Lula’s campaign has accused Donald Trump of trying to shape Brazil’s presidential race, releasing a campaign advert on Thursday night that will air on television on Friday. The spot says Trump is backing Flávio Bolsonaro and using the election to push Brazil into dependence on the United States.
The narrator in the advert says, “Flávio Bolsonaro is Trump’s candidate and what Trump wants is to colonise Brazil, take our riches, steal our future and leave us in the dust.” That is a sharp escalation in a campaign already running hot, with the first round set for 4 October and a second-round run-off on 25 October if no candidate clears half the vote.
The timing matters because Lula and Bolsonaro are neck and neck in the polls, and the accusation lands just as voters are being asked to decide whether the race goes to a run-off. Lula’s team also tied the ad to wider fears that Washington is trying to shape the result through diplomatic and economic pressure, including 25% tariffs on Brazilian imports.
The campaign’s argument did not appear out of nowhere. It drew on recent reports of alleged interference by Big Tech companies, a confidential document sent to electoral authorities by Brazil’s intelligence agency warning of a critical level of risk of US interference, and claims linking Bolsonaro’s campaign to the conservative donor network Rockbridge, which was co-founded by JD Vance. Dozens of Democratic party congresspeople also wrote to Marco Rubio earlier this week, denouncing what they called a sustained, multifaceted campaign of interference and destabilisation in Brazil.
That case ran into an immediate wall. The State department denied the interference charge and called any suggestion of a plot to undermine Brazil’s election “a baseless lie.” Lula answered on X by saying Bolsonaro wanted to hand Brazil’s natural resources over to the United States and warning, “If it’s up to him, Brazil will become a colony again.”
Lula went further in remarks at the UN general assembly in New York, saying, “We will not allow the enemies of democracy – internal or external – to attack the will of the people. Brazilian democracy belongs to the Brazilians.” The campaign advert now takes that message into prime electoral territory, turning a foreign-policy fight into a direct warning to voters at home.
Éden Valadares said the ad was part of efforts to alert the Brazilian people to what he described as an ideologically driven US campaign, and said a nationwide series of events was being planned for this Sunday. For Lula, the immediate test is whether the spot changes the tone of the race before Friday’s television airing; for Brazil, the bigger question is whether the foreign-interference charge hardens into a defining issue before the vote on 4 October.
