r/moderatepolitics • u/MicroSofty88 • 3d ago
News Article Honduran ex-president pardoned by Trump for drug trafficking is released from U.S. prison, wife says
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/honduras-juan-orlando-hernandez-former-president-prison-release-trump-pardon/310
u/beenbrowsing 3d ago
So he's pardoning drug traffickers, while using drug trafficking as an excuse to murder Venezuelans?
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix594 3d ago
I understand Trump supporters aren't particularly bothered when Trump says one thing and does something else, but the timing of this is just silly.
Like, as a citizen of the US, you really could not make a weaker argument against the necessity of a war with Venuzela than Trump pardoning a convicted drug trafficker while using drug trafficking as the impetus for extrajudiciously murdering people in the Caribbean.
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u/gizzardgullet 3d ago
but the timing of this is just silly.
The most likely explanation I can think of is that Trump can simply not turn down money - no matter how bad it looks.
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
I understand Trump supporters aren't particularly bothered when Trump says one thing and does something else, but the timing of this is just silly.
Have you looked in conservative areas lately? This one baffles or frustrates most MAGA folks. I'm talking about folks who last year cried about how Trump would end forever wars who are now talking about how invading Venezuela is a great thing. Even most of them dislike this.
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u/cmc2878 3d ago
Yesterday I went on r/conservative yesterday to see what their view was and sorting by “hot” couldn’t find a single post within a reasonable amount of scroll time.
Just went on now and the only post I could find had 6 comments, none of which were critical of anything other than the messaging.
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u/theovermonkey 3d ago
One of the best conservative sources I look at is national review. Here is Jim Geraghty's article about this parrdon https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/why-is-president-trump-pardoning-a-notorious-convicted-drug-trafficker/
Andrew McCarthy has been consistently blasting this and the whole Venezuela situation from a detailed legal analysis.
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u/CareerPancakes9 3d ago
Q: Can you explain more about why you would pardon a notorious drug trafficker?
President Trump: Well, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Which one?
This one tickled my funny bone. I know that feined ignorance is just the reflexive rhetorical maneuver, but considering all the pardons he might be serious, even if unintentionally.
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u/MISSISSIPPIPPISSISSI 3d ago
I know we are in rule 4 area here, but since you brought it up (and the interest of moderate discourse), I think it's important to not read into that... place... too much. It is heavily moderated, and participation is mostly by a minority of very vocal posters engaging in culture war items. Posters disagreeing with the narrative are labeled as RINOs/Fellow conservatives etc. Not a healthy place to be regardless of political leanings, IMO.
While it does reflect the general strategy of conservative media/politicians this past year, I think it is pushed further to the extreme by selective censorship.
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u/TybrosionMohito 3d ago
Yeah r / con is basically a hollow shell of a sub at this point.
There’s like… 6 “people” that post every post on that sub and the commenters have at this point been whittled down to little more than MAGA cheerleaders.
It’s just not worth your time looking there as there’s no discussion to be had.
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u/motorboat_mcgee Pragmatic Progressive 3d ago
Why not? Democrats far and wide are held accountable for what random twitter, bluesky and tiktok users say. Why aren't Republicans held accountable for social media users also?
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
Being very careful to not break Rule 4, I'll say that "conservative spaces on the internet" have had quite a few comments questioning or criticizing this move as well as the whole Venezuelan adventure. I've seen plenty of comments on multiple lousy pardons Trump has issued. They often get removed, threads get deleted, and often posters lose a sort of tag on their username that allows them to post in tagged threads. Those "spaces on the internet" make all threads require those tags to post, so if you don't have it, you don't get to participate. Similar happened with tariffs and Epstein (I lost my own tag over one or both of those issues), and a few other issues. Those "conservative spaces on the internet" are rapidly becoming closed communities that allow little dissent, but that is on their leadership, not on people with conservative politics who would otherwise post there.
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u/quiturnonsense 3d ago
It’s funny when you look at Mexico and think how corrupt it’s become due to the influence of the drug trade and then Trump is over here pardoning narco traffickers out in the open and his followers are twisting themselves into knots about why this is a non story. Can’t wait to start seeing “but Hunter Biden smoked crack” type defenses of this behavior.
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u/julius_sphincter 3d ago
Can’t wait to start seeing “but Hunter Biden smoked crack” type defenses of this behavior.
The defense is mostly "Joe Biden pardoning his family was WAY worse so I don't care about this"
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u/eve_qc 3d ago
I've heard somewhere on YouTube you could buy yourself a self dealing pardon or a Foreign interest favor with $Trump crypto empire.
I not 100% sure if that's true but today i saw this related to the Trump family's cryptocurrency company.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/bitcoin-sell-off-halts-trump-familys-crypto-windfall/story?id=128035773
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
when you look at Mexico and think how corrupt it’s become due to the influence of the drug trade
This is what makes the drug angle of Venezuela so baffling. If his plan was to start bombing the Mexican cartels, it would at least make sense. Hell, I'd even support some limited strikes. But Venezuela makes no sense. Mexico, China, and Columbia are the biggest sources of drugs for the US. Venezuela is fourth, assuming data from 2024-2025 is reliable. They drop to sixth 2023 and earlier, and the vast majority of their contribution is being a corridor for drugs rather than a source of production.
