Brazil's Bolsonaro bets on Trump card for political survival

For a man charged with masterminding an attempted coup and banned from public office, Brazil's far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro appears remarkably serene about his political future.

As he sees it, if US President Donald Trump could overcome crushing legal woes to make his way back into power, why can't he?

"I am calm... I don't give a damn about prison," Bolsonaro, 69, said last week after being charged for allegedly plotting to oust President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after the 2022 elections.

Buoyed by the global strengthening of the far-right, Bolsonaro is lobbying for Trump to turn up the pressure on Brazilian authorities to halt what he terms legal persecution against him.

The firebrand conservative has expressed confidence that Trump would use his influence to intervene on his behalf.

"He won't accept that certain people around the world persecute their opponents," he told reporters in January.

Trump has said the two men are "great friends" and described Bolsonaro as a "great gentleman" at last week's annual conservative convention in the US.

Bolsonaro is awaiting a Supreme Court decision on whether to try him over the alleged coup plot — charges which carry a jail term of up to 40 years.

He is also trying to get Congress to reduce his ban on running for office until 2030, imposed over his repeated attacks on Brazil's voting system.

US targets powerful Brazilian judge 

Political analyst Guilherme Casaroes of the Getulio Vargas Foundation said Bolsonaro's hopes of being able to run again "sound far-fetched at this point."

Nevertheless, "there are ways through which the Trump administration might try and exert some pressure on the Brazilian authorities," such as sanctions. 

The main target appears to be powerful Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes, who is leading the case against Bolsonaro.

Moraes is also spearheading a crackdown on online disinformation which has put him in the crosshairs of Trump's right-hand man and X social network owner Elon Musk.

The judge has ordered the suspension of social media accounts accused of spreading hate speech on X and the conservative Rumble video outlet.

Last week he suspended Rumble in Brazil, after shutting X down for 40 days last year for failing to comply with court orders.

The US State Department warned on X this week that his actions were "incompatible with democratic values, including freedom of expression."

Brazil hit back, rejecting "any attempt to politicize judicial decisions."

Bolsonaro's son, the lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, has made several trips to the US to plead his father's case to Republicans and push for sanctions against Moraes.

On Wednesday, a US judicial committee approved a bill it said was inspired by Moraes, that could block foreign officials from the United States if they try to censor local companies.

Rising from the ashes?

Despite the campaign against Brazil in the US, Lucas Leite, an international relations professor at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation in São Paulo, believes it will be more difficult for Bolsonaro to make a comeback than it was for Trump.

Bolsonaro "should be much more concerned" than he appears, he said.

"The only way for him to really escape would be through an amnesty via Congress, some political pact between the main parties, but I very much doubt that will happen.”

"I think it is very likely that he will be convicted before 2026," so as not to "contaminate" the electoral race, he added.

When Bolsonaro came to power in 2019, two years after Trump, his bombastic rhetoric and style saw him dubbed the "Trump of the Tropics."

Bolsonaro has doubled down on the comparison in recent weeks, regularly comparing his knifing at a 2018 campaign rally to Trump's brush with assassination, when a bullet nicked his ear.

He also recalls how both their supporters stormed government buildings two years apart in indignation over what they saw as stolen elections.

"Bolsonaro is trying to reinforce this political, nationalist identity, this rhetoric that is very Trumpist and that mobilizes people very strongly," said Leite.

His supporters are optimistic.

"Trump returned to power, rose from the ashes like a Phoenix, so I believe that Bolsonaro, even with all this persecution, will also return to power in 2026," seamstress and Bolsonaro supporter Silvia Lúcia Soares, 61, told AFP.