Former U.S. President Donald Trump has sparked widespread controversy and accusations of hypocrisy with his recent pledge to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the former Honduran president, who was convicted of orchestrating a vast drug trafficking network. Hernández, described by U.S. prosecutors as a leader who colluded with ruthless narco bosses to flood the United States with cocaine, was sentenced in July 2024 to 45 years in prison for creating a "cocaine superhighway." He allegedly bragged about "stuffing the drugs right up the noses of the gringos" and transformed Honduras into a "narco-state," lining his pockets with millions in bribes.

Trump’s astonishing intervention comes despite overwhelming evidence presented in a Manhattan federal court, which led to Hernández's conviction for cocaine importation and related weapons offenses. His younger brother, Juan Antonio "Tony" Hernández, was previously sentenced to life in prison in 2021, having accepted $1 million from infamous drug lord "El Chapo" Guzmán to support Juan Orlando Hernández’s presidential campaign. Mike Vigil, former DEA chief for international operations, described the evidence against Hernández, 57, as "overwhelming," asserting that he was "a big fish in the narco world" responsible for moving billions of dollars worth of cocaine into the U.S.

The pledge to pardon a convicted drug trafficker stands in stark contrast to Trump's aggressive stance against Venezuelan authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro, whom his administration has labeled a "narco-terrorist" kingpin. Trump has offered a $50 million bounty for Maduro's capture and deployed a significant military presence off Venezuela's Caribbean coast. Critics, including Vigil and author Ioan Grillo, quickly pointed out the profound hypocrisy. "It just shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade – it’s based on lies, it’s based on hypocrisy," Vigil stated, noting that Trump is "giving a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández and then going after Nicolás Maduro." Grillo called the offer "jaw-dropping" and believed it "really undermines his hard-line ‘war on drugs’ position."

Trump justified his decision by claiming Hernández was "set up" and that the people of Honduras believed he was unfairly targeted. However, Vigil emphasized that Hernández not only facilitated Honduras as a major transit point for South American cocaine but also industrialized it into a cocaine producing hub with coca plantations and makeshift processing labs. Vigil even suggested that, in terms of combining political power with drug trafficking, Hernández operated on a scale unmatched by even figures like Pablo Escobar or El Chapo Guzmán, making Trump’s pardon even more perplexing. "So if Donald Trump is giving this guy a pardon, why is he not giving Chapo Guzmán a pardon? El Chapo Guzmán is less of a figure in the drug world than Juan Orlando Hernández was," Vigil questioned.

Furthermore, Trump's "war on drugs" efforts in the Caribbean, involving "kinetic strikes" to destroy alleged narco boats, have been criticized for their ineffectiveness and potential misdirection. Vigil claimed these strikes have killed approximately 80 people and destroyed 20 boats, often targeting impoverished fishers earning minimal wages for transport, without providing concrete evidence of drug cargo. Meanwhile, the existence of the "Cartel of the Suns," the narco organization Trump attributes to Maduro, is doubted by many experts. While Maduro and allies were indeed indicted for trafficking cocaine in the U.S. in 2020, Vigil argues they "are not a cartel, they don’t have an infrastructure," dismissing such allegations as "nonsense."

Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert, concluded that Trump’s selective application of anti-drug policies reveals a lack of consistent strategy, driven instead by political considerations. "One [Hernández] is a right-wing supporter of the U.S. – and the other [Maduro] is not," Pérez explained, highlighting the ideological, political, and self-interested nature of Trump's approach, which he believes has "nothing to do with effective anti-drug policies." This inconsistency underscores a foreign policy prioritizing political alignment over the stated goals of combating international drug trafficking.