Date: Sunday, 30 November 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/trump-pardons-convicted-honduran
https://theduran.com/trump-endorses-pardon-of-convicted-honduran-narco
Trump Pardons Convicted Honduran Narco Kingpin, and Threatens to Remove Venezuela’s Maduro, Alleging He’s a Narco Kingpin.
30 November 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
As has been widely reported, U.S. President Donald Tump threatens to invade and remove Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, accusing him of drug-trafficking, but offering no evidence to back up the charge.
On Sunday, November 30th, the AP headlined “Trump’s pardon of ex-Honduran president Hernández injects wild card into election”, and opened:
The day before Honduras elects a new president, suddenly the main topics of conversation here shifted from domestic matters to U.S. President Donald Trump and the former Honduran president he said he will pardon.
Trump cannonballed into the deep end of Honduran politics this week, first endorsing presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura from the conservative National Party and then announcing the pardon of ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández — of the same party — sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison for helping move tons of cocaine.
Trump’s influence
Until the U.S. president’s splashy entrance, the main concern around the election was that the three candidates with an apparent chance to win were all undermining the process’ credibility and warning of manipulation.
On Saturday, Hondurans were trying to sort out who would benefit from Trump’s actions and what exactly he was trying to do.
Trump says he plans to pardon former Honduran President Hernandez for 2024 drug trafficking sentence
Wild card
The endorsement of Asfura seemed straightforward enough: one conservative backing another. But throwing in Hernández, someone whose lengthy U.S. federal trial in a New York City courtroom was covered daily in the Honduran media, was a wild card.
It could hurt Asfura by reminding voters of the depths of the corruption of his party. Or it could help him by firing up the National Party’s base.
Trump also dismissed the other two leading candidates Rixi Moncada of the governing social democrat LIBRE or Liberty and Re-foundation party and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who he called a “borderline Communist.”
Trump has previously labeled as a communist many social democrats (or “democratic socialists”) such as the newly elected Mayor of New York City, Zhoran Mamdani, as being a “communist” (and Mamdani, in turn, has labelled Trump as being a “fascist”); but, in this case, Trump is trying to get the voters in a foreign country, Honduras, to elect the conservative Nasry “Tito” Asfura to become that nation’s head-of-state.
Although there has been no recent polling of Hondurans in regard to their approval-rating of Donald Trump, there was one Gallup poll of Hondurans on this subject, and it was published on 23 January 2018, during Trump’s first term. It showed that 19% “Approved” of him, while 71% “Disapproved” of him. Consequently, with that massive -51% net approval of him, the likelihood that most Hondurans today would be more favorably inclined to vote for Trump’s preferred candidate than for either of that candidate’s main opponents, appears to be low; and the likelihood that they will vote for his two opponents would almost certainly be increased by Trump’s having endorsed Asfura.
Regardless of the Honduran impact, however, this endorsement by Trump of Asfura, along with Trump’s simultaneous pardon of Honduras’s narco-trafficking-convicted ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández, places into important context Trump’s often-repeated statements that the reason why he is determined to regime-change Maduro is that Maduro is (Trump says) a narco-trafficker.
On November 29th, Reuters had headlined “Trump says airspace above and around Venezuela should be considered closed” and opened:
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered "closed in its entirety", but gave no further details as Washington ramps up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro's government.
"To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY," Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Venezuela's communications ministry, which handles all press inquiries for the government, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump's post.
The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean have been underway for months, along with a U.S. military buildup in the region, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.
The President told military service members this week that the U.S. would "very soon" begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
