Flavio Bolsonaro stomped the critics and beat expectations in the first round of Brazil's presidential election, beating Lula and heading into the runoff with the Brazilian right feeling more confident than ever.

And Mike Benz thinks there's a very important piece of this story that the mainstream media won't touch with a 10-foot pole.

Money.

More specifically, American money.

Benz has spent years digging into USAID, the State Department, censorship networks, NGOs, and what he calls the sprawling American "soft power" machine operating inside foreign countries… and he says that Brazil has been one of his biggest case studies yet.

But Benz didn't just wake up on Monday and decide USAID had something to do with Brazilian politics.

He's been hammering this issue for years now.

Back in April 2025, Benz told his followers that he had delivered a five-hour presentation to the Brazilian Congress laying out what he described as USAID's role in building Brazil's censorship infrastructure.

And then came the money… lots and lots of money.

Benz said there was a massive jump in US spending in Brazil right after Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 election.

He said funding rose from roughly $32 million in 2018 to nearly $69 million in 2019.

But it later went up to more than $87 million during Bolsonaro's term.