A jet carrying the Brazilian far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro has landed in Miami, Florida, where the losing candidate in Sunday’s presidential election runoff left the airport under police escort without speaking to the press. The Gulfstream IV, registered as LV-JQW, left Guayaquil in Ecuador earlier in the day. After losing Sunday’s election to the incumbent president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro disappeared for more than 24 hours, until Argentina’s migration authorities said he had entered the country by land on Tuesday night.
There, he boarded the Gulfstream IV. The aircraft had been parked at Puerto Iguazú airport since the early hours of the previous morning, when the first reports emerged in Argentinian media that he intended to flee on it. Bolsonaro, the son of the jailed former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, boarded the jet with his wife and two daughters at about 11.30pm, bound for Guayaquil, reportedly to avoid Brazilian airspace.
They made a brief stop in Ecuador and continued on to Miami-Opa Locka executive airport. Bolsonaro and his family got off the plane and briefly remained inside the airport. Then he emerged, shielded by black umbrellas, climbed alone into a dark gray Ford Expedition MAX and sped away under police escort.
He said nothing before boarding the vehicle. He is expected to hold a press conference in the US today or tomorrow. He A senior US state department official told media outlets that visas would be granted to Bolsonaro and his family, and on Tuesday night Donald Trump said he would approve their move to the country.
The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible,” Trump said as he returned from a campaign event in Texas. I know Flávio a little bit. I know the father very well.” Lula called Bolsonaro’s flight “shameful”.
Brazil is their second homeland. Their first homeland is licking the boots of the US, as they’ve become accustomed to doing,” he said at an event celebrating his 81st birthday in Brasília. Some in the Brazilian government suspected Bolsonaro allies had spent Tuesday privately telling the press he was already on his way to the US to distract from his real plan to go through Argentina.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
