Michelle Bolsonaro sits next to a golden sculpture of a hand that says “I love you.” Looking directly at the camera, the wife of former president Jair Bolsonaro He proceeds to harshly criticize his son. Flávio Bolsonaro is running for president of Brazil, in part to secure the release of his father, an ally of President Donald Trump. Michelle Bolsonaro, who has led the women’s wing of her right-wing party, has spent the last year recruiting and training conservative Christian women for political leadership.
But now, in a professionally produced video released last week, the 44-year-old former first lady described a phone call in which she said her 45-year-old stepson, Flávio, had humiliated her. “He was very hard on me, he disrespected me and mistreated me,” she says. He told him to stay out of the party’s decisions, he says, because “he didn’t understand anything about politics.”
“After that humiliation,” he concludes, “I understood that he didn’t want my support.” The family drama, which occurs just over three months before the presidential elections, represents the latest challenge for the campaign of Flávio for overthrowing the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In a close race, evangelicals and women—voters with whom Michelle has great influence—could prove decisive. At a time when right-wing politicians are on the rise throughout Latin America, Trump has made his preference clear.
In early June, she hosted Flávio at the White House for a visit to the Oval Office and subsequently posted photos of the two, referring to him as: “An intelligent young man who He loves his country, Brazil, very much!“Michelle posted the video as Brazil prepared to play Scotland in the World Cup. Flávio initially tried to play it down. “It’s match day,” he said in a video posted on social media. “Nothing and no one” would ruin his good mood. The next day, he stated that he had never intended to disrespect Michelle.
“If I did it, I apologize,” he said in another video. Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a military coup after losing the 2022 elections to Lula, has not yet spoken publicly. It was Jair who chose Flávio andlast year to challenge Lulaafter some proposed Michelle’s candidacy. For Flávio, Michelle’s video comes at an already difficult time.
He has been trying to recover from revelations that he solicited millions of dollars from a banker accused of orchestrating one of Brazil’s biggest financial frauds to finance a film about Jair. At the beginning of the campaign, Flávio was practically tied in the polls with Lula. After Intercept Brazil published recordings of the exchange in May, it fell between four and seven percentage points. More recently, its decline appeared to have stabilized in this highly polarized country.
Women, who make up the majority of the Brazilian electorate and among evangelicals, were crucial to Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018, but they swung toward Lula in 2022. Both campaigns consider these groups key to winning the October elections. Michelle, an evangelical Christian, has helped the Bolsonaros connect with them. Her campaign to promote conservative women in politics is expected to have helped elect a record number of them to Congress.
Rumors of tension between the former presidential family are not new. But Michelle’s video is the first time she has laid out the dispute in such detail, using archival footage, graphics and a script. Flávio’s allies are increasingly concerned that Michelle’s public rebuke could become a decisive setback for his candidacy before the campaign officially begins in August.
“If we do not reach an agreement, we will lose the elections and Jair Bolsonaro will be the one who pays the consequences,” declared Valdemar Costa Neto, president of her party, to Rádio Gaúcha. Some are urging Flávio to announce a vice presidential candidate to stem the loss of support among women and evangelical voters. Michelle’s supporters claim that this episode has revealed her political strength and should reaffirm her as one of the most important voices within her husband’s movement.
On Tuesday, she resigned from her position as leader of the women’s wing. “My priority now is to take care of my family and my husband, who needs me,” she said in the video. “My political future is in God’s hands. He will provide everything.”