Trump says he will speak with Lula but avoids commenting on the election winner

United States President Donald Trump said this Thursday that he will speak with his counterpart from Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, although at the same time he avoided commenting on who he considers won last Sunday’s elections in that country, in which his ally, the far-right Flávio Bolsonaro, was defeated.

“I will talk to him, but the elections were a disgrace,” Trump replied when asked by the media about the possibility of him speaking with Lula.

Trump did not want to respond when journalists asked him who he considered the legitimate winner of Sunday’s elections, in which the current president achieved a surprising comeback after trailing Bolsonaro in the first round, who arrived in the United States on Wednesday fleeing Brazil, where he is being investigated for alleged corruption.

“I don’t want to comment on that for now, but I consider the elections to have been a great embarrassment for the Brazilian people. I followed the electoral process. I didn’t take sides; I let things take their course. The president, the current president, asked me not to take sides. And I didn’t,” explained the US leader.

Last Monday, Trump deemed the elections “fraudulent,” and on Wednesday, he stated that Bolsonaro—who on the same day proclaimed himself the legitimate leader of Brazil in a letter denouncing political persecution in his country—has been treated “very unfairly” in the Latin American nation.

The senator and his family arrived on Wednesday in the U.S. city of Miami after leaving Brazil, where the Federal Police canceled his ordinary and diplomatic passports on Tuesday after he failed to comply with a court order to surrender them on Monday as part of an investigation into alleged corruption.

The United States Government has said that it will grant visas to the four, although it has not specified what type of permits it will grant them for their stay in the country.

Bolsonaro’s defeat at the polls represents a blow to the Trump Administration, which was eager to align Latin America’s largest economy with Washington, just as has happened with other countries in the region where the right has prevailed electorally in recent months.