Jair Messias Bolsonaro (Brazilian Portuguese: [ʒaˈiʁ meˈsi.ɐz bowsoˈnaɾu] ; born 21 March 1955) is a Brazilian politician and former military officer who served as the 38th president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023. He previously served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1991 to 2019.
Born in Glicério, São Paulo, Bolsonaro began serving in the Brazilian Army in 1973 and graduated from the Military Academy of Agulhas Negras in 1977. He attracted publicity in 1986, after he wrote an article for Veja magazine criticizing the low wages of military officers, after which he was arrested and detained for fifteen days. He left the army, and was elected to the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro two years later. In 1990, he was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a representative for the state of Rio de Janeiro. During his 27-year tenure as a congressman, he became known for his national conservatism. Bolsonaro entered the 2018 presidential election, during which he began claiming to support economically liberal and pro-market policies. After surviving an assassination attempt on 6 September, he led in the 7 October first-round results and defeated Fernando Haddad in the 28 October runoff.
Bolsonaro focused on domestic affairs in his first months as president, dealing primarily with the fallout of the 2014 Brazilian economic crisis. The economy recovered slowly, while crime rates fell sharply during the first year. He rolled back protections for Indigenous groups in the Amazon rainforest and facilitated its deforestation. Bolsonaro's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil received significant criticism after he sought to downplay the pandemic and its effects, opposed quarantine measures, and dismissed two health ministers, while the death toll increased rapidly.
A polarizing politician, Bolsonaro has drawn both praise and criticism in Brazil for his views and comments, which have been described as far-right and populist. He is a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, abortion, affirmative action, drug decriminalization, and state secularism. In foreign policy, he has advocated closer relations with Israel and with the United States; later in his presidency, he also made efforts to improve relations with the BRICS countries.
In the 2022 general election Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On 8 January 2023, a mob of Bolsonaro's supporters stormed federal government buildings, calling for a coup d'état. On 30 June, the Superior Electoral Court blocked Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030 for attempting to undermine the validity of the election through his unfounded claims of voter fraud, and for abusing his power by using government communication channels to both promote his campaign and to allege fraud. Testimony from military officials showed that Bolsonaro had planned a self-coup with the military to keep himself in power.
In November 2024, he was indicted by the Federal Police of Brazil of multiple counts related to the planned coup. He was charged in February 2025, and the Supreme Court ruled he must stand trial. On 4 August 2025, he was placed under house arrest for using a mobile phone and accessing social media via his son Eduardo, violating pre-trial rules. His trial began on 2 September; on 11 September he was found guilty by the Supreme Federal Court and sentenced to 27 years and 3 months in prison. On 22 November 2025, Bolsonaro was arrested by the Federal Police after trying to remove his electronic ankle monitor. On 25 November 2025, the Supreme Court rejected his final appeals, declared the case to have reached res judicata and ordered the beginning of the enforcement of the prison sentence. On 24 March 2026, he was granted 90 days of temporary house arrest due to health issues, which was later extended.
Early life
Jair Messias Bolsonaro was born on 21 March 1955 in Glicério, São Paulo, in southeast Brazil, to Percy Geraldo Bolsonaro and Olinda Bonturi. His family is mostly of Italian descent, with German ancestry as well. On his father's side, he is the great-grandson of Italians from Veneto and Calabria. Bolsonaro's paternal grandfather's family comes from Veneto, more precisely Anguillara Veneta, in the province of Padua. His great-grandfather Vittorio Bolzonaro (the surname was originally written with a "z"), was born on 12 April 1878. Vittorio's parents immigrated to Brazil when he was ten, together with his siblings, Giovanna and Tranquillo. His German ancestry came from his father's maternal grandfather, Carl "Carlos" Hintze, born in Hamburg around 1876, who immigrated to Brazil in 1883. His maternal grandparents were born in Lucca, in Tuscany, and went to live in Brazil in the 1890s. On 21 January 2022 his mother, Olinda Bonturi Bolsonaro, died at age 94. His father, Percy Geraldo Bolsonaro, died in 1995.
