Questions After Lula White House Visit

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio looks at emerging questions from the Lula/Trump summit, alongside a leak of right-wing destabilisation plans for the region. 

Transcript

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Latin America Correspondent, where yesterday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met US President Donald Trump at the White House, a meeting which had some oddities to it. Most particularly, they met for several hours behind closed doors but then failed to appear for what was a scheduled joint media availability in the Oval Office. Now, we know that Donald Trump likes a media opportunity, but there have been some which he has rejected, including the one with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, and also with Colombian President Gustavo Petro, but what’s unusual here is that a photo-op was scheduled, then pushed back, and finally canceled altogether. When Lula da Silva finally left the White House after 3 hours, nothing was said, until later in the day, he addressed the media at the Brazilian Embassy, where he said that it had been an “important meeting for both countries.” He did also tell the gathered journalist pool, though, that Brazil ​was ⁠open to ‌opening its critical mineral resources with potential ‌ investors - one of the three critical topics on the table during the summit, the other two of which were the ongoing presence of and threats of tariffs on Brazil, and also PIX - spelled P - I - X, which is a Brazilian free digital system used by more than 80% of the country for all manner of daily payments. It’s been hugely successful, but it has generated heat from the US administration, who claim it is a threat to US financial and technology companies like Visa, as though Brazil did not have autonomy over its own internal financial decisions. It’s a rift which has not gone down well in Brazil, with many Brazilians regarding it as an(other) attack on their sovereignty. 

There was also important, destabilizing news from elsewhere also yesterday, as leaked audio recordings appeared, indicating a conspiracy by international right-wing leaders, including new Honduras president Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura, Javier Milei and Donald Trump to fund a fake news source, led by ex-Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, to discredit and  destabilize progressive governments in the region, including Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and of course Lula da Silva in Brazil. Remember that Juan Orlando Hernández was serving a 45 year term in the US on drugs offences before being pardoned by Donald Trump, and the recordings suggest that the pardon was based on a quid pro quo, involving Hernandez assisting in destabilising the left in Latin America, in exchange for clemency. 

The news was broken by Diario Red en América Latina and the website Hondurasgate, and - crucially, given the AI world in which we live - the recordings were analyzed and verified by using the Phonexia Voice Inspector protocol, a forensic audio identification tool from the Czech company, also called Phonexia Voice, currently in use in dozens of countries by banks and financial platforms, intelligence agencies and law enforcement. The recordings - made earlier this year and which run on until April 2026 - indicate the impetus to generating the fake news platform, as well as providing the funding for its development, all led by Juan Orlando Hernandez. 

At the press conference given in the Brazilian Embassy, Lula said that he did not believe that the US would interfere in the upcoming presidential election in Brazil. Just wishing for something, one of his advisers might have told him, doesn’t necessarily make it so.