Flavio Bolsonaro has said he is ready to stand for president of Brazil again, using his first visit to Washington since losing last month's election to insist he remains the leader of the country's political right.

The 45-year-old senator told Reuters on Thursday that he would run for the Liberal Party in the next presidential race, which he argued might come sooner than expected. "If a new electoral race emerges, I am ready to return," he said in a 50-minute interview held between meetings to sort out his immigration status in the United States.

Bolsonaro lost the presidential runoff on 25 October to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was re-elected by a margin of more than four million votes and has begun a fourth term in office. Days after the result, Bolsonaro left Brazil with his family, travelling through Argentina and Ecuador before arriving in Florida.

Rejecting the fugitive label

He rejected criticism of his departure, including from Lula, who has described him as a runaway. Brazil's Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his passport before he left the country, citing federal money-laundering investigations and concerns that he might flee.

A Quaest opinion poll showed 62 per cent of Brazilians disapproved of him leaving the country after the runoff. Bolsonaro said he was convinced he needed to be in the United States, and thanked President Donald Trump, who said on 31 October that the senator could stay in the country as long as he wanted.

Bolsonaro has not met Trump since arriving in Florida, and he declined to say which US officials he was meeting in Washington. He also declined to discuss who assisted his family's journey to the United States. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 31 October that Washington had not been directly involved in his departure, although Reuters and other media have reported that Jason Miller, a White House official, helped arrange the trip.

An early election?

Bolsonaro is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for a coup plot after losing the 2022 election. The younger Bolsonaro said he believed economic problems would cut short Lula's fourth term, although he offered no timetable and gave few details about his standing within the Liberal Party leadership.

He has previously raised the same prospect in public. In a broadcast from the United States on 31 October, he said he was prepared to contest another presidential election before 2030 and would pursue a legal challenge to the result, according to Confidencial. A new vote before the end of Lula's term would require a court to annul the winning ticket, and no such decision has been made.

Bolsonaro acknowledged that his post-election legal challenges face long odds. "If you ask me whether I think they'll go anywhere, I doubt it," he told Reuters.

He also declined to repeat language used in a letter sent shortly after his arrival in the United States, in which he initially described himself as "president-elect" before the wording was changed to "leader". Asked whether he regarded himself as president-elect, he did not answer directly.

Political allies of the senator have acknowledged the runoff result, and the electoral court has declared Lula the winner. For now, Bolsonaro says he has not decided whether he and his family will remain in Florida, but he was clear about one thing: he intends to run again under the Liberal Party banner if another race comes.