A 'president-elect' for under an hour

The Flávio Bolsonaro president-elect claim was brief. Forty-eight hours after losing the presidential election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by 4.4m votes, Bolsonaro flew to Miami, and after landing in the United States on Wednesday he published a letter declaring himself 'the true president-elect of Brazil' alongside unsubstantiated claims about election fraud - a text reportedly drafted with help from ChatGPT.

The proclamation survived less than sixty minutes. A corrected version was issued just under an hour later, altering his claimed status to 'leader of Brazil'. The correction came, reportedly, after Bolsonaro was upbraided by Trump administration officials keen to avoid a full-blown diplomatic split with Brazil's actual leaders.

The retreat set him against the tide of international recognition: rightwing leaders around the world, including El Salvador's Nayib Bukele and Italy's Giorgia Meloni, accepted Lula's victory, as did Bolsonaro's own party and many key allies.

A letterhead from 1967 and exile heroes

The rewriting went beyond his title. The original letterhead carried a Brazilian coat of arms naming the 'United States of Brazil' - a name the country has not used since 1967. The amended letter fixed that too.

Bolsonaro also used the letter to liken himself to historical exiles: Charles de Gaulle, the Cuban independence hero José Martí, María Corina Machado and Rui Barbosa, saying he would lead the opposition from abroad.

Brazilian press and allies turn on the Bolsonaros

The Brazilian press reaction was scathing, and it came from papers and commentators far beyond the left.

• •Estado de São Paulo's leader writers opened with: 'Flávio's letter isn't worth the ink of this newspaper, but there's no way the embarrassment can be ignored.'
• •The same paper wrote that Flávio's foolishness 'liberated the democratic right from a family of coup-mongers'.
• •Estado de São Paulo went on to call Bolsonaro 'a con artist of the highest order', predicted he would vanish into 'the basement of political irrelevance', and urged conservatives to ditch him and throw their weight behind his ally Tarcísio de Freitas, the São Paulo governor.
• •O Globo described Bolsonaro's decision to abscond as 'shameful and sneaky' and said it laid bare the 'pathetic' nature of Bolsonarismo, his political movement.
• •O Globo's conservative columnist Merval Pereira called Bolsonaro 'a madhouse Napoleon'.
• •Folha de São Paulo said the episode exposed the true nature of the 'authoritarian, ignorant, incompetent' Bolsonaro family.
• •Veja columnist José Casado wrote that 'the comedy storyline has already guaranteed him a spot in the pages of political satire.'

That was how the political commentator Flávia Oliveira summed up the letter on GloboNews.

Even allies weighed in. The televangelist Silas Malafaia, who is close to Bolsonaro's jailed father Jair Bolsonaro, was quoted saying: 'Bolsonaro's kids are jackasses … A bunch of amateur morons.'

Memes and what comes next

On social media the episode was treated as comedy. One meme invited supporters to attend his January inauguration - at Cinderella Castle in Walt Disney World, Orlando. Another reworked the movement's slogan 'God, Homeland and Family' into 'Goodbye, Homeland and Family'.

Celso Amorim, Lula's chief foreign policy adviser, declared Bolsonarismo defeated once and for all, calling the result 'the last gasp of a radical, irrational, lying rightwing'.

• •Donald Trump has declined to publicly recognise the result, calling the election 'a very great embarrassment to the people of Brazil', and said 'I won't get involved' when asked if Bolsonaro was Brazil's rightful leader.
• •A US diplomatic cable obtained by Folha de São Paulo, however, called Lula's victory 'surprising but definitive'.

Some observers believe Bolsonarismo will remain a powerful political force, even if the Bolsonaro family's leadership of the far-right movement is now in doubt.