Bolsonaro spent most of his childhood moving around São Paulo with his family, living in Ribeira, Jundiaí, and Sete Barras, before settling in Eldorado, in the state's southern region, in 1966, where he grew up with his five siblings. His first name is a tribute to Jair da Rosa Pinto, a football player for Palmeiras, with whom he shares a birthday.
Military career
In his final years in high school Bolsonaro was admitted to the Escola Preparatória de Cadetes do Exército (the prep school of the Brazilian Army), which he entered in 1973. In 1974 he went to the Military Academy of Agulhas Negras (Brazil's premier military academy), graduating in 1977 as an artillery officer. He served in the 9th Field Artillery Group, in Nioaque, Mato Grosso do Sul. Later, he studied at the Army Physical Training School in Rio de Janeiro and served in the 21st Field Artillery Group and the 8th Paratrooper Field Artillery Group, from the Paratrooper Brigade, also based in Rio. His superior officers described him as "aggressive" and criticized his "excessive ambition for financial and economic gain". This assessment referred to Bolsonaro's attempt to mine gold in Bahia, though he later claimed the activity was merely a "hobby and mental hygiene".
In 1987 he studied in the Officers Improvement School, where he completed the Artillery Advanced Course. Bolsonaro first caught the public's attention in 1986 when he wrote an article published in the news magazine Veja. He complained about low military salaries and claimed that the High Command was dismissing officers due to budgetary cuts, not because they were displaying "deviations of conduct", as the command had told the press. Despite being reprimanded by his superiors, Bolsonaro received praise from fellow officers and wives of military men, becoming a household name for ]supporters who were growing disenchanted with Brazil's new civilian democratic government.
In October 1987 Bolsonaro faced a new accusation. Veja reported that, with an Army colleague, he had plans to plant bombs in military units in Rio de Janeiro. After Bolsonaro called the allegation "a fantasy", the magazine published, in its next issue, sketches allegedly made by Bolsonaro in which the plan was detailed. Official records unearthed by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in 2018 detailed the case. After an investigation by an administrative military bureau called a Justification Board, Bolsonaro was unanimously found guilty. According to the board, Bolsonaro had a "serious personality deviation and a professional deformation", "lack of moral courage to leave the Army" and "lied throughout the process" when denying frequent contacts with Veja. The Supreme Military Court then analysed the case. The general in charge of reporting the case voted to acquit Bolsonaro, arguing that he had already been penalized for the initial Veja article, that there was no testimonial evidence of his plans to plant bombs, and that there were "deep contradictions in the four graphological exams", two of which failed to conclude that Bolsonaro was the author of the sketches. Bolsonaro was acquitted by the majority of the court (9 v 4 votes). In December 1988, just after this ruling, he left the Army to begin his political career. He served in the military for 15 years, reaching the rank of captain.
Early political career
City councilor in Rio de Janeiro (1989–1991)
Bolsonaro entered politics in 1988, when he was elected to serve as a city councilor in Rio de Janeiro, representing the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). According to the biography by his son Flávio, Bolsonaro "was a candidate for councilor because it happened to be the only option he had at the moment to avoid persecution by some superiors. His entry into politics happened by chance, for his desire was to continue in his military career".
Bolsonaro spent only two years in the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro. He was described as a quiet, discreet and conservative councilor, and showed little participation. His term as councilor was used mainly to give visibility to military causes, such as retirement benefits for former officers.
Federal deputy for Rio de Janeiro (1991–2018)
In the 1990 Brazilian parliamentary election Bolsonaro was elected a federal deputy for the Christian Democratic Party. He served seven consecutive terms, from 1991 to 2018. He was affiliated with several other political parties over the years. In 2014, he was the congressman who gained the most votes in Rio de Janeiro, with 465,000.
Bolsonaro's name was listed on the "Lista de Furnas", a list detailing a corruption and money laundering scheme involving the state-owned electricity company, Eletrobras Furnas. He received housing assistance for deputies who do not have residences in the capital Brasília, despite having an apartment in the southwest of the city. H later admitted that he considers this practice of his "immoral". He has also been accused of engaging in fuel allowance fraud.
In his 27 years of service in the National Congress, Bolsonaro put forward one constitutional amendment and at least 171 bills, two of which became law. Bolsonaro, who claimed to be persecuted by the left-wing parties, said most congressmen do not vote according to their agenda, but "by who the author of the bill is".
In January 2018 he abandoned the Social Christian Party and switched to the Social Liberal Party (PSL). After his arrival, the PSL adopted conservative and right-wing positions, and its social liberal group Livres announced its departure from the PSL.
Presidential campaign (2018)
On 22 July 2018, the PSL nominated Bolsonaro for president in the 2018 election. The Brazilian Labour Renewal Party also endorsed him. His coalition name was "Brazil above everything, God above everyone" (Brasil acima de tudo, Deus acima de todos). Though contested by two lawsuits, the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil deferred them and his candidacy was made official on 6 August. In August Bolsonaro announced that Antônio Hamilton Mourão, a retired army general, would be his running mate.
According to political pundits, Bolsonaro moderated his tone early in the campaign, taking a less aggressive and confrontational style. Economically, he started to support less government intervention in the economy (in contrast to the past, when he defended developmentalist policies). On the other hand, he maintained his tough stance on crime and his defence of "traditional family values". Bolsonaro also said he planned to cut taxes across the board, particularly on inheritances and businesses, to generate growth and tackle unemployment. He also promised more austerity measures and cuts in government spending, but had difficulty naming the areas where he would make cuts. He also said he would work to diminish the federal government's size and bureaucracy by enacting a wide variety of deregulation measures. Bolsonaro's promises to restore security amid record high crime and to stamp out Brazil's rampant political corruption won him huge popular support. In October, he announced he would name Paulo Guedes, a liberal economist, as his finance minister.
On 9 August 2018 Bolsonaro attended the first presidential debate of the year, organized by the TV network Rede Bandeirantes. A week later, there was another debate at RedeTV! On 28 August he gave an interview to Jornal Nacional, Brazil's highest-rated primetime news programme, at Rede Globo. Bolsonaro was the first presidential candidate to raise over R$1 million in donations from the public during the 2018 campaign. In the first 59 days, he amassed an average of R$17,000 per day.
After the Workers' Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was arrested in April 2018, Bolsonaro became the frontrunner according to all major opinion polls. A Datafolha poll from September showed Bolsonaro as the leading candidate in the first round with 28% of vote intentions, though runoff scenarios showed him losing to Geraldo Alckmin, Fernando Haddad, and Ciro Gomes and tying with Marina Silva. Another Datafolha poll, conducted the week before election day, showed a considerable surge for Bolsonaro, who had 40% of vote intentions, or 36% when null or blank vote intentions were included. Haddad came in second with 25% and Gomes third with 15%.
In the first round of the election, on 7 October 2018, Bolsonaro finished in first place with 46% of the popular vote (49.2 million). Since he failed to win over 50%, he faced the second-place finisher, Haddad, in the second round, held on 28 October 2018. After the first round, when his victory looked certain, Bolsonaro gave a speech by videolink to thousands of supporters who gathered at Paulista Avenue, in São Paulo. In the speech he threatened to arrest, purge, or kill "reds" and "petralhas" (a derogatory term for Workers' Party members), and promised that members of the social movements MST and MTST would be treated as "terrorists". He said: "This time, the clean-up will be even greater. This group ["reds"], if they want to stay, will have to abide by our laws ... These red outlaws will be banned from our homeland. Either they go overseas, or they go to jail ... Petralhada, you all go to the edge of the beach. It will be a cleaning never seen in the history of Brazil". The "edge of the beach", a Bolsonaro aide later confirmed, was a reference to a Navy base at Restinga da Marambaia, in Rio de Janeiro State, where the Brazilian military dictatorship tortured and killed dissidents. The speech was widely condemned by rivals, journalists and politicians.
