Global & US Headlines
Trump Announces Intent to Pardon Convicted Honduran Ex-President Hernández Days Before Election
On 28 Nov 2025, President Trump declared via Truth Social that he will issue a “full and complete” pardon to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández—convicted in U.S. court in 2024—while warning that future U.S. aid hinges on the conservative National Party candidate Tito Asfura winning Honduras’s 30 Nov election.
Focusing Facts
- Hernández received a 45-year federal sentence from Judge P. Kevin Castel in the Southern District of New York on 26 Jun 2024 for helping move more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
- Trump’s two posts on 28 Nov 2025 explicitly tied continued U.S. support to an Asfura victory, stating that if he “doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad.”
- Since launching “Operation Southern Spear” in early Sept 2025, U.S. strikes on suspected drug-running boats have killed over 80 people, according to Pentagon figures cited by multiple outlets.
Context
Mainstream U.S. coverage fixates on the apparent hypocrisy of pardoning a drug-trafficking ally while waging an expanded ‘war on drugs,’ yet rarely interrogates the legality of the 80+ lethal maritime strikes underpinning that war; right-leaning outlets frame the pardon as righting a judicial wrong. Historically, Washington has leveraged judicial or financial tools to steer Central American politics—the Taft administration’s 1912 demand that Nicaraguan elections favor U.S.-backed conservatives, or George H. W. Bush’s 24 Dec 1992 pardons of Iran-Contra figures that blunted legal accountability. Trump’s move echoes the 1989 removal of Manuel Noriega—another extradited leader entangled in narcotics—but in reverse: this time the trafficker is rescued, not captured. On a century timescale, the act underscores two enduring systems: the politicization of clemency as an instrument of foreign policy, and the oscillation between punitive and transactional U.S. approaches to the hemispheric drug trade. If foreign convictions can be erased by presidential fiat to sway elections, the credibility of U.S. extradition treaties and the deterrent power of transnational anti-narcotics law may erode long after the 2025 Honduran ballots are counted.
Perspectives
Left-leaning U.S. and U.K. newspapers
e.g., The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, Raw Story — They frame Trump’s planned pardon as a stunning hypocrisy that undermines U.S. anti-drug efforts and spotlights his willingness to free a convicted narcotrafficker for political gain just days before Honduras’s election. Because these outlets often scrutinize Trump, they foreground the brutality of Hernández’s crimes, U.S. civilian deaths in recent strikes and allegations of illegality to reinforce a narrative of Trump’s impunity while giving scant room to voices who say the conviction was politicised.
Right-leaning U.S. media
e.g., Fox News — They echo Trump’s language that Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly,” presenting the pardon as a corrective while touting Trump’s ally Tito Asfura as a bulwark against “Narcocommunists.” The coverage largely relies on Trump’s own posts, minimizes the detailed evidence of Hernández’s trafficking network and amplifies partisan labels like “Communists,” reflecting an incentive to defend Trump’s foreign-policy moves and electoral meddling.
International public broadcasters and wire-style outlets
e.g., BBC, PBS, USA Today — They report the pardon announcement in a straight-news tone but underline the contrast with Trump’s ongoing military ‘counternarcotics’ strikes that have killed dozens and whose legality experts question. By stressing casualty figures and legal doubts about Operation Southern Spear, these outlets foreground U.S. use of force abroad, which can subtly cast Trump’s pardon as inconsistent, yet they offer limited exploration of Honduran domestic reactions that might complicate that narrative.