By Gram Slattery and Andrea Shalal
PALM BEACH, Florida, Oct 31 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Saturday evening that defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro can stay in the United States indefinitely.
The comments, made to reporters during a Halloween party at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, suggest that relations between the Western Hemisphere's two largest democracies may remain strained for some time, even as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Brazil's top diplomat earlier in the day.
"He can stay here as long as he wants," Trump said of Bolsonaro, who left Brazil after losing the election to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, despite leading in most opinion polls. "In my opinion, the election was a disgrace."
The Brazilian embassy in Washington did not immediately return a request for comment.
Outside observers described the election as free and fair. Bolsonaro's decision to go to the US followed a ruling by a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to revoke his passport shortly after his loss, as the candidate faces a pair of federal money-laundering probes in Brazil and police there considered him a flight risk.
He was admitted to the United States under humanitarian parole, Reuters has previously reported, a status that typically only lasts for one year.
Rubio had said earlier on Saturday that he spoke with Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira at a Group of 20 meeting in Atlanta, and that they would see each other again in a few weeks.
In comments that had pointed to a potential rapprochement, Rubio told journalists that he and Vieira were expected to see each other again in France at a G7 foreign ministers' summit that will take place next month. Brazil is expected to attend the meeting as an observer, he noted.
A US official and a person familiar with the matter have told Reuters that Trump has no current plans to support the political ambitions of Bolsonaro — who has described himself as Brazil's rightful leader — despite allowing the Brazilian politician into the US. Trump on Saturday said he has no plans to meet with Bolsonaro.
Rubio said on Saturday that the US government "was not involved directly in any of the moves" that led to Bolsonaro's departure from Brazil earlier this week. However, Reuters and several other media outlets have reported that Jason Miller, a White House official, helped arrange Bolsonaro's journey.
Bolsonaro's father, far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, is imprisoned in Brazil for plotting a coup after losing his own re-election bid in 2022. Lula himself spent 17 months in jail in 2018 and 2019 on corruption charges that were later annulled.
(Reporting Gram Slattery in Palm Beach and Andrea Shalal in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru, André Romani in Sao Paulo and Max Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Tom Hogue, Peter Graff, Paul Simao and Lincoln Feast.)
