Trump’s recent pardon of convicted drug trafficker and former President of Honduras undermines his own reasoning for the escalation with Venezuela.
President Trump has stated previously that the justification for the escalation in tensions with President Maduro and Venezuela is a hard stance against drug trafficking into the U.S. from Latin American countries. If this was the case, then the recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández – a man convicted of working with drug traffickers to smuggle drugs into the U.S. – directly undercuts his own reasoning.
Convicted in February of 2024, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in a United States federal prison. During the 57-year-old’s two terms in office, he allowed over 400 tons of cocaine to flow through Honduras and into the United States in exchange for millions of dollars from cartel drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán, AKA “El Chapo.”
According to the Associated Press, Hernández was even caught on video boasting to drug traffickers during his trial that “together they were going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” Trump’s justification for pardoning Hernández is that people he respects told him Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
The problem is that pardoning a man who helped turn his country into a narco-state – while taking bribes from convicted cartel bosses – undermines the exact reasoning Trump and the United States have used to escalate pressure on Venezuela. Tensions first began in 2017 when the U.S. sanctioned Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami for drug-trafficking activity. Fast forward to 2019, and the Trump administration formally indicted President Nicolás Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials on narco-terrorism charges, arguing that they were responsible for trafficking cocaine into the United States.
These actions were presented as necessary steps to confront foreign leaders who enable cartels, threaten regional stability, and push drugs into American communities. The message from the Trump administration was simple: the U.S. will not tolerate narco-traffickers.
This is exactly why the pardon of Hernández undercuts Trump’s own argument. You cannot escalate against Venezuela because of its alleged operation of a criminal enterprise, then turn around and pardon a man who was proven – through evidence, witnesses, and beyond a reasonable doubt in a U.S. court of law – to have done the very same thing. In Hernández’s case, he did it while presenting himself as a U.S. ally to the public, all while taking cartel money behind the scenes.
By wiping away the forty-five-year sentence justifiably given to Hernández – a man who helped traffic massive amounts of cocaine into the U.S. – Trump shows that the hard-line stance against narco-politics is selective. If his escalation with Venezuela was truly rooted in opposing drug trafficking, Hernández would never have been pardoned.
Larson Zimmermann loves being outdoors and spending time in nature. He’s an avid reader with a strong interest in history and the stories that shaped America. Passionate about protecting state parks and preserving the environment, Larson also cares deeply about keeping American culture and traditions alive for future generations.
