Trump Praises Jair Bolsonaro After He’s Convicted for Plotting a Coup

President Donald Trump was—predictably—dismayed by the news that Brazil’s former right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, had been sentenced to 27 years in prison.

“President Bolsonaro was just found guilty by the Supreme Court [of Brazil]. You’ve been very clear that you would apply further sanctions to Brazil because of Bolsonaro,” a reporter said to Trump on Thursday. 

 “Well, I watched that trial, I know him pretty well. Hard leader … I thought he was a good president of Brazil. And it’s very surprising that that could happen. That’s very much like they tried to do with me, but they couldn’t get away with it, at all,” the president replied. “But uh, I can only say this: I knew him as president of Brazil, he was a good man. And I don’t see that happening.” 

Trump and Bolsonaro share a long-running fondness for authoritarianism that transcends borders, and has led them to become true allies over the years.

On Thursday, Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced the former leader to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup in 2023, or what some see as an attempt to recreate January 6 in Brazil. Bolsonaro had his supporters raid Brazil’s presidential palace, the Supreme Court, and Congress, all because he’d rather see chaos than admit he lost the election to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

The coup attempt caused “damage of an Amazonian scale.” Bolsonaro also planned to have multiple leaders arrested or assassinated. 

The former Brazilian leader’s actions and conviction only endeared him to Trump. In July, the president posted one of his many tariff letters on Truth Social, this one addressed to Brazil. He ordered them to end their “witch hunt” of Bolsonaro “IMMEDIATELY” or be hit with 50 percent tariffs. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also chimed in disapprovingly. 

“The political persecutions by sanctioned human rights abuser Alexandre de Moraes continue, as he and others on Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Rubio wrote Thursday on X. “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.”

 While Brazil’s left is wary of continued, U.S.-backed attempts from Bolsonaro’s party and supporters to free him, they see the conviction as  repudiation of authoritarianism rather than a political persecution. 

“Today, Brazil is making history,” Lindbergh Farias, who heads Lula’s Workers’ Party in the lower house of Brazil’s Congress, said, after Bolsonaro’s sentencing. “Brazil is saying: ‘Coups are a crime!’”

FBI Director Kash Patel’s yapping may have implicated Donald Trump in another legal fiasco.

A lawsuit brought by three senior FBI agents—Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans—accuses Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the agencies they head of wrongfully firing the men.

Driscoll argued that he was fired after he attempted to halt the firing of another FBI employee, Christopher Meyer, who was ordered to pilot Patel’s flights to Las Vegas but had also been falsely accused of signing off on the agency’s 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Driscoll served as acting FBI director at the start of the year—by accident. Robert Kissane was supposed to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray in January, but a clerical error instead placed Driscoll at the top of the FBI. Kissane then acted as Driscoll’s number two—an oversight that wasn’t corrected until the Senate confirmed Patel at the end of February. Driscoll notably refused orders from the White House to expose the bureau staff who were involved in the January 6 probe, earning him the adoration of his colleagues, who nicknamed the 45-year-old “Saint Driz.”

The legal complaint torches Patel’s leadership at the agency from the perspective of the senior agents, accusing the FBI leader of punishing the trio because they attempted to treat other subordinates, such as Meyer, with respect. But the suit also claims that Patel was fully aware of the illegality of his actions as he worked to force them and their peers out the door.

“When Driscoll explained that firing employees based on case assignments would be in direct violation of internal FBI processes meant to adjudicate adverse actions and prevent retaliation based on case assignments, Patel said that he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed,” the complaint reads.

Beyond blatantly violating the law, the statement also stood in direct contrast to what Patel had promised Congress during his confirmation process weeks earlier, when he swore to Senator Richard Blumenthal that all FBI employees would “be protected against political retribution.”

But the phrasing of Patel’s rebuke also implicated Trump, explicitly pointing to the Justice Department and the White House as the origin of the command.

“Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,’” according to the legal filing.

National security journalists were quick to note that Patel’s loose lips might have made it easier for the ex-FBI agents to achieve an incredible feat: getting a U.S. president to sit for a deposition.

FBI Director Kash Patel is hoping to salvage his mishandled manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer.

Speaking at a press conference Friday morning, Patel attempted to take a little credit for a job well done.

“This is what happens when you let good cops be cops,” Patel said. “The FBI and our partners are proud to stand here today together to bring justice to the family of Charlie Kirk.”

But Patel’s manhunt didn’t accomplish much—22-year-old Tyler Robinson was “turned in” by a family member, President Donald Trump claimed Friday morning.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirmed Trump’s statement, telling the Friday morning press conference that a family friend of Robinson’s had contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, after learning from a family member that he’d confessed. “We got him,” Cox said.

Patel viewed this manhunt as an opportunity to prove himself—but he seemed to stumble through it.

On Wednesday, Patel quickly got out over his skis, when he congratulated state and federal officials for taking “the subject for the horrific shooting today” into custody, only to release that suspect hours later.

