Trump-linked accounts ran paid ads backing Flávio Bolsonaro’s bid for Brazil’s presidency on Polymarket buzz

Foreign accounts tied to Donald Trump’s political ecosystem paid to promote Flávio Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign in Brazil, using his rise in odds on the American prediction platform Polymarket as the hook. For high-risk payments teams, the point is straightforward: political advertising, cross-border funding, and gambling-linked promotion all showed up in the same package.

1. Folha de S.Paulo counted at least 11 X users who published paid promotions between Friday (18/9) and Monday (21/9). The posts highlighted Flávio Bolsonaro’s climb in Polymarket pricing, with the platform described in the report as blocked in Brazil since April 2026. Under each post, X showed the label “paid partnership,” but without identifying who paid for the ads.
2. The Brazilian electoral law cited in the report bars third parties from boosting propaganda for candidates and also prohibits donations from foreign entities, whether in cash or in kind. That is the part compliance teams care about: the ads were not just political content, they were paid political content with foreign accounts in the chain.
3. The accounts fell into two groups: Trump-aligned Make America Great Again influencers and news-style profiles covering geopolitical conflicts such as Gaza and Ukraine. Among them was former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who has 3.4 million followers on X and said on Monday (21/9): “Flávio can save Brazil. This is the grand prize in the Americas.”
4. Another participant was U.S. influencer George Behizy, who has 639,000 followers, including Flávio Bolsonaro himself. Behizy, described in the report as aligned with Trumpism and known for spreading disinformation about alleged fraud in U.S. elections, posted a paid ad on Sunday (20/9) saying: “Everything is about to change in the Western Hemisphere. Flávio Bolsonaro continues to rise, despite all the last-minute lies spread by Lula’s communist government. In fact, Lula is now trying to bribe voters with social benefits if he wins the election.”
5. Behizy had already run a similar ad in March 2026, when Flávio Bolsonaro was slightly ahead of Lula (PT) in Polymarket odds. He also posted additional pro-Bolsonaro material without the paid-partnership label. Another account, UHN Plus, with 1.2 million followers, joined the campaign; it operates from Florida, publishes right-leaning Spanish-language content, says on X that it is “powered” by Polymarket, and is tied to a company registered in Florida.

For PSPs, acquiring teams, and payment controls, the signal is less about Brazilian politics than about how paid media, foreign accounts, and prediction-market narratives can be packaged together. Once a campaign uses a platform like X to push paid political content and the funding trail is opaque, the question stops being “who won the argument?” and becomes “who paid, from where, and under which rules?”