Brazilian Senator and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro met privately with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, roughly a month after Trump met with socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom Bolsonaro is challenging in the upcoming election.
President Trump privately met with Sen. Bolsonaro; his younger brother, former lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro; and Brazilian journalist Paulo Figueiredo. According to Figueiredo, the meeting lasted over an hour.
Flávio Bolsonaro is the oldest son of conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is presently under strict house arrest serving a 27-year prison sentence for “crimes against democracy.” The Rio de Janeiro senator is running for president in the October 2026 elections — a decision he made in December, months after his father was imprisoned and banned from running for office until 2060.
Speaking to reporters in Washington after the meeting, Sen. Bolsonaro disclosed that the main subject of his meeting with Trump was to request that the United States designate the highly dangerous Brazilian gangs Primeiro Comando da Capital (“First Capital Command,” or PCC) and Comando Vermelho (“Red Command”) foreign terrorist organizations. Bolsonaro emphasized the two criminal organizations operate in dozens of countries “with tentacles that directly affect the United States and the rest of the hemisphere.” As such, he argued, fighting the PCC and Red Command is a shared interest of both nations.
“While Lula came to the White House to lobby on behalf of drug traffickers, I came to do exactly the opposite: to emphatically ask President Trump to designate the PCC and Comando Vermelho as foreign terrorist organizations as soon as possible,” Sen. Bolsonaro told reporters. “And they are, indeed, terrorist organizations.”
He added:
They control entire territories in Brazil by force. They subject populations to their own code and their own law, their own parallel justice system. They execute anyone who dares to resist; they corrupt public officials, infiltrate institutions, intimidate witnesses, and order attacks inside prisons.
A prospective terrorist designation of the two gangs was reportedly one of the subjects that the government of Socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opposed in the days leading up to Lula’s April meeting with Trump. Brazilian government officials have reportedly argued that the designation could potentially translate to American sanctions on Brazilian financial institutions “indirectly” related to both gangs and “potential U.S. military operations” in Brazilian territory. Bolsonaro reportedly said that Trump told him he would “analyze” designating both gangs terrorist organizations.
Sen. Bolsonaro also detailed that he discussed tariffs and rare earth minerals with President Trump and affirmed that, if elected, he will have Brazil join the Shield of the Americas regional security initiative in January 2027, when the winner of the October election is slated to take office. Bolsonaro emphasized that Brazil’s place is alongside the regional countries that form part of the initiative, forming “a major hemispheric alliance against organized crime, transnational crime, and terrorism.”
Former lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, who accompanied his brother to the meeting, reportedly confided to UOL that President Trump started the conversation by asking about former President Jair Bolsonaro’s health. The elder Bolsonaro, who faces a litany of health conditions and complications, was finally granted house arrest in March after he contracted bacterial pneumonia in both of his lungs while in prison.
Eduardo Bolsonaro has resided in the United States since 2025 after he requested political asylum on the grounds that he was the target of a persecution campaign led by Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
“It’s hard to pinpoint the exact duration of the meeting, but it was longer than I expected. The guy is in the middle of a deal with Iran, worried about Cuba, having to manage Venezuela, and keeping an eye on the November congressional election,” Eduardo Bolsonaro told UOL.
The Brazilian outlet Poder 360 reported that allies of President Lula da Silva criticized Senator Bolsonaro’s meeting with Trump, accusing the senator and presidential candidate of allegedly using the encounter as a “smokescreen” to redirect attention away from a recent scandal involving him and former banker Daniel Vorcaro over the funding for Dark Horse, an upcoming biographical drama film based on Jair Bolsonaro’s political career in which actor Jim Caviezel portrays the conservative former president.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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