Lula reveals who he prefers as next US president

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said his personal preference for an outcome in the US election is for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to become the next US president.

The endorsement from the leader of the BRICS member state comes just days before the election on Tuesday.  

“I love democracy. I think it is the best system of government that society has ever built in the world,” Lula wrote in a post on X on Friday.

This system allows political opponents, “who are antagonistic, to have a civilized debate of ideas, without violence,” he added.

“I think that if Kamala wins the election, it is much safer to strengthen democracy in the US,” the Brazilian leader said.

The post followed Lula’s interview with French broadcaster TF1 earlier in the day, during which he voiced a similar position, saying: “It would be nice to have Kamala Harris in power.”

The US used to be a “model of democracy,” he believes. But it all “collapsed” in 2021 after supporters of then-outgoing president Donald Trump overran the US Capitol on January 6 in an attempt to block the certification of his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, as president, the Latin American leader said. 

“Now we have hatred being disseminated every single day, lies, not only in the US but also in Europe, Latin America, and other countries around the globe. It is fascism and Nazism coming back with a different face,” Lula said.

In July, he set out that ties between Brasilia and Washington would be “a civilized relationship between two important countries that have a centuries-old diplomatic relationship that we want to maintain” no matter who wins the election.

The campaign in the US was marked by two assassination attempts on Donald Trump. In mid-July, the candidate was struck in the ear when several shots were fired as he addressed a rally in Pennsylvania. In September, the US Secret Service confronted a suspected gunman hiding in bushes at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“There’s a lot of rhetoric going on right now… the Democrats, when they talk about ‘threat to democracy’ and all of this,” Trump said back then, explaining the attempts on his life. Speaking about the two suspects in those incidents, the 78-year-old stated that “it seems that both of these people were radical lefts.”