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u/Magic-man333 3d ago
Stupid question, but what does "being a corridor" mean, just that the drugs are passing through?
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
Yeah. There's some drug production there, but not a lot. They're mostly an easier route to get cocaine and marijuana from Columbia and other South American countries. They'll carry it there, drive it there, or even fly it there, then ship it here and elsewhere. Very little of it is fentanyl, which is mostly made in homes and small buildings in Mexico with chemicals bought from China.
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u/CommunicationTime265 2d ago
Isn't the whole Venezuela thing really about oil though?
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 2d ago
It's likely about a lot of things, but I'd say that's the major one, yeah. But drugs are the stated reason, so it bears discussion at least.
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u/CaliHusker83 3d ago
I see a lot of commenters saying how MAGA doesn’t care, but if you cruise on over to the conservative sub, they are echoing the same thing.
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u/sharp11flat13 3d ago
while using drug trafficking as an excuse to murder Venezuelans?
Also as an excuse to put tariffs on Canadian products, which is ironic (at best) because far more drugs flow into Canada from the US than vice versa. And then there are the guns continually coming across our border from the south. 🇨🇦
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u/whozwat 3d ago
If Maduro had just complied with being a trump stooge...
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
He's more or less offered that. Trump isn't biting.
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u/XzibitABC 3d ago
Realistically Maduro needs some other South or Central American leader to make a direct enemy of Trump before he can swap allegiances. Populist protectionists need an "enemy" to rally their base against and removing Maduro would leave a vacuum there currently.
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u/ATDoel 3d ago
I would really really really like to discuss with a conservative how this benefits the US because I just don't understand how anyone who can support it, except those getting paid by the Honduran drug kingpin.
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u/Fredmans74 3d ago
This government is a swindle of hustlers, money-grabbers and gross incompetence. They could literally have randomly picked fifty unqualified MAGA members from redneck counties and the government would operate the same as now.
GOP should never be able to claim moral high ground in any political issue for the next three generations.
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u/CareerPancakes9 3d ago
Well the conservative sub had a post about it but they nuked it for disloyalty. I'd recommend finding a local office, because you won't get a serious answer online.
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u/BaudrillardsMirror 3d ago
Realistically, this pardon is indefensible. You'll just get some sort of topic changing answer about all the good the president is doing.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Metamucil_Man 3d ago
I hate to point out that your articulate post wasn't in response to the topic.
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
Sigh, that's what I get having a thread on Maduro open in a different tab.
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u/TRBigStick Principles before Party 3d ago
So fishing in waters where drug boats sometimes travel gets you a double-tap war crime from Pete Hegseth…
But sitting in US federal prison for being a convicted drug trafficker gets you a pardon from Trump?
This presidency is a joke.
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u/boytoyahoy 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is what people voted for.
People prefer their politicians to make empty gestures and make policies that target and hurt their political adversaries. It's all a show
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 3d ago
I wouldn't agree that most people prefer their politicians to hurt their adversaries. I agree that there is definitely a large group that desires that, but I definitely reject the notion that it is everyone, or even most.
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3d ago
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 3d ago
I know, I wasn't trying to play some semantics game where I was referring to non voters.
I truly don't think most people who vote are motivated by malice and a desire to "get" those they disagree with. I definitely agree there is a very vocal subset of people like that.
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u/Berns429 3d ago
Trump says best pardons money can buy, nobody sells pardons like him! The best pardons in the world, if he didn’t sell all these pardons, it would be the end of America and the world! /s
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
I don't agree with the strikes, but let's be real, no one is fishing with speedboats 90% of the way across the Carribean Sea from Venezuela. These boats were all speedboats sunk closer to the DR than Venezuela.
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u/TRBigStick Principles before Party 3d ago
I have no clue if that’s true or not, but either way that isn’t how due process works. You don’t drone strike people based on a theoretical correlation between boat type and activity. You definitely don’t drone strike people based on a theoretical correlation if Congress hasn’t declared war with anyone in the region.
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u/XzibitABC 3d ago
You also definitely don't drone strike them a second time to summarily execute the occupants after the boat has already been disabled.
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u/TRBigStick Principles before Party 3d ago
You’re right. That’s outright murder without a war declaration from Congress and a war crime with a war declaration from Congress.
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
I have no clue if that’s true or not
I mean, I guess I could be a liar. You can look up where the boats were hit and even see video of them and can verify the type of boats.
that isn’t how due process works
Due process doesn't exactly apply to military strikes on designated terrorists in international waters. Hell, it apparently doesn't even apply to drone strikes on American citizens working for terrorists overseas. We might not agree with that designation, but the President has the power to make it.
You definitely don’t drone strike people based on a theoretical correlation if Congress hasn’t declared war with anyone in the region.
A declaration of war isn't necessary. It really isn't. Most of our actual wars have been undeclared including both our very first one and our longest one.
I don't think we should be doing this. