Do we like them?

Do we like Michelle Bolsonaro?

Our score: 4 out of 10. Some real public service and no clear campaign against any group in what we could open, but her record is thin and her politics sit uncomfortably close to the harm line.

Michelle Bolsonaro rose from modest beginnings to become Brazil's First Lady (2019 to 2022) as the third wife of Jair Bolsonaro. She's an evangelical Christian, unlike the Catholic Bolsonaro men, and that's the bit that made her politically useful. Foreign Policy describes her as a key link to women and evangelical voters.

As First Lady she gave a speech in sign language at the 2019 inauguration, which broke protocol and won her fans. She also led the government charity program Pátria Voluntária (Volunteer Homeland). From 2023 she led the women's wing of the Partido Liberal, recruiting women into the party.

The harm check is where it gets murky. Her slogan, per Foreign Policy, is “feminine, not feminist”, and that analysis says she has verbally attacked feminist activists and left-wing lawmakers. It also says she opposes abortion and sexual freedom, though we couldn't open pages with her own words on those. Nothing we read had her speaking about LGBTQ+ people directly, so that's a gap, not a tick.

The pandemic is the other mark. Nine days before the 2022 runoff, she told an evangelical church in Rio “Don’t look at my husband, look at me.” Global Voices reads that as using her own devotion to excuse her husband's handling of COVID-19, which Brazilian experts link to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. Her defenders would say she was a wife vouching for her family. Where you land depends on how you read it.

The recent drama is a stoush inside the family. In June 2026 she posted a video accusing stepson Flávio, the presidential candidate, of disrespecting and humiliating her, and six days later she resigned as head of PL Mulher. Flávio then apologised and asked for her help, and she agreed to back his campaign online. Foreign Policy also reports that she and her allies took a pile-on of criticism over the video.

On the good side, she's said to have urged women to call the police in cases of domestic violence. Foreign Policy notes, though, that her public record on the issue is thin, and she did not mention Brazil's Maria da Penha Law on its 20th anniversary. She has worked on charity through Pátria Voluntária, but we found no verified record of sustained advocacy for LGBTQ+ people or the environment.