Far-right president told reporters he was considering Eduardo Bolsonaro for the position despite lack of diplomatic experience

Brazilian diplomats have reacted with scorn and dismay to reports that Jair Bolsonaro wants to make his son Eduardo the country’s ambassador to the US, despite his lack of diplomatic experience.

“Most of my colleagues are perplexed and in shock,” said a source at Brazil’s foreign ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Not less because it’s a case of nepotism … But also because he does not have the qualifications for the job.”

The far-right president told reporters he was considering Eduardo for the job on Thursday – the day after the younger Bolsonaro’s turned 35, the minimum age for an ambassador. Brazil’s senate would need to approve the appointment.

“He’s friends with Donald Trump’s children, speaks English and Spanish and has great experience in the world,” he said, according to the Folha de S Paulo newspaper. On Friday Bolsonaro said the appointment would not constitute nepotism. “That’s for the supreme court to decide. It is not nepotism, I would never do that,” Bolsonaro said

That argument has failed to convince many in Brazil. “If it’s confirmed, the nomination will bring Brazil closer to becoming a banana republic,” wrote Bernardo Mello Franco in his blog for Rio’s O Globo newspaper.

Eduardo was the most voted congressional deputy in Brazilian history in last October’s elections, heads the congress’s foreign relations committee and had a front-row seat when his father visited Donald Trump in March. He has ties to the US president’s former strategist Steve Bannon and is South American representative for Bannon’s rightwing populist network, the Movement.

“This is more about a political ideological project,” said Maurício Santoro, professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

Eduardo told reporters he would accept if the invitation was made official.

“Obviously I am not a career diplomat,” he said on Thursday, but he added: “The nomination or indication of a person so close to the president … would be well seen by the American side.” The Viriginia-based far-right astrologist and conspiracy theorist Olavo de Carvalho, a guru to the Bolsonaro clan, could be an “adviser”, he said.

On Friday Eduardo met Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, and said he had received his support. “I’ve already fried hamburgers in the United States,” he told reporters. “I’ve seen the receptive North American treatment for Brazilians.”

Araújo denied the appointment would constitute nepotism, even though one supreme court judge has already said he believes it is.

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“It is not because he is the son of the president of the republic, it is because he has the capacity for political action and ideas that are what we consider to be correct,” Araújo said.

Luiz Castro Neves, who served as Brazil’s ambassador to China, Japan and Paraguay, said the decision was “surprising” but added that Eduardo’s relationship with the Trump family might be an advantage.

“Having access to the inner circles of Trump and his family … could make some sense,” Neves said. “He will certainly be well-advised.”

But Eduardo’s diplomatic naivety could also be a disadvantage, said Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at São Paulo’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, a business school.

“I have spoken to some people who have participated in meetings with him and they were taken aback by how self-abasing he was … he was basically saying whatever you want, we will give it to you,” he said. “In Washington you don’t do that.”