On Wednesday evening, conservative businesspeople, digital influencers, and US government officials flocked to the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, for the Latino Wall Street-organized inaugural Hispanic Heritage Gala. The event’s guest of honor was Javier Milei, the far-right president of Argentina, who has been described as “Trump’s doppelgänger” and a “proxy” for the US leader in Latin America. But that evening, all eyes were on another politician: Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and brother of presidential contender Flávio Bolsonaro.
Attendees in sparkling gowns and tuxedos swarmed to Eduardo for selfies and handshakes. Many asked after his 71-year-old father, whose health issues have allowed him to serve a 27-year sentence for attempted coup at home. Others gushed over his brother Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead in the first round of a close presidential race against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He talked to MAGA media (including the boxer-turned-LindellTV White House correspondent Cara Castronuova) and posed alongside Javier Negre, a controversial Spanish communicator dubbed the “King Midas of virality” for right-wing propaganda. At one point, a woman approached to pray with him for Brazil.
Eduardo is more than a cheerleader for his would-be presidential sibling; he is poised to become the next foreign minister of Brazil in a potential Flávio Bolsonaro government. Since moving to the United States in early 2025, the younger Bolsonaro has lost his congressional seat for missing more than 80 percent of sessions and a job as a federal police investigator for “abandoning his post.” Last week, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued a warrant for his arrest after he was sentenced to more than four years in prison for trying to interfere with his father’s criminal case by lobbying the Trump administration. But in the MAGA world, Eduardo is a star—and his brother’s ascent to power is a fait accompli.
“We’re going to kick out the communist dictator in Brazil and we’ll paint the continent blue,” Milei roared after warmly hugging Eduardo, who threw kicks in the air. Conservatives, he said, “cannot give an inch in our reconquest of the hemisphere.” Eduardo cautioned that the election results weren’t final yet, but the tone was openly celebratory. “When we confirm the victory of my brother Senator Flávio Bolsonaro as president of Brazil,” he said in a speech that followed Milei’s, “we’re going to achieve a new, what I call, the Golden Era of Latin America.”
The optimism in the room wasn’t unjustified. Flávio came out ahead of Lula following the first round of voting, albeit by a small margin, and the election of conservative candidates to Congress all but guarantees that the legislature will move further to the right. The presidential race will be decided in a runoff on October 25. A Bolsonaro win would bring Brazil—Latin America’s largest economy and a coveted prize for its wealth of rare earths—back into the fold of populist right-wing leaders ideologically aligned with Trump, sealing the “orange wave” that has swept a region the American president sees as his sphere of influence. “We have everything to be just like the US,” Eduardo said.
The former lawmaker has used his ties to Trump’s circle to court the White House to impose tariffs on Brazil and sanctions on judicial authorities like Moraes while making the case for his father’s freedom. Trump heeded the call, linking a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods announced last year to a “witch hunt” trial against Jair Bolsonaro and accusing Brazil’s government officials of “persecuting” the former president. In May, a couple of days after Eduardo and Flávio Bolsonaro met with Trump, the US government designated two criminal groups active in Brazil as terrorist organizations.
If Flávio Bolsonaro’s victory materializes, Brazil is expected to join the Shield of the Americas coalition. Despite his alleged connections to militia groups in Rio de Janeiro, Flávio has positioned himself as a tough-on-crime candidate, invoking the brutal regime of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador as an example to be followed. Flávio and Eduardo have visited CECOT, the mega prison where migrants sent by the Trump administration reported being tortured. At the gala, Eduardo name-checked Bukele and praised Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella, who calls himself “El Tigre,” for posing in front of body bags.
“Everybody who gives a hard time to the criminals, we love,” he remarked, adding that “for the first time we’re going to see all the countries [in Latin America] fighting narcoterrorism.” The audience approved. One real estate entrepreneur who does business in Honduras told me he found the speech “inspirational” and that Brazil should implement the “Bukele model.” As speakers on stage talked about getting rid of crime and defeating socialism, guests who paid between $3,000 and $10,000 to be there enjoyed wagyu meatballs, smoked duck with blackberries, grilled stuffed avocado, and smoked beef tenderloin. “The best is yet to come,” Eduardo declared, vowing to free Brazil, starting with his father.
The Brazilian elections have raised the specter of outside influence, with the country’s intelligence agency warning of risk of US interference in light of the Trump administration’s priority of reaffirming its hegemony in Latin America. Earlier this year, the Brazilian government denied visas to two senior State Department officials whose visit was intended to cast doubt on Brazil’s voting system ahead of the election. Several Democrats have accused the Trump administration of “acting as an agent of interference and destabilization,” citing a “troubling pattern of interference” in electoral processes in Argentina, Honduras, and Colombia. Trump, experts have observed, is playing “kingmaker” in the region. (The event’s organizers lamented that Trump couldn’t be there because he was in Alaska campaigning ahead of the midterms. But after several minutes of audio issues, they showed a recorded message from the president urging US voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot and get out to vote.)
Speaking to reporters before the gala, Eduardo dismissed concerns that the United States is meddling in Brazil’s elections, repeating unfounded claims that, during the Biden administration, USAID funded NGOs and the media to prevent the re-election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2022 under the guise of fighting disinformation.
“Brazil has already suffered international interference,” he said. “What I see now is the opposite.” First order of business would be to “purge this cancer called Alexandre de Moraes from the Supreme Court,” Eduardo said, calling the justice a “tyrant.” Otherwise, he added, his brother wouldn’t be able to govern. When asked if he had plans to return to Brazil, he said he wouldn’t want to go to jail, “being innocent.”
Eduardo moved around the ballroom shadowed by far-right blogger Allan dos Santos, a close Bolsonaro ally and self-described “most persecuted journalist in the world.” Dos Santos, who lives in the United States, is considered a fugitive from Brazilian justice in the context of probes into the dissemination of fake news and creation of digital militias. A fixture of US conservative events, Eduardo rubbed elbows with an Italian influencer who supports Germany’s far-right AfD party and schmoozed with CPAC chair Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes. She gave the Bolsonaros a shoutout in her speech, predicting Flávio would be elected president of Brazil. “We got Latin America back on track,” she said.
Towards the end of the evening, as guests danced to La Bamba, Conga, and the Macarena, I chatted with Lena Ruseva, who wore a long red dress with Trump’s face on it and the words “drill, baby, drill.” Calling herself an “America First Artist,” Ruseva said Milei had liked the portrait she did of him for the occasion so much that he wanted it for himself. She took similar pride in the painting she said she gave President Trump for one of his birthdays. Some of her work was displayed around the ballroom for auction, with bids starting at $10,000. Among them was a depiction of the American flag with the outline of Latin America on it.
Eduardo Bolsonaro signed the piece in golden letters. “I told him I was going to keep it until he became the next president of Brazil,” she said.
This article was published in partnership with Agência Pública.