In a gobsmacking interview launched on Tuesday, President Donald Trump was requested about his eyebrow-raising pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
He was convicted of working a large, state-protected cocaine trafficking operation that funneled 400 tons of medicine into the USA whereas he concurrently took bribes from cartels and weaponized Honduran safety forces to guard the commerce.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks in the course of the opening ceremony of the UN Local weather Change Convention COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 1, 2021.
Because the Justice Division mentioned on the time, this was “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world”—and that wasn’t hyperbole.
That 400 tons amounted to 4.5 billion particular person doses of cocaine. Hernández as soon as boasted, “We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it.”
Even within the pantheon of questionable Trump strikes, this one stands out.
Trump has spent years invoking drug trafficking as justification for tariffs in opposition to Canada, China, and Mexico, to not point out his undeclared and unlawful naval assaults on Venezuelan fishing boats.
Requested by Politico’s Dasha Burns how this squared together with his supposed “zero tolerance on drug trafficking,” Trump’s reply was befuddling.
“Well I don’t know him, and I know very little about him other than people said it was like an Obama-Biden type setup,” he blathered.
What the what?
The presidential pardon is absolute, however it’s ideally used to appropriate miscarriages of justice, present mercy in extraordinary circumstances, or resolve inequities the authorized system failed to deal with. Trump, in fact, has used it to reward allies, peddle affect, and certain revenue. His pardon tempo has been completely frantic, one of many few areas of presidency the place he can act with out interference and the place his authoritarian instincts run free.
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In accordance with CNN, Trump pardoned extra individuals within the first 30 days of his newest time period than Barack Obama did in eight years as president. And thus far, he has pardoned over 1,500 individuals in 2025 alone, in comparison with President George W. Bush’s 189, Obama’s 212, and President Joe Biden’s 80 whole pardons whereas in workplace.
But it takes a sure type of callous incompetence handy out a pardon after which declare, “I don’t know him” and “I know very little about him.” Somebody advised him Hernández was “set up” by Obama and Biden? How about possibly you’ve got your employees examine the matter, discuss to prosecutors, learn the f’n Wikipedia entry—something!
That “someone” feeding him that nonsense is none apart from soiled trickster Roger Stone, the longtime GOP ratfucker and self-described political hitman who has orbited Republican scandals for the reason that Nixon period. Stone lobbied Trump for months on Hernández’s behalf. Stone doesn’t do something without spending a dime, and he’s not silly.
Nevertheless it’s one factor to be manipulated by the individuals who have mastered working round Trump’s more and more fragile cognition. It’s one other to go on digital camera and shrug your shoulders and say, “I don’t know nothin’ about it except what my pal Roger told me.”
In a sane world, this could finish a presidency. In a sane world, it could be merchandise 47,335 within the lengthy listing of issues that ought to have ended his presidency.
However this may merely deepen the nervousness Republicans are already feeling after their disastrous electoral efficiency final month. They’ve begun difficult Trump on the Venezuelan boat strikes, his try to increase ACA subsidies, and the Epstein recordsdata. That listing will develop because the GOP’s political survival turns into more and more tied to how far they will crawl away from him.
Trump handing out pardons to infamous drug traffickers? Republicans are usually not going to line as much as defend him on this—particularly when the president himself can’t be bothered to justify it.
