Elon Musk Is Visiting Brazil to Meet With Bolsonaro Friday

Walter Brandimarte and Daniel Carvalho, Bloomberg News

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., arrives at the Axel Springer Award ceremony in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. Tesla Inc. will be added to the S&P 500 Index in one shot on Dec. 21, a move that will ripple through the entire market as money managers adjust their portfolios to make room for shares of the $538 billion company. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk, chief executive for Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, is traveling to Brazil to meet with Jair Bolsonaro just five months before the right-wing president seeks a second term in national elections, according to a Brazilian newspaper.

The world’s richest man will be received by Bolsonaro Friday at a hotel about 70 miles from Sao Paulo, the country’s financial capital, O Globo reported on Thursday, without saying how it obtained the information. It added that the gathering was organized by Communications Minister Fabio Faria, who visited the billionaire last year in the US.

Tesla and SpaceX did not respond to an inquiry about Musk’s travel plans. His plane was scheduled to depart to Brazil later on Friday, according to an automated Twitter account maintained by Jack Sweeney, who follows the whereabouts of the billionaire’s jet.

While Bolsonaro’s office didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment, the president confirmed he’s traveling to Sao Paulo the next day. “We’ll have a meeting with a world-renowned person, who’s coming to help our Amazon,” he said during a live broadcast on social media on Thursday night, without revealing his guest’s name.

O Globo reported the two men are going to discuss plans to connect rural schools to broadband Internet, as well as systems for the monitoring of the Amazon rainforest.

Musk has become even more popular among Bolsonaro’s supporters after announcing plans to buy Twitter Inc. and use the platform to defend “free speech.” Bolsonaro himself has had several social media posts taken down by Twitter and Facebook after the companies considered the president was spreading falsehoods about topics including the Covid-19 pandemic and the safety of Brazil’s electronic voting system.

Bolsonaro, who’s being investigated in Brazil for allegedly spreading fake news, has been stepping up his rhetoric against the country’s top court and its electoral authorities, raising concerns that he could dispute the result of the October election if he were to lose.

(Updates third paragraph with information of Musk’s jet set to depart to Brazil.)