Brazil’s election delivered a stunning victory for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a familiar spectacle from the American right. Faced with defeat for Flávio Bolsonaro, conservative officials and commentators quickly reached for baseless claims that the contest was rigged.

The result was also a blow to President Donald Trump, described as a friend of authoritarian strongmen and a longtime ally of Bolsonaro and his family. Trump had not responded to Bolsonaro’s loss, but prominent voices in his political orbit wasted little time melting down.

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser turned election denier, posted a chart on X showing Lula overtaking Bolsonaro as votes were counted. “Is Brazil turning into a Banana Republic?” Flynn wrote before asking, “What does this remind you of?”

Far right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones offered essentially the same script. “Where have we seen this same pattern?” Jones asked, adding, “Ahh yes, 2020 …”

Lula won 51.8% of Sunday’s second round vote, while Bolsonaro received 48.2%. The margin was almost 4.4 million votes, making the cries of fraud look less like an argument and more like the usual refusal to accept an unwelcome result.

The victory represented a remarkable turnaround from the first round, when Lula lost to Bolsonaro by 2 percentage points. Never before had a Brazilian candidate recovered from a first round loss to win the second round.

Bolsonaro refused to concede the upset and asked election officials to annul the results. He also called the extension of voting hours a “dirty trick,” even though both campaigns had requested the extension after weather and transportation problems.

Trump did not explicitly endorse Bolsonaro during the election, despite his longstanding relationship with the family. Bolsonaro’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is currently imprisoned for attempting a coup.

Donald Trump Jr. focused his complaints on the extended voting hours. “If a conservative government in Brazil did this, everyone in the mainstream press in America would lose their minds,” he wrote on X. “But I guess they’re just choosing to be silent because it’s all for the cause.”

Mike Benz, a former vlogger who praised Hitler and now enjoys special access to the State Department, also seized on the voting extension. He suggested it had “just stacked the 2026 vote for Lula” and claimed it was the work of a Brazilian court installed by USAID.

USAID, the humanitarian and development agency, sits at the center of many of Benz’s conspiracy theories. The source also described Benz as someone who helped dismantle the agency.

Mike Cernovich, a pickup artist turned conservative commentator, directly urged the State Department to intervene. “Don’t be cucks,” he wrote on X. “The election was rigged and it must be done again, the legal way.”

Some demands went considerably further than insisting on a new vote. One far right influencer wrote, “It’s time for President Trump to send in a team for Lula,” referring to Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and capture of its president.

Jones similarly called for “Lula to get the Nicolás Maduro Treatment.” The reaction showed some of the loudest figures on the American right calling not merely for scrutiny, but for direct United States involvement in Brazil.

The defeated Bolsonaro family also appeared to be seeking more direct help. Eduardo Bolsonaro, Flávio’s brother, lives in Texas and was sentenced in Brazil to more than four years in jail for lobbying the Trump administration to interfere in his father’s trial.

“This is a message to you: Do not recognize this election because even more other facts are coming up right now,” Eduardo said. “We need to cancel this election. It was clearly fraudulent, but we need international pressure. We need you to share this video, make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”

Eduardo’s evidence was hardly overwhelming. In a video posted to X, he strangely pointed to early Polymarket predictions as proof of the alleged fraud, while Lula’s nearly 4.4 million vote margin stood as the actual election result.