The midterm elections in the United States are just around the corner: On Tuesday, November 3, American voters will choose their representatives to the US Congress. The right-wing-conservative Republican party of President Donald Trump currently has a majority in both chambers. But in other parts of the world election results are already in.
The majority of voters in both Serbia and Brazil cast their ballots for left-wing parties. Those results will not influence the midterms in the US, but the victories of the Student List in Serbia and the incumbent president, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, in Brazil are bad news for Trump all the same. In Serbia, he has lost an important European ally in outgoing president Aleksandar Vucic.
And in Brazil, the Trump camp had been hoping Flavio Bolsonaro would triumph. "Trump was a strong supporter of both Jair Bolsonaro, the Trump-like figure who served as president before Lula defeated him in 2022, and of his son Flavio," says Lawrence J. Haas, a senior fellow for US foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, who was communications director for Al Gore, Bill Clinton's vice president, in the 1990s.
"Trump wasn't happy about the defeat of either Bolsonaro," he continues, "and he doesn't feel warmly toward Lula. So relations will remain cool at best." Flavio Bolsonaro is under investigation in Brazil for alleged corruption and money laundering. After losing the election, he fled the country for Florida.
The US State Department granted him and his family entry visas in spite of the pending legal action. Bolsonaro has refused to concede defeat. Instead, he claims there were irregularities in the vote.
This is very reminiscent of Trump, who continues to claim – falsely – that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party "stole" the US election in 2020. Trump's comments on Bolsonaro's defeat sounded very familiar. "It looked like another rigged election, frankly," the US president said on Monday.
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