Scenes from Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach on Sunday showed throngs of people dressed in Brazil's signature yellow and green colors cheering for Musk in an event organized by embattled former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazilian politician Nikolas Ferreira of the Liberal Party called for attendees to thank Musk for his efforts to bring transparency to the government's efforts to suppress free speech on the X platform.

"Here I want to say thank you to a foreign man Elon Musk for what he's doing," he said. "Because I know this is going to go around the world and I ask for a round of applause for the fight for our country's freedom."

Bolsonaro said in a social media post before the rally. "The whole world is aware of how threatened our freedom of expression is. Let's do our peaceful act, in defense of democracy, for our freedom, without signs or banners."

"What you see here are freedom-loving people who are fighting for democracy! What you see here are people who love liberty, who do not give up, who will not bow down to dictatorships!" congressman Gustavo Gayer shouted to the crowd.