Donald Trump promised “no new wars” and somehow, despite everything, people believed him. We’re not even a year into his second term, and all indications are that the combined might of the U.S. Military is aimed squarely at Venezuela.
Over the weekend, Trump ominously declared that Venezuelan airspace is now closed, and multiple MAGA Republicans have been beating the war drum in appearances on news networks. Trump’s flimsy justification for attacking Venezuela is that he’s defending the United States from drug smugglers.
That argument has just had a semi driven through it, as it’s just been announced that Trump will pardon the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of running a violent drug trafficking ring that smuggled hundreds of tonnes of cocaine into the United States.
The evidence against Hernández was overwhelming, with U.S. prosecutors producing financial records and ledgers linking him to cartel activity, direct testimony of how he’d used presidential power to protect drug-traffickers, and that he’d “financed his political career with drug trafficking profits and abused his authority as president to further those criminal activities”.
Free just a year into his sentence
In March 2024, Hernández was sentenced to 45 years behind bars for his massive crimes… Or at least he was until Trump decided that this particular narco should walk free. His justification? Last night he was quizzed by reporters as he boarded Air Force One:
Trump on pardoning Hernández who helped move over 400 tons of cocaine into the US:
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 1, 2025
“Many of the people of Honduras said it was a Biden setup. I looked at the facts and agreed with them”
Pressed for any evidence of a Biden “setup,” Trump couldn’t give any pic.twitter.com/ehD0l6sxcy
Trump first played dumb when a reporter asked him about his pardon. When the reporter clarified which former Honduran president/drug kingpin she was talking about, Trump then claimed that “Many of the people of Honduras said it was a Biden setup”, that “the people of Honduras really thought he was set up”, and that he’d “looked at the facts”.
The reporter then asked what facts he was referring to. Trump dodged the question and began a typically rambling answer that appeared to indicate he was unnerved by a president of a country being imprisoned for his crimes. Huh, wonder why he’d be worried about that?
So it seems that Trump is completely fine with vicious drug traffickers running their countries like a “narco-state” while in bed with the cartels and involved in bringing narcotics into the United States. Oh well, I guess it’s just a coincidence that Venezuela has massive oil reserves…
