Bulwark Takes - Trump's Drug Kingpin Pardon Makes No Sense

Episode Date: November 30, 2025

Andrew Egger and Will Saletan take on Trump’s stunning move to pardon Honduras’s ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted in U.S. court for drug trafficking, and detail Trump’s pattern of protecting criminal allies from around the world.

Hey guys, it's Andrew Eger with the bulwark. I don't know how you spent the day after Thanksgiving. There's probably a lot of sleeping, a lot of digesting. Donald Trump was doing plenty of that, too, but he did something else as well. Something that not a lot of people were looking for or expecting. It came as a shock to pretty much everybody. And that was that he promised a pardon for the former leader of Honduras, a guy named Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was just convicted in the United States of crimes related to drug trafficking back when he was running Honduras. We're going to break it all down, here to talk about it with me today, our very own Will Salatan. Will, how you doing? How was your day after Thanksgiving? My day was fine. Andrew, I thought that on Thanksgiving, the president is supposed to pardon a turkey, not a drug trafficker.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You do that before. Beforehand you pardon the turkey. Then you sit down, you eat, you eat some other turkey. And then while you're digesting that separate, less fortunate turkey, you get around to pardoning former, like, tin pot, despots who accepted. bribes from El Chapo over the years. So this is a crazy story. I mean, this is just like truly, truly bizarre. Nobody saw it coming in the slightest. This is a guy who was convicted, again, in the United States, convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges. I'm reading

from the New York Times here, sentenced to 45 years in prison. Not an enormously geopolitically important country, Honduras. I mean, it's not like, you know, top five in terms of our allies. It's not a guy who wields a lot of power today. He had already been convicted. And so it's not like he was a guy who was really on anybody's radar for, for, you know, Donald Trump to, like, be trading political favors with or anything like that. But Will, walk me through a little bit what we know about what happened here, because it's actually not very much. Yeah, we don't have much of a statement from the president. So Friday afternoon, Donald Trump posts an endorsement of a candidate in the Honduran presidential election. This is our guy. He does it actually

a couple of times over the Thanksgiving break. A different guy. Not this guy. A different guy. Not this guy. This is the former guy. He posts that. And then he posted again endorsing this, this guy, this other guy. And then as just a throw in, he's like, oh, by the way, I'm pardoning this guy, one Orlando Hernandez, right? Who the hell is this guy, right? Apparently related, because he puts it in the same truth post. He's like, I'm endorsing this candidate. We need this party to win. By the way, Andrew, Trump says in these posts endorsing the Honduran candidate, I'm endorsing this guy because we need to beat the narco-terrorists. And another one, he says, we've got to beat the narco-communist.

It's always narco-this, narco-that. And then he just throws in a pardon of this massively convicted drug trafficker. So where does the narco come in? It seems like we're on the side of the narcos. Yeah, this is such a bewildering story. And again, we're all just kind of getting up to speed on this because I think your first question, I assume, Will, like mine, when we read about the pardon was, who? We know, we're not, we did not report on this trial.

again, there's a lot of, been a lot of news happening all throughout the world. But he's such an interesting guy because while he was leader of Honduras, it seemed like he talked a pretty big game about, you know, stamping out the drug trade. And he had like photo ops with Obama and Trump and Biden and like seemed to be like an ally at the United States in a lot of ways. But what came out at the trial, and again, this is all sort of happened just in the last few years, was that that was all pretty much a facade, right? This was a guy who was who was talking a good game in public, but also massively benefiting, like privately, his campaign coffers were being stuffed by these drug lords, and he was working on the sly to help them out and to help,

you know, like there's all these bizarre, you know, quotes from the man. Like, he once boasted that he would quote, stuff the drugs up the gringo's noses. He accepted a one million dollar bribe from El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras. A man was killed in prison to protect him. I mean, like, this is just crazy stuff if you trust the word of the United States justice system in any possible way. Again, like, we keep going back to this. This is a guy who got a criminal trial in a jury trial in the United States. A United States jury in New York convicted him on these charges last year. And here comes Donald Trump to say, all just kidding, you know, like it's all, I mean, we assume it's the same sort of stuff that he said about other leaders that it's all jumped up political prosecution.

he kind of alluded to that fact very briefly. But again, like just kind of out of left field, this guy is just going to get out of jail in the U.S. for reasons that are basically still unknown to us, right? And I mean, the extra amazing thing here is the contrast of this happening, like while the White House is still talking as though, and even acting as though, it sees, you know, drugs being run up from Central and South America

as like a giant pressing social problem, so much so, that they have been authorizing all of these bombings of boats off of the coast of Venezuela in particular that they claim are these drug-running boats. So, I mean, am I taking crazy pills here? Will, what's going on? No, I mean, it's the upside down for all the reasons that you just laid out. So let's go, first of all, the drug boats. Yeah, we're like nuking, we're blowing up these drug boats.