Patel completely lost it during a meeting Thursday with 200 agents involved in the manhunt, berating them with expletives and accusing them of slowing down the search.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe criticized Patel’s decision to get personally involved in the search, arguing that his presence would impose a “huge burden” on the Salt Lake City field office and that his missteps were either the result of a poor flow of information or Patel’s own utter cluelessness.

Representative Nancy Mace, of all people, is accusing Democrats of derogatory conduct toward Republicans.

In a Friday morning appearance on CNN, Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, attributed the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk to an increase in political violence and divisiveness—problems that she, absurdly, said were confined to the left.

“It’s very one-sided right now,” Mace said. “I have never called one of my colleagues the kind of names that we’ve been called. I’ve never dehumanized my colleagues.”

The claim echoes those of many prominent Republicans who have baselessly blamed the shooting and the nation’s political temperature entirely on the Democratic Party and left generally.

The sentiment was particularly ludicrous coming from Mace, who has a well-documented history of transphobic attacks.

The South Carolina Republican notoriously responded to the election of the first transgender woman in Congress, Democratic Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware, with an outpouring of hate.

In November 2024, Mace spearheaded an effort to ban transgender people from using Capitol bathrooms, which she said was “absolutely” meant to target McBride. Mace referred to McBride as a “biological man,” saying, “It’s offensive that a man in a skirt thinks that he’s my equal.”

When demonstrators protested the ban, she referred to them using the transphobic slur “tranny.” (When confronted for her use of the term in a congressional hearing, she said tauntingly, “Tranny! Tranny! Tranny!”)

Mace’s hostility toward her colleagues doesn’t stop at transphobia. In January, for example, she responded to criticisms from Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett with an apparent threat. “If you want to take it outside,” she said, cutting herself off. She later claimed she hadn’t been suggesting “a physical fight.”

President Donald Trump wants to paint right-wing extremists as vigilante heroes, while demonizing “vicious” radicals on the left.

Speaking on Fox & Friends Friday about Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump admitted that he isn’t all that concerned about right-wing radicals.

“Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical ’cause they don’t want to see crime, they don’t want to see crime,” Trump said. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in, we don’t want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’

“The radicals on the left are the problem,” he continued, “and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

Trump’s blatant effort to defend political violence committed by people he agrees with is not necessarily surprising, given his steadfast support for the rioters at the Capitol on January 6 and accused murderers such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. He also previously defended attendees of the 2021 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which was organized by neo-Nazis.

But Trump’s statement is deeply misleading about the trends in politically motivated violence in the United States. Right-wing attacks and plans accounted for the majority of all terrorist incidents between 1994 and 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Between 1975 and September 2025, individuals motivated by right-wing ideologies such white supremacy, involuntary celibacy, and anti-abortion beliefs committed 391 murders, according to the Cato Institute. Comparatively, people motivated by left-wing ideologies were responsible for 65 deaths.

As recently as this week, a 16-year-old in Colorado who was accused of shooting two of his classmates reportedly embraced antisemitic and white supremacist social media content.

Within hours of Kirk’s death and without knowing any information about the shooter, Trump blamed the “radical left” and their rhetoric for political violence by “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

Meanwhile, Democrats uniformly condemned Kirk’s murder—and right-wing activists were foaming at the mouth for an all-out war.

It seems clear that Trump isn’t interested in turning down the temperature on political tensions in the United States, and he’s just given the go-ahead to right-wing radicals to take matters into their own hands.

Bullet casings engraved by Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer tell a very different story about his political ideologies than previously understood.

Authorities identified the suspect as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah. Robinson reportedly revealed his actions to his family members, who turned him in Friday morning. He has been booked into the Utah County jail, according to Governor Spencer Cox.

During an FBI presser Friday, Cox revealed that police had located four bullet casings connected to Robinson—one fired, three unfired. The text on the fired casing made a possible reference to an old Reddit copypasta, reading: “Notices bulge OWO what’s this?”

The unfired casings featured different scrawls. One read, “Hey fascist! Catch!” Another: “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,” possibly referring to an Italian anti-fascist folk song. The last casing read: “If you read this you are gay LMAO.”

Contrary to prior reporting, none of the text suggested that Robinson was transgender or supported transgender people. But that didn’t stop the transgender community from catching heat: A bulletin circulated among law enforcement officials Thursday suggested that symbols on Robinson’s weapons expressed “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” That detail was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal eventually retracted the premature release, though its correction wasn’t enough to stop MAGA-heads and other far-right personalities from dogpiling on the transgender community in their vengeful grief over Kirk’s murder. In the wake of that reporting, conservatives referred to trans people as a “species” that deserves “no mercy,” calling for them to be “rounded up” and “deported.”

Robinson was registered as a nonpartisan voter. Both of his parents, however, are registered Republicans, according to public records.

Citing one of Robinson’s family members, Cox said at the news conference that the suspect had “become more political in recent years,” particularly about Kirk.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered his own unhinged theory as to who shot Charlie Kirk, asserting without any evidence that the Turning Point USA founder was killed by a team of “radical Islamists and ultra-progressives.”

