The president of the United States, Donald Trump, described this Thursday the Brazilian presidential elections as "a great embarrassment for the Brazilian people", although he refrained from answering who he considers the legitimate winner of the elections held last Sunday.
The statements were made to journalists and reported by the Anadolu agency, after Trump was asked directly: "Who is, in your opinion, the legitimate winner of the Brazilian elections?".
"I don't want to make comments right now, but it seemed to me that the election was a great embarrassment for the Brazilian people," the U.S. president replied.
Trump stated that he followed the electoral process, but insisted that he stayed out of the dispute between Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.
"I saw the elections. I didn't take a side. I left things as they were," he stated.
The Republican added that the acting Brazilian president had asked him not to take sides, although he did not provide details about the circumstances of that request.
"The president, the current president, asked me not to take sides. I did not take sides," he reiterated.
However, Trump once again questioned what happened during the elections, which concluded with Lula's reelection for a fourth presidential term.
“But when I saw what happened in Brazil, it was an embarrassment,” he declared.
The president also pointed to the behavior of financial markets to support his criticism.
"Well, the market speaks for itself. Just look at the market. I mean, its market collapsed," he stated.
And he concluded: “I found it to be a very embarrassing situation for Brazil”.
His references to the alleged collapse of the Brazilian market were part of his political assessment of the events and do not, on their own, constitute evidence of electoral irregularities.
The official results from the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil confirmed that Lula received 64,256,232 votes, equivalent to 51.79% of valid votes, while Flávio Bolsonaro received 59,826,041 votes, or 48.21%.
The definitive difference was 4,430,191 votes in favor of the reelected president.
Trump's recent statements come amid the controversy sparked by Bolsonaro's defeat and his subsequent departure to the United States.
This Wednesday, Trump had already questioned the Brazilian electoral process and expressed his willingness to welcome Flávio Bolsonaro and his family on U.S. soil.
Additionally, he described the elections as "very strange" and stated that they seemed "terrible" to him, although he also asserted that he had not intervened in favor of any of the candidates.
This Wednesday, Flávio Bolsonaro proclaimed himself the "elected president" of Brazil from the United States, through a letter in which he denounced an alleged fraud and announced that he would lead the opposition from abroad.
The senator publicly thanked Trump and the U.S. government for welcoming him and his family, while questioning the legitimacy of the results acknowledged by Brazilian electoral authorities.
The dispute arose after the second round on October 25, when Lula overcame the lead that Bolsonaro had obtained in the first electoral round and secured his presidential reelection.
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