US President Donald Trump has called Brazil's recent presidential election "rigged" and "corrupt," casting doubt on the fairness of the two-round contest that concluded over the weekend.
Speaking to reporters en route to a midterm election rally in Corinth, Mississippi, Trump was asked whether he considered the nationwide runoff vote to have been conducted fairly. Describing the process as looking "terrible," Trump remarked that "it looked like another rigged election, frankly."
The US leader's criticisms came after Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva secured a historic fourth non-consecutive term as Brazil's president. Official election returns showed Lula capturing 51.79 percent of the valid votes—totaling more than 64 million ballots—to defeat conservative Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, who garnered 48.21 percent.
Trump asserted that democratic elections must be entirely above dispute and argued that the handling of the Brazilian vote sent a damaging message globally. "Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me," he told journalists.
While maintaining his criticism of how the vote was executed—stating that "it looked so, so corrupt, so terrible"—Trump insisted that he had not backed any specific candidate or taken an official stance in the South American nation's political contest.
