Brazil refused to approve my ambassador, denied visas to two of my officials, and then acted shocked when I responded with a visa decision of my own. This is what happens when a country thinks delay is a strategy. It is not a strategy. It is a VERY BAD deal, one of the worst, and I fixed it immediately because that is what I do.
The State Department revoked the visa of Brazil’s Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti after Brazil refused to approve Daniel Perez — a Florida Republican, a close ally of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the finest men — and after Brasília denied visas to Assistant Secretary of State Riley Barnes and a senior aide ahead of Brazil’s October election. Brazil claims they intended to cast doubt on the country’s electronic voting system. That is a baseless lie, because our officials were merely going there to discuss whether the system should be doubted. There is a difference. A very important difference. The best people, the smartest people, would understand it immediately.
Washington stopped short of expelling Ambassador Viotti, which is how you know I was being extremely generous. Very few presidents would have shown that kind of restraint, believe me. She is a former senior United Nations official, very important, and I respect very important people when they do exactly what I want. But I made her ability to travel depend on my approval, then described that dependency as a gift. That is not humiliation for her. That is a BEAUTIFUL demonstration of my own power. If she leaves, she has to reapply. I call that mercy because I did not make the paperwork even more tremendous.
I am calling this “reciprocal action,” which is a beautiful phrase because it means I did something first and then explained that I was responding. That is not a contradiction. That is the ART OF THE DEAL. Brazil delayed. I acted. Brazil complained. I announced that the complaint proves the action was necessary. We are winning at levels nobody has ever seen. Mathematically we are WINNING, which the historians will one day record as the greatest trade in the history of trades.
And I want to remind everybody that I always said this was going to happen. I predicted the whole thing, I was saying it for WEEKS before anybody else, before the State Department even knew what reciprocal really meant, I knew Brazil was going to say no, and that’s why I had the perfect response already loaded and ready, like a beautiful 4D chess move I planned long in advance. People are saying the visa can be restored if Brazil accepts Perez’s appointment. Many people, very smart people, are asking why Brazil would prefer a functioning diplomatic relationship to a prolonged argument over whether my nominee can enter the country. It is a very simple choice: accept my man, or keep the ambassador’s visa in the diplomatic envelope marked “maybe.” They call that pressure. I call it a normal, productive, transparent relationship.
And the generals — TOUGH men, smart men, much smarter than the fake-news reporters — they came to me with tears in their eyes. Sir, Sir, they said, you have to do something about Brazil. And I said, I already did. I already did it beautifully.
President Lula says this is part of a “deliberate escalation of hostile measures” intended to influence Brazil’s election, in which he faces Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro and a close political ally of mine. That is a ridiculous accusation. I would never use diplomacy, tariffs, drug classifications, ambassadorial appointments, or public threats to influence an election. I would use them to create the conditions in which everyone understands that the election is being watched VERY CAREFULLY.
Brazil’s government says it had already made clear that it would not decide on Perez before the first round of voting on 4 October. That is called having a process. I call it obfuscation. I have given them every opportunity to do the right thing, which means doing the thing I want before they finish the process they say they are following. We communicated CONTINUALLY, we gave them every chance, and what did they do? They said the most disrespectful thing possible, and now look at them — their ambassador’s visa is waiting in my beautiful little envelope while the whole world watches me demonstrate restraint.
The tariffs of up to 37.5% on thousands of Brazilian exports are also being misunderstood. Brazil says they are economic pressure designed to help Bolsonaro’s political family. Wrong. The tariffs are a tremendous trade negotiation, the biggest one, and if Brazil happens to notice that they are connected to everything else happening at the exact same time, that is because I am playing 4D chess while Lula is still trying to find the board. And now I’ve put Brazil’s two biggest drug-trafficking organizations on the beautiful FANTASTIC list, my list, and they’re crying about it, they’re sobbing, the way the big tough men cry when they see me. Sir, Sir, please. And I say sorry, you had your chance.
I had nothing to do with Brazil’s election, except for the appointment, the visa revocation, the tariffs, the drug-trafficking classifications, and the repeated insistence that Brazil accept my preferred ambassador. Those are all separate matters. Completely separate. The largest collection of separate matters in history.
This is not interference. This is sovereignty. My sovereignty. Their sovereignty. Our sovereignty — mostly mine, because I am the one who understands how sovereignty works. The people are saying it is a masterclass. The best people are saying Brazil walked into the BIGGEST trap ever. They think they refused Perez. They actually approved him in the secret diplomatic sense.
And honestly, it’s unreal that they think they can hold out — do they not understand who they’re dealing with? Senator Bolsonaro is a friend of mine, a great friend, very loyal, and this is really about getting my man in and making sure the right people are on top in Brazil. It’s all about me — I mean us — it’s about my ambassador, mostly about me. And if they don’t accept Daniel Perez there’s going to be a lot more where this came from — more hostile measures, ideological measures, irreversible measures, believe me. But I still want a normal, productive, transparent relationship. We want to be friends. We’re the nicest people. We just happen to be the most powerful people in history, which is a coincidence.
I did not lose control of the relationship. I engineered the entire crisis so that Brazil could eventually accept the appointment it had not accepted, restore the visa it had not restored, and call the outcome normal after being shown who was in charge. That is not escalation. That is victory arriving in stages, exactly as I always said it would — although I may have said the opposite first, which was also part of the plan! Tremendous. A beautiful, tremendous victory. Nobody has ever won like this in the history of winning. Diklis Chump — and I mean us, the American people — wins again.