Rumors swirl of Bolsonaro skipping Lula's Sunday inauguration to visit Florida, meet Trump

The Drudge Report this week posted the hyperlink headline, “Bolsonaro heading to Mar-a-Lago?”

The link comes in the wake of a Wednesday publication of Brazil’s official gazette on Wednesday reporting authorization for an army official to travel to the U.S. as part of “a security detail for the president and his family during a trip to Miami.”

Bloomberg immediately reported a story headlined, “Brazil’s Bolsonaro Poised to Skip Lula’s Inauguration, Visit U.S. instead.”

“Bolsonaro’s decision, if confirmed, will be reminiscent of Donald Trump’s skipping Joe Biden’s swearing in ceremony in 2021 and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner ditching the inauguration of Mauricio Macri in 2015. It will also cap a politically convoluted year in Brazil that saw supporters of the outgoing president protesting the result of Lula’s razor-thin victory across the country,” Bloomberg reported.”

Neither of those rumors have yet to be confirmed, however and can still only be categorized as speculation.

Since Lula’s razor thin victory on Oct. 30, Bolsonaro has been non-committal as to whether he will attend Brazil’s inaugural ceremony on Sunday.

The ceremony involves a symbolic transition of power in which the presidential green-and-yellow sash is passed from one chief executive to the next.

Vice President Hamilton Mourao asked Bolsonaro to do the honors in a recent television interview, and said it wasn’t the job of a vice president.

Bloomberg conceded there is still no definitive answers on Bolsonaro’s plans, reporting that, “the foreign ministry referred questions on Bolsonaro’s possible U.S. trip to his office, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.”