There is no legal process. We just, the administration asserts we have intelligence on this. They don't even show it to like any member of Congress who wouldn't cover. for them. They don't show it to the Democrats, right? So they assert that there is evidence of this. Trump himself is bragging that there's no fishing boats out there because innocent people are afraid they're going to get blown up. There are allegations already that some of the people who have been blown up in these were innocent. We're also sending troops down. We're like deploying warships in the vicinity of Venezuela because we're going to like apparently

stage regime change operation there. Why? communism, but apparently drugs, like we're accusing Maduro of running a cartel. What was the name of it? Cartel de losoles, which apparently is like Antifa is not an actual organization. It's sort of a loose collection of stuff. But again, none of this has legal process. And Andrew, you use the key word here. Trial. This guy, Hernandez, got a trial. All of this stuff was proven in court, right? In an American court. And now in a normal world, that would mean that we give extra credence to the charges against him. We know that he's guilty, right? In the Trump world, it's the other way around because Trump sees the United States justice system

as an enemy. It orchestrates witch hunts against people like him. And so the fact that this guy got convicted by the American judicial system was like a bonus. And in fact, Hernandez, let me just read you a couple of the quotes. Hernandez, when he got sentenced, said that he was the victim of a, quote, political persecution. Again, magic words to Donald Trump. And then he wrote a letter complaining about this in which he said that he was the victim of, quote, a lynching through the U.S. judicial system. Now, of course, this is exactly what you would say if you're angling for a pardon from Donald Trump, who has also been targeted by the U.S. judicial system, and Trump absolutely fell for it. And in the statement that Trump put out to the New York Times when they asked him,

what the hell, man, what did you just do for this guy? Trump says they gave him 45 years, Hernandez, because he was the president. Trump said, you could do this to any president. So Trump identifies with Hernandez as a former president who was targeted by the U.S. judicial system. That's it. That's the connection. Yeah. And we'll talk more about the kind of world leader angle of all in a minute. I just want to dwell real briefly on that thing that you just said about. I mean, like, that's the connective tissue here to me between the kind of blowing up boats off the coast of Venezuela and here is that in both of those cases, the main thing that Trump is sort of like dealing with or moving around is his own unbelievable distrust for just the idea of U.S. courts,

not just any given judge, not just any given prosecutor or anything like that, but the whole system, you know, one way or another, like the whole reason why these guys claim that they have to just be bombing these boats and committing these apparent war crimes as we got reporting about last week is because the old system of arresting them and trying them in the U.S. was not sufficient to their purposes, right? They don't see that as conducive to good, just outcomes. And the same thing here, right? I mean, the fact that this guy who, you know, reading between the lines, he doesn't hardly seem to know from Adam. You know, it comes up in the context of him already thinking about Honduras and this other guy's allies looking for an endorsement, you know, going into their election

today on Sunday when we're taping. And like he like bumps into this, into this former president's case sort of on the side of that and is like, oh, you know, oh my gosh, he's getting, he's getting waylaid by the witch hunters in the, in the Southern District of New York, just like I was, you know, back in the day, we better do something for this guy. And like, again, like you said it. I mean, It really just does come down to this remarkable distrust for U.S. justice writ large here. Let's go to the other thing you were alluding to right there at the end about how this is, and this is the other just insane part of all of this. This is part of a pattern for Trump.

And maybe like the most consistent pattern policy instinct for him of this entire second term is just these right wing leaders all around the world that he keeps getting out of trouble or at least trying to get out of trouble in one way or another. So I've written about this previously. Trump has this pattern of demanding that other countries' judicial systems back off or pardon friendly leaders, leaders friendly to Donald Trump, who were convicted of crimes similar to Donald Trump. He's like, I identify with this. I think Andrew in our headline we call that Trump's felons first foreign policy, right? So it doesn't really make sense. It doesn't go here in any way except are you a criminal? If so, our criminal president identifies with you. you. So one of them is Marine Le Pen, French politician. She was convicted in a French court of embezzlement. And Trump's response, Trump posts about this at the time, they are trying to censor their political opponent. It's the same playbook that was used against me. And he says they got her on a, quote, bookkeeping error, which Andrew was exactly the defense that Trump used in Manhattan when he got convicted of his, in the Stormy Daniels case. So he identifies with Marine Le Pen. Another one, Benjamin Netanyahu. He was on trial for fraud and bribery and a bunch of

financial crimes. Trump posts, it's a political witch hunt, a term we've heard from Trump many times. He says the trial should be canceled. And then Trump threatens to withhold U.S. funding. He says, the United States of America spends billions of dollars a year protecting Israel. We're not going to stand for this. He's like a donor basically threatening to pull the plug on the nation of Israel if they don't pardon or excuse or helps us somehow get Benjamin Netanyahu off from the crimes of which he's accused. And then, by the way, Trump went to the Knesset and tells the president of Israel to pardon Netanyahu, which is totally, totally insane. Hey, I have an idea. Mr. President, why don't you give him a pardon?

