Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively that conservative victories in Brazil, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and more are proof that the “great movement” he leads is spreading worldwide.
“The whole thing is a great movement that’s taken place and now it’s happening all over the world,” Trump said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “It’s a very simple movement: Give us borders, give us safe streets, we don’t want crime, give us good education, give us dignity and give us respect as a nation. It’s not complicated.”
Asked if he thinks these global wins against globalism are foreshadowing a looming American victory against globalism, like what happened in 2016, Trump said, “I think it is.”
“They saw what happened to me, they saw what happened to our country and now they’re comparing it to what’s happening with the Biden administration,” Trump said. “We had no inflation. We had the hottest economy ever in the history of the world prior to the virus coming in. Then I built it back up a second time. The stock market was higher than just before the virus coming in. They saw what we did and they saw the movement. It really became big. We started it—and it became very big. It’s happening here again. It’s happening now again because people see the results of the open borders and the stupidity taking place, the crime. All of the things that are happening in our country, other countries are watching.”
Trump’s endorsement of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro boosted the conservative leader in the final days before his first face-off with the leftwing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, where Bolsonaro shocked the world by far outperforming polls and holding Lula under 50 percent, forcing a runoff later this month. Bolsonaro’s performance was more than double digits better than pollsters expected—very similar to Trump’s election performances here in the United States in 2016 and 2020 where the former U.S. president far outperformed polls and expectations—and Trump expects Bolsonaro has a strong chance at victory in the runoff.
“I think he’s in great shape to win on Oct. 30,” Trump told Breitbart News. “The people that got out largely were conservatives, the ones who lost, so the votes should go to Bolsonaro.”
But the shocking performance from Bolsonaro came in the wake of Trump’s endorsement, both in a Truth Social post and a video the former U.S. president released right before the election. Trump put the Truth Social post up on Saturday night—along with releasing a video he recorded on his way to a rally in Michigan for gubernatorial hopeful Tudor Dixon—just ahead of the election on Sunday in Brazil.
“To the people of Brazil: You have a great opportunity to reelect a fantastic leader, a fantastic man, one of the great presidents of any country in the world—President Bolsonaro,” Trump said in the video. “He’s done an absolutely incredible job with your economy, with your country. He’s respected by everybody all throughout the world. So I strongly endorse President Bolsonaro. He will hopefully be your leader for a long time—he has taken your country to great heights. And, again, your country is now respected—because of him—all over the world.”
Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, told the U.K. Daily Mail that when his father posted Trump’s video on his Instagram account it went viral. “The video was incredible,” Eduardo Bolsonaro said. “It was by far number one when you talk about foreign support for President Bolsonaro.”
Eduardo Bolsonaro also said that the notion that Trump’s influence was declining is not true. “You have a big expectation of Brazilians here that he will be again the president of the United States,” Eduardo Bolsonaro told the Daily Mail. “So his status is not the status of a regular politician.”
Trump, in his interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday, noted correctly that his domestic endorsement record “was close to 99 percent in the primaries and we’ll do great in the general elections too.”
But Trump has also been getting active in international endorsements, first helping deliver a victory earlier this year to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and now helping Bolsonaro in Brazil.
President Donald Trump welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House in Washington, Monday, May 13, 2019. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
“In other places, it was very funny—when I did it in Hungary, he came to see me actually recently to thank me,” Trump told Breitbart News. “It made a tremendous difference. He’s a very good man. It made a tremendous difference. And it obviously made a tremendous difference in Brazil and he’s obviously a great leader who isn’t being treated fairly. It made a tremendous difference.”
Asked about why he thinks foreign leaders want his endorsement, Trump said his brand has been around and trusted much longer than his time in politics—and people worldwide are familiar with his name and image.
“People see me and have known me a long time,” Trump said. “They’ve known me long before politics. Certainly, it’s been a big thing. Others are calling from other countries.”
Orban’s victory and Bolsonaro’s much-better-than-expected performance are hardly the only wins for conservatives worldwide this year: In Europe, both in the north and south, conservatives took control of two major countries. Conservatives just weeks ago took control of the government in Sweden and this past week won in Italy as well, with the election of the nation’s new prime minister Giorgia Meloni.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, reacts at the party’s general election night event in Rome, Italy, on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. (Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
When asked if he thinks these victories from around the world are similar to international victories for the right in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, Trump said: “I think so.”
That year, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union—the Brexit referendum was seen as a major defeat for globalists—and conservatives were elected in several other nations worldwide, like Jimmy Morales in Guatemala and others too.
Trump said he senses a similar phenomenon brewing right now—with the added benefit of being able to use the Trump administration as an example for how they should structure their governments.
“A lot of people are using the United States as an example because they saw how well we did for four years,” Trump told Breitbart News. “We had numbers that were incredible. Even though we got hit at the end by the virus but if you look at it we did unbelievably even at the end. The stock market was higher than it was—and prior to the virus coming in we had numbers the likes of which no country had ever seen before. They saw how well we did, and if you look, a lot of countries are going this way. Sweden also, by the way.”
Americans who see the world like he does, Trump added, “should be excited” as they are watching this play out around the world.
“It’s a great thing and it’s a great tribute to common sense—not only conservatism but just common sense,” Trump said. “A lot of what we do and what we preach and what we believe in is common sense.”
Trump, however, warned conservative leaders around the world to stay strong or risk losing their hard-won positions. He pointed in particular to former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson who was forced out of office by his own party—saying he warned Johnson to avoid the environmentalist left.
“Boris, who’s a friend of mine, I said, ‘You’re making a mistake with the windmills and you’re making a mistake with the liberal stuff, it’s going to hurt you,’” Trump said. “What happened is the Conservatives went against him because he really was no longer conservative and they got him out on the grounds of the party. If he had that same party and he stayed conservative, he never would have been out. He hurt himself. He became very much a greenie.”