Does a viral video show defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro receiving an ovation upon his arrival in the United States in October 2026? No, that's not true: The footage predated the runoff election by roughly one month. The video showed Bolsonaro still campaigning in Brazil.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published by @JaimeHorta17 on Oct. 27, 2026. The French caption began:
Flávio Bolsonaro, est arrivé à Fort Lauderdale. Trump a envoyé l'ICE à l'aéroport pour assurer sa sécurité.
However, people in English-speaking regions saw the automatic translation first. It read:
Flávio Bolsonaro has arrived in Fort Lauderdale. Trump sent ICE to the airport to ensure his safety.
This is what a thumbnail from the video looked like on X at the time of publication:
(Image source: post by @JaimeHorta17 on X.)
The 40-second recording showed Flávio Bolsonaro entering a building from the tarmac. Attendees hugged him and clapped to greet the politician.
The news about the defeated Brazilian presidential candidate (archived here) arriving in the U.S. broke on Oct. 28, 2026 (archived here) -- three days after the country voted in the runoff election and two days after Brazil's Supreme Court told him to surrender his passport due to a money-laundering investigation (archived here).
He and his family members landed at the Opa-Locka Airport near Miami, Florida -- not Fort Lauderdale, as the post had claimed.
By then, the video reviewed in this fact check had already been online for roughly five weeks (archived here). That earlier caption read:
'AGORA EM SÃO LUÍS: FLÁVIO BOLSONARO DESEMBARCA, É RECEPCIONADO POR MARIANA E CARREATA DA DIREITA TOMA AS RUAS DA CAPITAL'.
As translated by Google Translate, that meant:
'NOW IN SÃO LUÍS: FLÁVIO BOLSONARO ARRIVES, IS WELCOMED BY MARIANA, AND A RIGHT-WING MOTORCADE TAKES OVER THE STREETS OF THE CAPITAL'.
(Image source: post by @estreitomidia on Instagram.)
São Luís is the capital of the Brazilian state of Maranhão.
On Sept. 22, 2026, Maranhão Hoje (archived here), which is a local news outlet, published similar recordings showing Flávio Bolsonaro campaigning at that location. On the same day, reports about the then-candidate's public events in São Luís appeared on G1 (archived here), which is Globo's news website (archived here), and on the website of the local university's radio station (archived here).
According to Google Maps, São Luís is 12 hours 35 minutes away from Miami by plane, and Flávio Bolsonaro did not fly to Miami from that city. Prior to his arrival, Argentina's migration authorities said on X (archived here) that Bolsonaro and his family first came to Argentina by land and then boarded a private jet bound to Ecuador. These details further confirmed that the video from São Luís was irrelevant to Bolsonaro's landing in the U.S.
The image of Flávio Bolsonaro (archived here) getting off the plane in Miami and the respective video recording of that moment (archived here) republished by multiple media organizations showed him wearing a different T-shirt. It was either dark-blue or black, not green.
