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Trump Meddles in Honduran Election & Vows to Pardon Ex-President Jailed in U.S. for Drug Trafficking

2025-12-01 News & Politics
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Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
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Trump’s Threat to Pardon Drug Trafficker JOH Amid Honduran Election Interference

Uncover how Donald Trump weaponized a potential presidential pardon to influence Honduran elections and undermined the US justice system's drug trafficking convictions.

Short Summary

  • [00:00:08] Trump announced plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), convicted of trafficking tons of cocaine.
  • [00:00:56] Rodolfo Pastor details how Trump threatened Honduras with "vengeance" if they rejected his preferred conservative candidate.
  • [00:14:09] Dana Frank argues this action constitutes an outrageous subversion of the rule of law within the United States itself.
  • [00:09:28] US intervention in Honduran politics, dating back to the 2009 coup, remains a consistent factor shaping the nation's governance.

This discussion analyzes the implications of Donald Trump’s explicit intervention in the Honduran presidential election, focusing on his threat to pardon convicted narco-president Juan Orlando Hernández. Guests critique this move as a deliberate act of blackmail, revealing profound contradictions in US drug war rhetoric and exposing deep-seated US involvement in Honduran political instability.

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Description

Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-yt President Trump has announced plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. In 2024, Hernández was convicted in New York of drug trafficking and weapons charges. "The evidence from the Southern District of New York was overwhelming," says Dana Frank, professor of history emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a longtime observer of Honduran politics. Trump's announcement came on Friday, and he also threatened to cut off funding if Hondurans did not elect his chosen conservative candidate as they went to the polls Sunday to pick a new president. "He's almost threatening Honduras that if we don't do what he is demanding … he will wreak vengeance against Honduras," says Rodolfo Pastor, former secretary of the presidency under Xiomara Castro in Honduras. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

Top Comments (10)

@SamSwarthout-u6n 2025-12-01

This is what a government run by corporate criminals looks like!

84 3 replies
@eileentsiapanos5430 2025-12-01

So much for ridding the US of illegal drugs, huh?!

71 4 replies
@MargaretR.J 2025-12-01

Let’s see if I understand what’s going on, DJT is currently killing Venezuelan “narco terrorists” in international waters, while simultaneously pardoning one of the biggest narco dealers in recent history. Make this make sense!

55 16 replies
@seramerika 2025-12-01

Are we living in a parallel universe with trmp’s dark circus horror show? Sadly not….

38 1 replies
@jeanlewis1403 2025-12-01

I guess the drug traffickers had more money than the oil men in Venezuela to pay the bribes.

31 1 replies
@Swifthollow 2025-12-01

8:01 no one from any other country in the world should believe most American’s, especially most American politician’s, definition of “socialism” or “communism”. It will be devoid of intellectual honesty because their national interest lie in unfettered capitalism and of controlling the rest of us, economically and militarily. The propaganda used against their own population against even social democracy has been 100 years in the making, their accusations of socialism of anyone else are utterly worthless because most of them don’t understand the words in the first place.

26 1 replies
@PeggyHartman-e2q 2025-12-01

Why should he be pardon? All those drugs and he wants to pardon him. What is going on here?

8 2 replies
@m00njaguar 2025-12-11

Hi, I'm a Honduran. FOLLOW THE MONEY! Hernandez, our narco ex-president, was pardoned because of Peter Thiel, the Tech Bro billionaire who is a top Trump contributor. With Hernandez's help, Thiel & other tech billionaires were given absolute control of Próspera, a chunk of the Honduran island of Roatán where Honduran laws do not apply. Instead, billionaire foreigners make all the laws, run the courts and police there. Honduran labor, environmental, and criminal laws do not apply there. Thiel & others have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into this hellish libertarian experiment that they would like to expand across the world. The current leftist president tried to repeal the permit for Próspera, so Trump endorsed the candidate of Hernandez's conservative party in the recent presidential election before also pardoning the drug trafficking ex-president who is Thiel's top local political ally. So if the conservative wins the presidential election, it's expected that he will restore Thiel's Próspera project that destroys Honduran sovereignty over its own territory and citizens.

2
@mariamarquez7957 2025-12-06

Thank u Amy G, I always look forward to ur reports, appreciate ur reporting on events corporate media will not, so they can continue putting out fake news to prop up the criminal Trump and his administration. Thank You!!!

1
@masajhn 2025-12-02

And that is how Trump want to fight Narcos .. hahaha

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