The Grand Illusion
Trump rages on about needing to stop drug trafficking, and his Department of Defense/War keeps sinking boats and small ships leaving Venezuela, claiming that they’re drug traffickers.
So why did Trump pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who has been serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. prison for drug trafficking and who accepted millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers connected to the notorious Sinaloa Cartel?
But the pardon of Hernández was scarcely the first pardon of high-profile drug traffickers. Others pardoned include Ross Ulbricht, creator of the dark web marketplace Silk Road a major conduit for anonymous drug trafficking, who had been serving multiple life sentences, and who received a full pardon in January 2025; Larry Hoover, the leader of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples, who was serving multiple life sentences for crimes linked to his role in a violent, multi-state drug trafficking operation received a grant clemency from Trump in May 2025; Michael Harris (Harry O)the co-founder of Death Row Records, had his sentence for cocaine offenses commuted by Trump in his first term and was fully pardoned in 2025 after endorsing Trump in the 2024 election.
It “might” have something to so with Sunday’s Honduran election, since Trump wrote on Truth Social on administration would be “very supportive” of Nasry “Tito” Asfura’s government if Asfura won. Trump then announced he would be “granting a Full and Complete Pardon” to Hernández. And followed up his words by pardoning him.
But when the ongoing election vote-counting results shifted to favor the centrist candidate, Trump vowed there would be “hell to pay” and immediately claimed “election fraud,” because, of course, any election that doesn’t go the way he wants must be fraudulent.
The situation so far – pardons for convicted drug kingpins and heads of state bought by drug money, but total destruction for boats merely suspected of carrying drugs, and apparently a tight election see-sawing back and forth between the Trump-backed conservative and the moderate centrist candidate while Trump continues efforts to sway the results of the ballot-boxes.
I’d say full hypocrisy if Trump actually had some kind of guiding star and he was going against that. But I’m beginning to think his behavior is much more magpie-like when he doesn’t know if anyone has an opinion. But it’s definitely contrarian if his ‘enemies’ like a certain policy or position.
So, who knows? Trump so often claims he has no idea about a subject when confronted with it later.
As you’ve discussed before here, the real mysteries involve the behaviors of his allies and enablers. We’ll all have to watch what they do in a post-Trump scenario (and I do mean post sentient Trump era – trying to not be too blunt)