Don’t Forget to Pardon One Drug Trafficker When You’re Prepping to Invade Another

While many Americans were no doubt grappling over the holiday weekend with the annual struggle to remember moderation and balance in the loading of plate after plate of Thanksgiving leftovers, President Donald Trump–noted advocate of tact and moderation–was having no such difficulties in regarding all the increasingly dire aspects of the gathering military crisis the U.S. has been fomenting in Venezuela. Remembering that balance in all things is a necessity, Trump made sure to undermine any possible, drug-related justification for U.S. intervention in Venezuela, against the regime of president Nicolás Maduro, by announcing the “full and complete pardon” of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, currently serving a 45-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in a U.S. court of conspiring with cartels to move more than 400 tons of cocaine toward the United States. Naturally, Trump being Trump, he offered no particular rationale for why it would be logical to pardon one prolific drug trafficker even as he’s using the threat of drug trafficking from Venezuela to justify airstrikes on unconfirmed drug boats in the Caribbean, beyond saying (without evidence) that the conviction of Hernández was somehow a “Biden setup.” Speaking to reporters Sunday, Trump would go on to effectively imply that no president or head of state, world-wide, should be prosecuted … merely deposed, perhaps by U.S. troops, if the country in question is Venezuela.

“You take any country you want–if someone sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life,” said Trump on Sunday.

Exactly! Everybody agrees you don’t arrest that president, put them on trial and have a jury consider the evidence and convict them. No, you merely mass troops outside their borders and conduct potential follow-up strikes on unarmed sailors as they cling to the wreckage of their boat, having survived the first explosive attack. Who cares if doing so has members of Congress throwing around the words “war crimes” in the direction of Department of “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth–that’s how you show Maduro that you mean business, while spending the rest of your weekend attempting to personally meddle in the election results of another Central American country.

Ah, because as it turns out, the pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández is likely tied up in good old fashioned election interference more than anything else. Hernández is the former leader of Honduras’ conservative National Party, and on Friday Trump threw his endorsement on Truth Social behind current National Party presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura at the last minute, in advance of Sunday’s presidential election. In his posts, Trump promised support for Honduras in the event of Asfura’s victory, and implied punishment should his selection not win, in classic Trump fashion.

“If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive,” Trump posted. “If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is. Tito will be a Great President, and the United States will work closely with him in order to ensure the success, with all of its potential, of Honduras!”

The effectiveness of this particular meddling is still up in the air as of Monday–the election results appear to be razor thin so far, with The New York Times reporting that Asfura was very narrowly leading with 40% of the vote, edging fellow (relatively) conservative candidate and sportscaster Salvador Nasralla, with 39.8% of the vote, both far ahead of left-wing candidate Rixi Moncada. History would suggest that Trump’s main priority, as it typically is, would be installing a leader who shows him the personal deference and supplication that he craves. And that’s how you end up with a pardon for the legally convicted Hernández, who prosecutors alleged conspired with Honduran drug cartels throughout his tenure, accepting millions of dollars in bribes for himself (including $1 million from El Chapo) and his administration while “protecting and enriching the drug traffickers in his inner circle,” according to the Justice Department. It’s hypocrisy so obvious and easy to highlight that even the likes of Sen. Tim Kaine (VA), fresh off selling out Americans by caving on the government shutdown without extending health insurance subsidies, couldn’t help but loudly point it out.

“He was the leader of one of the largest criminal enterprises that has ever been subject to a conviction in US courts,” said Kaine about the pardon of Hernández on CBS’ Face the Nation. “And less than one year into his sentence, President Trump is pardoning him, suggesting that President Trump cares nothing about narco-trafficking. If he doesn’t care about narco-trafficking … then what is this Venezuela thing really about?”

So yeah, “what is this Venezuela thing really about?” One thing it’s almost certainly not about in the least would be “drugs,” especially considering that Venezuela doesn’t even produce the drug–fentanyl–most closely tied to the current epidemic of opioid-related American drug overdoses and deaths. Indeed, most fentanyl that enters the U.S. is produced in Mexico or China and enters the country through official entry points on the U.S.-Mexico border. Venezuela instead primarily produces cocaine, but even then, the vast majority of its cocaine is actually ticketed for the European market, rather than the United States, according to drug experts speaking to the New York Times. One quoted former diplomat stated that cocaine from Venezuela likely accounts for less than 10% of the cocaine supply entering the U.S., dwarfed by other producers such as Colombia. And yet it’s Venezuela and Maduro that have remained firmly in Trump’s crosshairs, with the president initially claiming–without evidence, do we even need to state this–that Venezuelan boats were transporting fentanyl when strikes on them began in September. Since then, at least 21 boats have been destroyed, killing 80 people, even as military officials met with Congress for closed-door hearings and told them that no fentanyl was involved.

Trump’s mythical Venezuelan fentanyl submarine.

This weekend, the posturing and saber-rattling ascended to new heights as Trump said on Thanksgiving Day that the U.S. would “very soon” move to act against alleged drug trafficking networks on mainland Venezuela, while simultaneously saying that the country’s airspace should effectively be considered closed, while U.S. warships lead by aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford floated menacingly in the Caribbean Sea. It is likely that the Trump administration hopes that the steady increase of pressure will result in spontaneous regime change for Venezuela, whether that is Maduro stepping down or being deposed by his generals/military, although the resulting chaos and violence could very well simply send fresh waves of refugees and migrants in the direction of the U.S. even as Trump attempts to crack down in immigration. Maduro has thus far resisted all calls to abandon the presidency, including a supposed weekend ultimatum from Trump himself in a phone call. At the same time, Venezuela sent a letter toe OPEC, published in the country’s state media on Sunday, wherein Maduro accused the U.S. of attempting to “appropriate Venezuela’s vast oil reserves–the largest on the planet–through the lethal use of military force.”

You have to admire, on some level, the simultaneous, willful blindness of Congressional Republicans when faced with this constant escalation of tension and the threat of outright war with Venezuela. Look no further than Sen. Markwayne Mullin (OK), who on Sunday told CNN’s State of the Union that Trump has “made it very clear we’re not going to put troops into Venezuela,” at the very same time that Trump is threatening to do exactly that. One area that a fresh international conflict will presumably not help things, by the way: Trump’s plunging approval rating, given that starting new foreign wars is historically a deeply unpopular move with the general public.

We could be looking at a holiday season of bloodshed as Donald Trump prepares to sacrifice American and Venezuelan lives at the altar of his own ego, but at least for one drug trafficking kingpin in the form of Juan Orlando Hernández, a merry Christmas is likely on the horizon.