President of Argentina Javier Milei on Wednesday condemned Brazil’s socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as a “communist dictator,” reiterating his support of Flávio Bolsonaro in the upcoming presidential runoff election.
Milei also reiterated his support for President Donald Trump and his government’s disposition to work alongside the Trump administration to form a “true shield against socialism” in the region.
The Argentine president travelled to the United States this week for a two-day trip to Washington that included his participation as a guest of honor at the Official Hispanic Heritage Gala, held at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on Wednesday night. During the Gala, Milei received the “Leadership and Global Impact in the Context of Hispanic Heritage” award.
At the event, Milei delivered a roughly 20-minute speech in which he highlighted the changes that are happening in Latin America in the wake of the new conservative and right-wing governments that have risen in the region after years of widespread socialism and leftist administrations. Milei described his country as a “land of freedom” that not just applied drastic measures to avoid what would have been the worst economic crisis of its history, but as a country that adopted a “geopolitical chance of course” to re-embrace the West.
Milei emphasized that Argentina’s alignment with the United States and Israel has turned the country into a “beacon of freedom” for a region that was subjugated by socialism for over two decades.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei (C) and Brazilian politician Eduardo Bolsonaro (L), brother of Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, attend the Hispanic Heritage Gala in Washington, DC on October 14, 2026. (Alex WROBLEWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
The Argentine president referred to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech in Greece and lamented that the values Sec. Rubio reminded are what defined Western civilization have been eroded by a “leftist disease that plagued our continent for decades, a disease of the soul that drove much of our population toward envy, a race to the bottom, resentment, and toward the normalization and justification of crime.”
“In short, it led us to the Marxist logic of oppressor and oppressed, which resulted in unequal treatment under the law and corrupted the very essence of the West,” Milei said.
President Milei cited the cases of Cuba and Venezuela, two countries that have been under the control of communist dictatorships — but emphasized that, thanks to President Trump’s actions, Venezuela is returning to walk the path of the West and democracy, while the Cuban dictatorship “is uneasily on edge in the face of a United States that fully understands the nature of the regime off its coast.”
“In 2023, we drove socialism out of Argentina, and then Daniel Noboa was re-elected in Ecuador, Rodrigo Paz won in Bolivia, Nasry Asfura in Honduras, José Antonio Kast in Chile, Keiko Fujimori in Peru; and Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia,” Milei said.
“And now my dear friend Flávio Bolsonaro, who, with the Forces of Heaven on his side, I am certain that in a few days he will once again prevail over the communist dictator Lula da Silva, the founder of the São Paulo Forum alongside the sinister Fidel Castro,” he added.
Neither President Lula, nor any member of his far-left Workers’ Party (PT), has publicly commended on Milei’s remarks at press time.
President Milei emphasized that socialism is “in full retreat” in the region after the United States arrested Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, accusing him and his predecessor Hugo Chávez of causing the exile of millions of Venezuelans from their country, leading to “one of the worst tragedies” in the history of the continent.
In that sense, President Milei reiterated that Latin American presidents must, together with President Donald Trump, form a “true shield against socialism to protect the right of life, liberty, and property all across the American continent.”
“And that is why it is so important, not only for the United States, but for the entire West, that President Trump’s agenda emerge stronger from the November elections,” Milei said, and stressed, “We cannot give an inch in our reconquest of the hemisphere.”
Brazilian former Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro and brother to current presidential front-running candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, was also present at the gala as a guest of honor.
After Milei finished delivering his speech, Eduardo Bolsonaro approached the stage to hug Milei before the Argentine President said, “Now let’s kick out Brazil’s communist dictator and paint the whole continent blue.”
“And the bald trash,” Eduardo Bolsonaro said in Spanish, referencing Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
In July, during his participation at the Bolsonaro-led Liberal Party (PL) National Convention in São Paulo, President Milei referred to de Moraes as “bald trash” after the Supreme Court justice blocked the Argentine president from visiting Jair Bolsonaro. Former President Bolsonaro is currently serving a 27-year sentence for alleged “crimes against democracy” charges under a highly strict house arrest at his residence in Brasília.
Eduardo Bolsonaro currently resides in the U.S. after he requested political asylum in 2025 on the grounds that he was the target of a political persecution campaign led by Justice de Moraes. Last week, de Moraes ordered that Bolsonaro serve a four-year prison sentence for discussing politics in the United States.
Flávio Bolsonaro and President Lula will face each other off in an upcoming October 25 runoff election that will determine who will be the next President of Brazil. Bolsonaro defeated Lula in the first round of the election on October 4, but did not receive the required 50 percent of the votes to win in the first round. The first round of polls released after the October 4 election indicates that Flavio Bolsonaro is ahead of Lula.
Lula, for his part, received the endorsement of Spain’s embattled socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday. ESánchez called for new snap elections in Spain this month that will take place on November 29.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.