“This is a worldwide problem. The people on the extremes, the Islamists … the radical Islamists and their union with the ultra-progressives, they often speak about human rights. They speak about free speech. But they use violence to try to take down their enemies,” Netanyahu said on Fox News on Friday. “Whether it’s President Trump, who’s been almost assassinated twice, or they try to kill me here too. But they got Charlie Kirk, and it’s just heartbreaking.”

So, just to be clear: The Israeli Prime Minister decided to appear on American media to assure its audience Israel had absolutely nothing to do with Charlie Kirk’s death but that some anonymous cabal of Muslims and leftists does.

This makes no sense, as no one knows the motive behind Kirk’s killing at this moment, especially not Netanyahu. The prime minister is dipping into the same obtuse, harmful rhetoric of the American right, declaring war on an anonymous “they,” latching on to a fictional scenario to project their own biases onto the situation.

Netanyahu decrying political violence is rich, as just this month he has starved Palestinians, bombed residential buildings in Gaza City, set siege to the West Bank, and attacked Hamas leadership in Doha, Qatar.

FBI Director Kash Patel unleashed a profanity-laced tirade on federal agents, as he cracked under the pressure of finding Charlie Kirk’s killer. 

The New York Times reported Thursday that Patel completely lost it during an online meeting with 200 agents involved in the manhunt for Kirk’s killer. 

One official recounted to the Times that among Patel’s mostly expletive-laden remarks, he warned agents he wouldn’t put up with anymore “Mickey Mouse operations.” But it was Patel who’d turned the investigation into a farce by congratulating state and federal officials Wednesday for taking “the subject for the horrific shooting today” into custody—a claim that officials were forced to backtrack hours later.

In the Thursday meeting, Patel was furious that it had taken 12 hours for him to see a photograph of the suspected killer, and blamed agents in Salt Lake City (where he had fired the head of the FBI field office for unclear reasons just weeks earlier). He also berated subordinates he said hadn’t provided him timely information.  

Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, relayed that they were under immense pressure to succeed and prove that they were capable of conducting a manhunt. As it turns out, they were not.

President Donald Trump claimed Friday morning on Fox & Friends that a 22-year-old suspect had been apprehended, but only because one of his family members turned him in. 

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe criticized Patel’s hands-on approach to the search, as the director’s handling of the case has come under increasing scrutiny. On Wednesday, Patel was the subject of a major lawsuit against the Department of Justice, accusing him of unlawfully ousting any employee that had investigated Trump.

Poland is not allowing Donald Trump to brush off Russia’s recent drone incursion.

Nineteen Russian drones, many originating from Belarus, crossed into Polish airspace late Tuesday, forcing the Eastern European nation to shut down four of its airports as it scrambled to fire up its defense systems. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk invoked Article 4 of the NATO Treaty the following day, calling the ​​situation the “closest” that Poland had come to armed conflict “since the Second World War.”

The U.S. president, however, told reporters Thursday that the attack “could have been a mistake.” The White House did not clarify Trump’s remarks.

Polish leadership was unequivocal in its response.

“We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “And we know it.”

Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland Radosław Sikorski also responded to Trump’s eyebrow-raising comment, plainly explaining that the Russian advance “wasn’t a mistake.”

Trump, who claims he has a good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has yet to meaningfully comment on the drone incursion into Poland. On Wednesday, he wrote on Truth Social, “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”

Trump has little to show for the profound international recognition he’s offered the Kremlin over the last few months. Against the advice of world leaders, Trump invited Putin to Alaska in August—tasking U.S. soldiers to literally roll out the red carpet for the Russian dictator. It was the first time that a Russian leader had stepped foot on U.S. soil in more than a decade.

Still, Russia has not agreed to peace terms in its ongoing war against Ukraine. The superpower has instead insisted on receiving “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, an internationally recognized portion of Ukraine, along with four regions it has claimed in the three years since it first invaded Ukraine.

Rather than de-escalate the situation after it breached Polish airspace this week, the Kremlin decided to stoke more fear, tossing threats at Finland if it decided to oppose Russia’s power.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that the suspected killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has been apprehended.

“I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody,” Trump said on Fox and Friends.

“Essentially, somebody that was very close to him turned him in,” the president continued, noting that additional details would be provided later that day. “I just heard about it five minutes before I walked in. As I’m walking in, they said, ‘Looking real good.’ They have the person that they wanted.”

“So you have breaking news, don’t you, eh? You always have breaking news, Ainsley,” he added, turning to host Ainsley Earhardt, before joking that Sean Hannity, who hosts another show on the network, would “be very disappointed that we’re not doing it on his show.”

“He’ll be very thankful and appreciative of the police officers that got this guy,” Earhardt replied.

Trump later expressed that he hopes the gunman “gets the death penalty.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Kirk’s death on Wednesday was announced not by his family or local authorities, but by Trump himself.

During the ensuing manhunt, the FBI’s MAGA partisan director, Kash Patel, faced criticism for a clumsy and confusing response.

On Wednesday, Patel prematurely declared that “the subject for the horrific shooting today” was in custody—a claim that was almost immediately contradicted by local officials, and which Patel later backtracked on, writing that the “subject” was released.