Bolsonaro won the second round of the election with 55.13% of the votes, and was elected the 38th president of Brazil. He took office on 1 January 2019. During the campaign, academics repeatedly raised concerns about the consequences to Brazilian democracy Bolsonaro's rise will have. In the news magazine Foreign Policy, Federico Finchelstein, a historian at the New School for Social Research who specializes in fascism, wrote, "Bolsonaro's vocabulary recalls the rhetoric behind Nazi policies of persecution and victimization. But does sounding like a Nazi make him a Nazi? Insomuch as he believes in holding elections, he is not there yet. However, things could change quickly if he gains power". Jason Stanley, a philosopher at Yale University who has published widely on Nazism, said that Bolsonaro "uses more tactics associated to fascism than [the] American president Donald Trump". Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, said that Bolsonaro "is clearly authoritarian", but not a fascist. Similar concerns were raised by analysts in Portugal and Brazil. Others, such as the Marxist historian Perry Anderson, dismissed the "fascist" and "populist" labels altogether.
Another highly controversial aspect of the campaign was the alleged use of illegal digital communication strategies by some of Bolsonaro's most important financial supporters. According to an investigation by Folha, one of Brazil's bestselling newspapers, "Bolsonaro has been getting an illegal helping hand from a group of Brazilian entrepreneurs who are bankrolling a campaign to bombard WhatsApp users with fake news about Haddad". The suspicions led to a formal investigation by electoral authorities and the Federal Police; Bolsonaro and allies denied any wrongdoing. Another controversial point was that Taíse Feijó, an adviser in Bolsonaro's government, was among those paid to feed fake news to his supporters.
Attempted assassination
Bolsonaro was stabbed in the abdomen on 6 September 2018 while campaigning and interacting with supporters in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. At first, his son Flávio Bolsonaro stated that his father's wounds were only superficial and he was recovering in the hospital, but he later said the wounds seemed worse than initially thought and his father most likely would not be able to start campaigning personally before the end of the first round. He posted on Twitter about his father's condition, explaining that the perforation had reached parts of the liver, lung, and intestine. He also said that Bolsonaro had lost a large amount of blood, arriving at the hospital with severe hypotension (his blood pressure was 10/3, equivalent to 100/30 mmHg), but that he had since stabilized. The attack was condemned by most of the other candidates in the presidential race, and by President Michel Temer. The day after the attack, Bolsonaro was transferred to the Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in São Paulo, after a request from his family. According to the doctors, he was in an "extremely stable" condition.
Police arrested the attacker and identified him as Adélio Bispo de Oliveira, who, according to security agents, claimed he was on "a mission from God". He had been a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party from 2007 to 2014. His social media posts included political criticisms of both Bolsonaro and Temer. But an initial Federal Police investigation concluded that Adélio had no help from political organizations and acted alone. A medical report produced for a second investigation concluded that Bispo is mentally disturbed, having a "permanent paranoid delusional disorder" which, according to Brazilian law, prevents him from being considered legally liable for his actions. In a May 2019 decision the Federal Court found Bispo not liable. Bolsonaro did not appeal the decision.
On 29 September, a month after the attack, Bolsonaro was released from the hospital and returned to his home in Rio de Janeiro. His condition prevented him from returning to the campaign trail for the remainder of the first round of the presidential election. The first federal police investigation into the attack concluded that the attacker acted alone, but the investigation "leaves out many issues". Bolsonaro said he did not observe "any effort by [the] former minister Sergio Moro to resolve the matter". Joaquim de Carvalho has said that the police left out of their investigation the search for information by a mastermind of the attack or even a self-attack. For this, expert medical examination of Bolsonaro and review of the medical records would be needed.
Personal motto
Bolsonaro's personal motto, which he established in 2016, is John 8:32: "The truth will set you free".
