonaro Scurries Off To Miami

Three short weeks after he appeared to be on the cusp of assuming the presidency of Brazil and turbocharging the fascist revival movement started by his cadaverous father Jair, Flavio Bolsonaro is now a fugitive from the Brazilian justice system. Having been humiliated by an octogenarian in Brazil's presidential election, he was unable to gin up any support for an election theft, and was thus forced to choose between handing over his passport or scampering off to Miami like so many failed dictators before him.

Bolsonaro will no longer get to see through his family's dream of evangelicizing Brazil and turning the full force of its military inwards. Instead, he will be browsing the aisles of Publix and begging a different, much stupider octogenarian for the scraps of his dwindling mercy.

How did the younger Bolsonaro get here? His journey to Florida began with the collapse of the powerful bank, Banco Master, just over a year ago. That collapse resulted in the world learning about all the corrupt schemes the bank was doing, and also how intertwined it was with the Bolsonaro family. Incredibly, Flavio hitting up the now-jailed Banco Master owner for money to finance a Jim Caviezel–led biopic of his tubercular father is at the center of his corruption case. Flavio's best and perhaps only chance of avoiding jail time hinged on his family's ability to win Brazil's 2026 presidential election.

Bolsonaro tussled with his younger stepmother for control of the Liberal Party last summer, eventually winning the Freudian power struggle and being anointed by an AI avatar of his rheumatic father. Things seemed to be going well through the first round of elections: Bolsonaro led by two percentage points over the 80-year-old socialist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, forcing a runoff. The stakes were extremely high: Brazil has been one of the lone holdouts against the right-wing tide sweeping across almost all of Latin America, and had Bolsonaro won, the Amazon rainforest would have been subject to intense environmental depredation.

Thankfully, once Brazilians had to seriously contend with the prospect of someone like Flavio Bolsonaro running the country, they rejected his ass. His combination of malicious personal conduct and dodo-brained political instincts was neatly summed up at the final debate, in which he mocked Lula as "Nine Fingers." I can't think of a better possible way to burnish Lula's working class bona fides than to refer to the 1964 incident in which he lost the little finger of his left hand while working in a metal factory. Bolsonaro also tried to do a gotcha on Lula by asking him why 73 percent of inmates voted for him, to which Lula replied, "I wish it was 100 percent, including your father."

The final round of voting was held this past Sunday, and it was a decently chaotic one. Brazilian election officials extended the voting window by two hours due to heavy rain and transportation delays in several major cities. Lula eventually won with 51.8 percent of the vote, and though Bolsonaro conceded that night, he also mounted several halfhearted attempts to steal the election. All were rejected.

On Tuesday morning, the Brazilian government ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passports (he also has an Italian passport) as it pursues the corruption investigation. Rather than stick around and face justice, Bolsonaro turned tail. Despite Brazil theoretically forbidding immigration authorities from letting him out of the country, he and his family crossed by land into Argentina and the welcoming arms of Javier Milei's government on Tuesday night. They then flew to Guayaquil, Ecuador, which is administered by international criminal and close Marco Rubio ally Daniel Noboa, and on to Miami around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. The Trump administration said it would grant the Bolsonaro family visas.

I must admit to feeling simultaneously rueful that Bolsonaro was able to worm his way out from under the weight of the corruption investigation, and also jealous that Brazil is actually going after its antidemocratic right-wing political crime families. Flavio Bolsonaro probably will never face meaningful consequences for all his transgressions, but his father is currently under house arrest for trying to do a Brazilian Jan. 6th a few years ago. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is using its might to degrade American life and install all manner of thieves and criminals at the highest levels of power.

We could have done something about these guys. Instead, they're in position to welcome Flavio Bolsonaro to Florida, like so many disgraced and displaced Latin American right-wingers before him.