Trump Pardons Despot, Claims Unfair Treatment — Again
Trump's declaration on Truth Social, pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández for drug trafficking, paints the convicted narco-state leader as 'treated very harshly and unfairly.' This sentiment conveniently omits that Hernández was Washington's preferred strongman, backed by US aid even as his brother, Tony Hernández, was convicted of drug trafficking in 2019, implicated in the
same schemes. The US government overlooked rampant corruption and human rights abuses under Hernández, viewing him as a crucial ally for 'border security,' even after a 2017 election widely condemned as fraudulent. One might wonder if 'harshly and unfairly' now qualifies the process of actually prosecuting a US-backed foreign leader for crimes the US knew he was committing all along. The hypocrisy
isn't that a convicted drug trafficker gets pardoned by a former president; it's the selective memory regarding the stability a known criminal provided to US foreign policy. How many 'allies' must be jailed before Washington admits its strategic choices often empower the very criminals it later prosecutes?