Give him a pardon. Come on. The case that always really stands out to me as a time when it actually did dramatically affect U.S. policy was his rhetoric about Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil earlier this year, where, you know, again, a former president, not a current guy, not a current guy he's dealing with, not somebody who's back he's trying to scratch in order to extract U.S. favorable policies out of Brazil, which would be insane, but I guess you could sort of see where it would be coming from. No, this is a guy who lost his re-election bid a couple of years ago, tried in another act that is very familiar to Trump, tried to steal that election, failed to steal that election, was held accountable for his attempts to steal that election, and has now been convicted of crimes related to that. And Trump was so incensed by the fact that, you know, Bolsonaro was was charged with and then later convicted of these crimes that he, when he was in the middle of launching all of those, uh, tariffs wars all around the world. It was like the first thing on his agenda when it came to dealing with Brazil. And Brazil got a like monstrously high U.S. tariff rate relative to its regional neighbors. And he explicitly said that was why. Let's play the video. This is from two months ago

right after the Brazilian Supreme Court found Bolsonaro guilty. Uh, here's the, here, Trump is at the White House and a reporter asks him about it. President, in Brazil, Bolsonaro was just found guilty by the Supreme Court. You've been very clear that you would apply sanctions. Are you thinking further sanctions to Brazil because of this Bolsonaro? Well, I watched that trial. I know him pretty well. Foreign leader. I thought he was a good president of Brazil.

And it's very surprising that that could happen. That's very much like they tried to do with me, but they didn't get away with it at all. But I can only say this. I knew him as president of Brazil. He was a good man. So Trump says it right there. It's very much like they tried to do with me. He identifies with Bolsonaro, just like instantly, as soon as the guy is found guilty,

Trump's like, oh, that's my brother, right? And Andrew, I think you put your finger on it. This was not just Trump trying to like meddle in the Brazilian justice system. He made Americans pay a tariff. He made us pay an egg like Brazilian products. cost more to Americans because Donald Trump wants to protect his buddy who was convicted of staging a coup, a Trump-like coup in Brazil. It seems like totally crazy.

Let me go on to one other one. So there is another country where a guy of a then president attempted a coup to stay in power, right? So in the sort of Bolsonaro Trump tradition, right, another guy, but the current South Korean president, comes to the White House. This is now three months ago. So here he is in the Oval office, and he's spoken, he speaks in Korea. The translator is now explaining to Trump what happened with the former president. So it hasn't been long since Korea has overcame the political turmoil following the self-coup by the former president. Currently, there is a fact-finding investigation

by a special prosecutor that was appointed by the National Assembly. And this special prosecutor... Is his name deranged Jack Smith, by the issue? They took him from our country. Deranged Jack, he's a deranged sick individual. Go ahead. Go ahead, please. I'm only kidding.

Maybe I'm not. So Trump hears that this guy was prosecuted by a special prosecutor, and instantly Trump's mind goes, oh, Jack Smith, right? So, like, he instantly identifies with the criminal. It just seems like, Andrew, in one country after another, Bolsonaro, the Korean case, Israel, France, Honduras, just in every one of these cases, it seems like that's his foreign policy. Yeah, yeah. It's not just that it's the first thought. It is also the last thought, right? I think that is what the Honduras one, this particular one, again, with Juan Orlando Hernandez there, really shows,

Again, we don't know for a fact that this was the case because we haven't yet gotten good reporting about how this came to be. But all the circumstantial evidence seems to suggest that, you know, there are allies of this guy who is running for president of Honduras now, who is from the same party as this guy who was just convicted in New York. Their allies are getting face time with Trump over the Thanksgiving break. They get him to make this endorsement. And he also is getting these facts, you know, kind of being reminded about about this. this guy who is just convicted, and he has that first thought of like, oh, you know, my soul brother over there who's, who, you know, has gone through many of the same experiences I have at the hands of the dastardly U.S. deep state. And then there's not like a second thought, right?

He just announces a pardon his forthcoming in sort of the same breath. He gives out, he decides to give the endorsement and he decides to give the pardon and it's all there in the same social media post. Who knows how many more of these are going to be forthcoming? You would think we would be kind of like getting through the rolodex of like plausibly accused right wing political criminals, like even around the world, Honduras is already pretty far down there. Who knows? Who knows? I mean, I would have thought we were already getting near the end of it. The weird thing here, one of the weird things here, one of the 500 weird things here, again, this all happened the day after Thanksgiving, right? So like, there hasn't been a whole lot of backlash yet. You know,

people are kind of like coming up, like surfacing from their turkey coma and like discovering what was good, what like that this has happened. People in Congress haven't been asked about it. The White House has hardly even had to weigh in. You know, Carolyn Levitt hasn't been asked about it from the podium. So, you know, there's going to be more about this story. We will keep following it as it comes out. But thanks, Will, for coming on to chew over what we have so far on this bizarre, insane, unconscionable, sort of understandable for all the reasons we've talked about, pardon, from Donald Trump to Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras. Thanks to you all out there for watching. Hope you'll subscribe to the feed, head over to the bulwark.com, and get our written content,

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