Flávio Bolsonaro left Brazil despite a passport order. Trump says he ‘got treated very shabbily.’

Donald Trump said three times on Monday that he didn’t take sides in Brazil’s election. By Saturday he’d picked a side of the border.

At his Mar-a-Lago Halloween party gaggle, a reporter asked if he planned to meet Flávio Bolsonaro while in Florida. “No plans to meet,” Trump said, adding that he thought Bolsonaro had been badly treated. Asked whether they had spoken, he skipped that: “He can stay here as long as he wants.” Then he went further: “in my opinion,” he said, “the election was a disgrace. He got treated very shabbily.”

The disgrace is his opinion. Lula beat Bolsonaro in the Oct. 25 runoff, and the result has been recognized by Brazil’s electoral court, international observers and Bolsonaro’s own party. Bolsonaro then failed to hand over his passports under a Supreme Court order in a money-laundering investigation he denies, slipped out through Argentina and Ecuador, and landed in Miami on Wednesday with U.S. visas waiting. Lula called the exit “shameful.”

The running neutrality count, by our math: three “I didn’t take sides,” one “looked like another rigged election,” one “disgrace,” and an open-ended stay.