Jair Bolsonaro grimaces after he was stabbed in the abdomen during a campaign rally.Raysa Leite/AP
It didn’t take long for the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania to galvanize right-wing politicians and supporters of former far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. About a month before the election in 2018, Bolsonaro, then the frontrunner, was stabbed on the campaign trail. While Trump seems to have recovered from the shot in the ear, his Brazilian counterpart had to undergo a colostomy and several abdominal surgeries in the aftermath of the stabbing.
The incident with Bolsonaro has lessons for how the attempted assassination of Trump could affect this year’s US election. In Brazil afterward, false theories spread—both on the left and the right—of either a staged attack or a purposeful attempt to kill a dangerous threat to the establishment. Critics softened rheotric. Right-wing actors blamed the media for instigating the attack. And the discussion about Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic politics became notably more complex.
After the Trump news, Brazilians on the right were quick to see the similarities and decried the shooting as part of a systematic persecution against conservatives.
On X, Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman and the third son of the one-time Brazilian president, shared a photo montage of a bloodied Trump and a pained Bolsonaro. “Trust me: he is already elected,” he wrote in English. “We have experience with a situation like that, we know the enemy—and you too.”
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son, also chimed in, blaming the left: “They tried to kill Trump, they tried to kill Bolsonaro, but the (extreme) right is the one accused of being violent. You may not like Trump or Bolsonaro, but ask yourself: why did they want to kill them?” A debunked video dubbed in Portuguese with a supposed message from Trump to Bolsonaro said, “They tried to do the same thing to me as they did to you.”
When asked about the shooting, Bolsonaro suggested “only conservatives suffer attacks.” Echoing talking points from some US Christian Nationalist groups, Bolsonaro said it was “a miracle from heaven” that Trump “was saved by a matter of a few centimeters,” just like it was a miracle that he survived in 2018. Calling the Republican nominee the “biggest world leader of the moment,” Bolsonaro, who has been barred from running for office until 2030, posted, “See you at the inauguration.”
Earlier this year, the police confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport as part of a sweeping search-and-seizure operation linked to an ongoing federal investigation in Brazil—overseen by the Supreme Court—into Bolsonaro and his allies’ alleged coup-like efforts to overturn the results of the 2022 elections. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned the attack as a loss for democracy.
“All Brazilians instantly thought of the knife attack that propelled Bolsonaro to victory in 2018.”
As my colleague David Corn wrote the shooting has triggered claims that Democrats and President Joe Biden are to blame for political violence, with GOP Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia going so far as to say that Biden should be charged with “inciting an assassination.” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s pick for vice president, said the Biden campaign’s rhetoric that Trump is “an authoritarian fascist” led to the attempted assassination. (There have been no reports indicating the motive of the shooter at the Pennsylvania Trump rally. In a statement, President Biden said, “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America.”)
The shooting also resurfaced false theories, from both sides of the political spectrum, about the attack against Bolsonaro six years ago. In September 2018, Adélio Bispo, who had previously been a member of a left-wing party, stabbed Bolsonaro in the abdomen. Although police investigations concluded that the perpetrator, who was arrested on the spot, acted alone, Bolsonaro and his supporters insisted that the stabbing had been ordered by someone and tried to blame it on the left. At the time, Bolsonaro called the left “aggressive,” saying they “have tried to eliminate their opponents no matter how.” His supporters have continued to use the stabbing to cultivate an image of Bolsonaro as a “political martyr.”
Meanwhile, some on the left raised doubts about the incident, suggesting it had been staged and calling it a “fake stabbing.” After Saturday, André Janones, one of Lula’s allies in Congress, joked about Bolsonaro having “taught” Trump how to fake an attack and questioned the seriousness of the attempted assassination, mentioning the fact that Trump asked for his shoes amidst the chaos. “At least this time they remembered to provide the ‘blood,'” he posted on X. In response, a far-right congressman aligned with Bolsonaro has vowed to send a letter to the US Embassy requesting the cancelation of Janones’ US visa.
The impact of the assassination attempt against Trump on the presidential race remains to be seen. But there could be hints in what happened with Bolsonaro. Some political analysts in Brazil believe that staying away from the public stage during recovery ultimately helped the far-right Brazilian candidate insulate himself from fiercer criticism and potential debate confrontations. A voter intention poll by the Economist from that time shows a rise in support for Bolsonaro and a decline for the opponent Fernando Haddad, from the Worker’s Party, after September.
Some say Saturday’s shooting could have a similar effect on Trump. “All Brazilians instantly thought of the knife attack that propelled Bolsonaro to victory in 2018,” historian Thiago Krause said. “This is going to give Trump a major boost and it will further radicalize his base.”
The shooting also seems to be renewing the Brazilian far-right’s victimhood narrative as they reel from the electoral loss and Bolsonaro’s mounting legal troubles. What many experts do seem to agree on is the real threat of escalating political violence leading up to elections, in both Brazil and the United States.