Protests
The same weekend he left the hospital, thousands of people took to the streets in dozens of cities in Brazil to protest against Bolsonaro and his political stances, chanting "Ele não" ("Not him"). There were also rallies in support of the candidate in sixteen states.
Presidency (2019–2023)
Bolsonaro was sworn in as president on 1 January 2019, succeeding Michel Temer. Bolsonaro began to get his cabinet together before his inauguration, choosing the economist Paulo Guedes as his economy minister and the astronaut Marcos Pontes as his science and technology minister. Bolsonaro said his cabinet would have 15 members; in December when he announced Ricardo Salles as a minister, the total was 22. (His predecessor, Michel Temer, had a 29-member cabinet.)
Bolsonaro's initial cabinet was composed of 16 ministers, two cabinet-level positions, and four presidential secretaries, including Chief of Staff Onyx Lorenzoni. Bolsonaro's ministers included Operation Car Wash judge Sergio Moro as Justice Minister and congresswoman Tereza Cristina as Minister of Agriculture. Bolsonaro placed many army officers in key positions in his cabinet. Before his inauguration, he said he would fill positions in his government based only on technical qualifications and skills rather than ideological sympathy; however, many appointees clashed ideologically with the government during his presidency and fell out of favor with Bolsonaro. By June 2020 the ministers of Justice and Education, the Secretary of Government, the head of the postal service and other government officials had already resigned.
Early in his administration, Bolsonaro focused primarily on domestic and economic issues, ranging from tax reform to changes in social security, but he faced an uphill battle with Congress. Bolsonaro stripped the indigenous affairs agency FUNAI of the responsibility to identify and demarcate indigenous lands, arguing that those territories have tiny, isolated populations who would be controlled by NPOs, and proposed to integrate them into the larger Brazilian society. Critics feared that such integration would force Brazilian Amerindians to suffer cultural assimilation. Argentine President Mauricio Macri was the first foreign leader Bolsonaro received on a state visit to Brasília after he became president.
The second inauguration of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela took place nine days after Bolsonaro's inauguration. The disputed results of the 2018 Venezuelan presidential election led to the Venezuelan presidential crisis, as the National Assembly rejected the results, considered Maduro an illegitimate ruler since his first term of office ended, and appointed Juan Guaidó as acting president. Bolsonaro did not attend Maduro's inauguration and recognized Guaidó as the legitimate ruler of Venezuela, alongside Mauricio Macri from Argentina and Donald Trump from the US, among others. He said that "We will continue doing everything possible to re-establish order, democracy and freedom there".
After his first year in power, Bolsonaro's popularity steadily declined. A Datafolha survey, published on 21 May 2019, showed that 28.6% of respondents described Bolsonaro's administration as "excellent" or "good", 31.3% as "average", and 36.2% as "bad" or "terrible"; 3.9% did not respond. This was the first poll in which more Brazilians disapproved of Bolsonaro's government than approved of it. Meanwhile, after allegations of campaign-finance fraud, Bolsonaro fired Gustavo Bebianno, a top adviser and general secretary for the president. The party that they both belonged to was accused of diverting public campaign funds to candidates who did not run for office. In November 2019, Bolsonaro left the Social Liberal Party due to conflicts with its leadership. He attempted to form his own party, Alliance for Brazil (Portuguese: Aliança pelo Brasil), but it failed to gather enough signatures to register at the Superior Electoral Court for the 2020 municipal elections or the 2022 general election, leaving Bolsonaro without a party until 2021.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, Bolsonaro and his administration were accused of downplaying the crisis while the number of Brazilians infected by the virus climbed exponentially by mid-2020. Bolsonaro claimed that COVID-19 was no deadlier than "the flu" and that his priority was the nation's economic recovery rather than the health crisis. In fact, as at early 2021, the Brazilian economy was bouncing back, albeit somewhat slowly and inconsistently, as the pandemic was still threatening to undo any economic recovery. Bolsonaro continually accused political opponents and the press of exaggerating the threat of the virus and called it a "fantasy" created by the media.
