Do we like Jair Bolsonaro?
Our score: 1 out of 10. A coup conviction, a run of anti-gay remarks and years of attacks on the voting system, with no verified good deeds in what I read to set against it.
Bolsonaro is the first former Brazilian president convicted of attempting a coup. In September 2025 a Supreme Court panel voted 4-1 to find him guilty and gave him 27 years and three months. The court's own words were stark: Justice Carmen Lúcia called him the leader of an organisation that orchestrated every move to keep power after he lost the 2022 election.
He denies wrongdoing and says he is politically persecuted. His lawyers argued there were deep injustices and contradictions in the case, but a panel of the court formed a majority to reject his appeal in November 2025. The prosecution's case was that the plot only failed because the military's top brass wouldn't back it, and that he instigated the 8 January 2023 attack on Brazil's institutions.
On gay people, his own words are on the record. In April 2019, as president, he told reporters Brazil couldn't become a “gay tourism paradise”, adding that visitors could come if they wanted sex with a woman. LGBT activists said it gave a green light to violence against the community, and one congressman called it a national disgrace.
Covid is the other big one. A Senate inquiry in 2021 recommended charging him with at least 11 crimes over his handling of the pandemic, including crimes against humanity and charlatanism, and said his government made deliberate decisions to delay vaccinations. Those were recommendations from senators, not a court finding, and the sources I opened don't show where they ended up.
There are other cases that never reached a verdict in what I read. In July 2024 Brazilian police alleged he embezzled about US$1.2 million in jewellery gifts from his time in office and indicted him over it. He has denied wrongdoing, and I found nothing that shows how that case ended.
The good stuff is thin. I found no verified charity or kind act in the reporting I read, and the case his defenders make is the one he makes himself: that he is the victim of persecution. In July 2026 the court kept him at home, not in prison, with Justice Moraes calling that “reasonable, appropriate and proportionate”. A court gave him that on humanitarian grounds, not as a reward.