RIO DE JANEIRO, BRASIL - Luciano Huck hosts Brasil’s most popular TV show, Domingão com Huck, which draws over 30 million viewers every week.
Some have even referred to him as the possible next Donald Trump of Brasil. Now Payday Report has learned that Huck’s political group, RenovaBR, has received direct financial support and training from the Trump Administration to influence the lead-up to this year’s Brazilian presidential election.
The startling revelations raise questions about the journalistic integrity of Brasil’s largest news network, Globo, ahead of this Friday’s presidential debate.
Domingão com Huck is a three-and-a-half-hour variety program broadcast every Sunday and one of the most coveted advertising spots in all of Brasil. It’s part comedy show, part Dancing with the Stars, and part current affairs discussion. Huck has often used his platform to blast Lula’s Workers’ Party and programs like Bolsa Família, which support working families struggling through poverty.
Over 30 million Brazilians watch Huck’s mix of innocent dance competitions and occasional right-wing takes. Still, few of his viewers know about his deep financial ties to the Trump regime and its supporters.
In May, it was reported that Huck’s AI legal startup Enter, designed to help corporations fight labor and civil lawsuits, received a $100 million investment from Peter Thiel. A co-founder of Palantir, Thiel has worked closely with Trump to fund his campaign and uses Palantir to help ICE deport immigrants.
Now, Payday Report has obtained documents showing that Huck’s political group, RenovaBR, received training and financial support from the Trump Administration for election activity ahead of this year’s Brasil presidential election. The Trump Administration even flew its executive director to Washington, D.C.
Huck & RenovaBR
Huck speaking at a RenovaBR event in 2017 (Caio Barbieri/Metrópoles)
For nearly a decade, Huck has been RenovaBR’s public face and largest financial backer. The organization recruits, trains, and helps finance right-wing candidates to run for office. This year, it elected 47 candidates to office in Brasil. Huck has even volunteered his time to teach those candidates how to interact with the media and promoted RenovaBR and its causes on air.
In late September, after a segment of Dancing with the Stars, Huck used his TV program to launch an app sponsored by RenovaBR in conjunction with the Coalition for Conscious Voting called “Have My Vote.” The app asked voters to mark down their political priorities, then matched them with candidates who supposedly shared those values. One activist called it “tinder for elections.”
However, this “tinder” consistently told activists to vote for more right-leaning candidates even if they expressed left-wing views.
“The website was completely manipulated and indicated practically only right-wing candidates,” said socialist Congresswoman Fernanda Melchionna. “The voter has the right to transparent information, not to a biased tool presented as if it were neutral.”
The app’s creators blamed AI and quickly took it down.
“Without a sufficiently diverse base of participating candidates and with little time to expand it, the platform’s effectiveness as a comparison tool was compromised. Therefore, we opted to suspend its operation in this election cycle,” the app’s creators said in a statement.
The public prosecutor of Rio Grande do Sul is now investigating Huck and Globo for violating federal election laws by promoting the app on his TV program.
Recently, Huck has faced questions about his financial ties to Daniel Vorcaro, CEO of Banco Master, which collapsed last year in the largest bank collapse in Brazilian history.
Given the montage of public articles about his connections to recent scandals, Globo decided in October to take him off the air temporarily. It’s been leaked that Globo officials may even replace him and remove him from the air permanently.
The new revelations that an organization heavily backed and promoted by Huck, RenovaBR, took money and training from the Trump Administration ahead of Brasil’s presidential election could increase calls for his ouster.
The Trump Administration’s backing is part of a massive social media campaign by Trump and his allies to influence the tight Brazilian election.
Trump Admin Pays DC Junket for Huck’s RenovaBR
Trump poses with Flavio Bolsonaro in the Oval Office in September (The White House)
According to documents obtained by Payday Report, RenovaBR’s Executive Director Rodrigo Matsumoto Cobra was invited to participate in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) by the U.S. Consulate in São Paulo. Cobra confirmed his participation in a July LinkedIn post.
The Lula Administration has repeatedly accused the U.S. Embassy in Brasília and the Consulate in São Paulo of interfering in elections. Several Trump administration officials have even been denied visas out of fear that they will meddle in this year’s election.
Two days before the first round of voting in Brasil, the Trump Administration even announced that it was closing the US Embassy in Brasília and its consulates in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, and Recife, citing “security concerns.”
The Brazilian federal police, however, said they did not agree with the increased security alert.
“There is no concrete or actual threat at this time,” said Maj. Raphael Broocke, a police spokesperson. Other figures denounced it as a clear attempt at influencing the election.
“It is yet another step in the United States’ attempt to intervene in our democracy,” Brazilian Congresswoman Talíria Petrone said.
In September, The Guardian revealed that $1 million of State Department money was diverted to a program titled “Countering lawfare and censorship in Brazil.” The program was designed to attack Brazilian Supreme Court Justices who convicted former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and have tried to limit interference by foreign powers in Brasil’s election.
The Brazilian Supreme Court recently ruled that Meta interfered in Brasil’s election by censoring over 1,000 pro-Lula accounts, a ruling Meta has ignored.
Trump’s top digital director, Brad Parscale, also serves as an advisor to the Bolsonaro campaign, helping them refine targeting strategies learned from Trump’s two successful campaigns in the United States.
The Trump Administration has further tried to place tariffs on Brasil in retaliation for the conviction of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting to overthrow the government, similar to January 6.
Additionally, the Trump Administration controversially has attempted to label two gangs as “terrorist organizations," something which the Lula Administration has repeatedly resisted because of fears of how the Trump Administration could intervene in the affairs of Brasil. Ahead of the Brazilian presidential election, the Trump Administration has labeled Brasil a major distributor of cocaine and attempted to paint Lula as weak on taking on drug gangs.
Fearful of election interference by the Trump Administration, the Lula Administration has denied visas to several top Trump operatives. However, the Trump Administration has flown several Brazilian officials to the United States to meet with top Trump officials.
Payday Report has learned that in July, the Trump Administration brought Huck’s top political lieutenant from RenovaBR on an all-expenses-paid trip to the United States. According to documents obtained by Payday Report, the US State Department held a project in June-July called "Freedom 250: Youth in the Political Process; most of the invitees were right-wing political actors from overseas.
According to the documents obtained by Payday Report, the program focused on “leadership strategies and communication skills for managing political and social campaigns”, as well as “election center and voting precinct preparation, election monitoring, vote tabulation, and security procedures.”
After attending the program, RenovaBR Executive Director Rodrigo Matsumoto Cobra boasted on LinkedIn that he was excited about the possibility of partnerships between the Trump Administration and his right-wing political group.
"I began talks with the IVLP and the U.S. Consulate General in São Paulo about an initiative for Brazilian political leaders focused on electoral transparency, civic engagement, public management, social transformation, and democracy” Cobra wrote on LinkedIn.
It’s unclear what those partnerships entail, but given the accusations repeatedly leveled at the U.S. Embassy and Consulate for interfering in Brazil’s election, it’s worth asking how much U.S. State Department money goes toward these projects and how much Huck receives.
The U.S. Consulate General in São Paulo did not return a request for comment at the time of publication. Nor did Luciano Huck or Globo News. Payday Report will update as we learn more.
However, both the Brazilian federal police and the intelligence agency warned that the Trump Administration’s intervention in the Brazilian election has reached unprecedented levels.
“A hybrid war is underway: a psychological operation generating conflicting, inconsistent information to create this unfavorable climate of insecurity, or the sense that something could happen,” a Brazilian federal police source told Revista Fórum. “This coup attempt isn’t the traditional kind. It’s meant to intervene and tip the scales toward one candidate.”
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