In August 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Bolsonaro's approval rating showed signs of recovery, reaching its highest level since his inauguration. In November 2020 he said he would not take a COVID vaccine if it became available, but he later said he would support any possible vaccine if the Brazilian Health Agency deemed it safe. In the same broadcast, he called face masks "the last taboo to fall". In 2020 the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international non-governmental organization that investigates crime and corruption, gave Bolsonaro its Person of the Year Award, which "recognizes the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption". Bolsonaro received the award for "surrounding himself with corrupt figures, using propaganda to promote his populist agenda, undermining the justice system, and waging a destructive war against the Amazon region that has enriched some of the country's worst land owners".
In early 2021 Bolsonaro's approval ratings fell again, mostly due to the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination controversies, and the concurrent economic crisis that evolved under his watch. Days after Brazil surpassed Russia as the country worst hit by COVID, Bolsonaro held a political rally in Brasília; his supporters and his own security guards wore masks, but he did not. In June 2021, nationwide protests erupted against Bolsonaro's response to the pandemic; in São Paulo alone there were estimated to be 100,000 protesters on the streets. In July, YouTube removed videos posted by Bolsonaro for spreading false information about the virus. YouTube has reportedly removed 15 videos altogether; one that was removed had shown Brazil's former health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, comparing the virus to HIV. In other videos, Bolsonaro criticized efforts to stop the spread of the virus, such as wearing masks or taking the vaccine.
By the end of June 2021, more members of the opposition started to call for his impeachment over his handling of the pandemic and spreading misinformation. The opposition signed a document with multiple accusations, such as blaming Bolsonaro for the deaths of 500,000 Brazilians from COVID-19, stating that his government had blatantly turned down expert advice on tackling the virus, and at least 20 other grievances. In July 2021, Bolsonaro claimed on Brazilian radio that his government's greatest achievement was "two and a half years without corruption". In the same month, a scandal dubbed "vaccine-gate" emerged. After months of denying offers of vaccines and bartering the costs, Bolsonaro's government made a deal to buy the unapproved Covaxin vaccine from the Indian company Bharat Biotech at a very high price. It was found that the government paid ten times the amount agreed by Bharat Biotech for the vaccine, and that the irregularities were found not in the price of the vaccine, but in a payment of $45 million to a company in Singapore. In response, the Supreme Court authorized a criminal investigation of Bolsonaro.
In March 2021 Bolsonaro dismissed Fernando Azevedo e Silva as defense minister and replaced him with Walter Souza Braga Netto; like Bolsonaro, Netto lionized the 1964–1985 military dictatorship. The day after Netto was appointed, the leaders of the army, air force, and navy all resigned. In April, Bolsonaro claimed that the Brazilian armed forces would "go into the streets" if he ordered them to. In mid-August, the military conducted a ten-minute tank parade in Brasília, with Bolsonaro in attendance. The parade had been held annually in the last 30 years, but tanks had never been sent to the capital before. The parade was announced only a day in advance, and passed by the national congressional building, where lawmakers were due to vote on Bolsonaro's proposed election-related changes hours later. The lawmakers ultimately rejected the changes.
On 28 July 2021 Bolsonaro appointed Ciro Noguiera, a senator who was implicated in the Odebrecht corruption case, as his chief of staff. In early August 2021, Bolsonaro threatened to respond with unconstitutional measures to an investigation over his baseless allegations of fraud vulnerabilities in Brazil's electronic voting system, because he deemed that investigation unconstitutional. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had approved the investigation. In mid-August 2021 Bolsonaro warned of a potential "institutional rupture", while urging the Senate to charge de Moraes and another Supreme Court Judge, Luis Roberto Barroso, the leader of the electoral court. On 26 October 2021 a Senate committee approved a report calling for Bolsonaro to face criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Without a political party, Bolsonaro began to negotiate his entrance into one in preparation for the 2022 general election (as the 1988 Brazilian Constitution does not allow independent politicians). He negotiated with the Progressistas (PP), of which he was a member from 1995 to 2003 and from 2005 to 2016, and the Social Christian Party (PSC), of which he was a member from 2016 to 2018, the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), Brazilian Woman's Party (PMB), Christian Democracy (DC), Party of National Mobilization (PMN), the Republicans and Patriot (PATRI). On 30 November 2021 Bolsonaro and his son Senator Flávio Bolsonaro joined the Liberal Party (PL). According to political analysts, the choice represented the consolidation of the alliance of Bolsonaro with the Centrão, a large bloc of parties without consistent ideological orientation that supports different sides of the political spectrum to gain political privileges—PL being one of them. Bolsonaro previously made deals with the Centrão for support in Congress. On 23 June 2022 Bolsonaro defended his former education minister, Milton Ribeiro, after the latter was arrested on corruption charges.
2022 presidential election
In the second round of the presidential election on 30 October, Bolsonaro was defeated by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took 50.9% of the votes cast. Lula had won the most votes in the first round of the election on 2 October, receiving 48.43% of the votes cast; Bolsonaro received 43.20%. In a press conference at the Palácio da Alvorada on 1 November, Bolsonaro did not acknowledge his defeat but stated that he would "comply with the Constitution". Regarding the protests by his supporters, he referred to them as "the fruit of indignation and a sense of injustice of how the electoral process unfolded", while calling on them to remain peaceful and not block roads. Shortly after his speech, the Supreme Court stated that by authorizing the transition of power he had recognized the results, paving the way for the transition two days after Lula was recognized as the winner. Bolsonaro left for the United States on 30 December to avoid taking part in the swearing-in ceremony of Lula, leaving Vice President Hamilton Mourão as the acting president.
The documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics (2024) shows how evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia had a defining influence on Bolsonaro, while mustering support from Brazil's evangelical movement, in the path to Bolsonaro losing the election and in the protests and attempted insurrection that followed.
Post-presidency (2023–present)
On 30 December 2022, one day before the end of his term, Bolsonaro arrived in the US state of Florida and resided in Kissimmee for several months. On 8 January 2023 his supporters attacked the buildings of the Supreme Court of Brazil, the National Congress and the Planalto Presidential Palace in an attempt to instigate a military coup d'état and reinstate Bolsonaro as president. While the riots were going on, President Lula blamed Bolsonaro in a press conference. Bolsonaro condemned the protesters in a Twitter post on 9 January, and denied responsibility. In February 2023 Bolsonaro announced that he would be returning to Brazil in March. This would be the first time Bolsonaro had returned to the country since December 2022. Bolsonaro had entered the United States on a diplomatic visa which expired on 31 January, but the family applied for tourist visas to extend their stay in Florida.
Bolsonaro returned to Brazil in March 2023 for the first time since his supporters stormed the Supreme Court, Congress, and the presidential palace two months before. Bolsonaro has stated that he returned to the country to help his party and asserted that he intended to campaign for the 2024 elections. On 14 April 2023, Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to submit himself for questioning with the Federal Police over the storming of the Congress.
In July 2024, the Federal Police charged Jair Bolsonaro with money laundering and criminal conspiracy related to undeclared diamonds that he allegedly received from Saudi Arabia while he was in office.
Ineligibility, charges of coup planning, conviction and return to federal custody
On 30 June 2023, the Superior Electoral Court barred Bolsonaro from running for public office until 2030 as a result of his attempts to undermine the validity of Brazil's 2022 democratic election, as well as for abuse of power with regard to using government channels to promote his campaign. The decision applies to municipal, state and federal elections for the next eight years. He was prosecuted on several fraud charges in the 2022 elections and events linked to the 8 January attack on federal government buildings. The decision came after a 5–2 vote in favour of conviction. Following the decision, Bolsonaro stated his intentions to appeal.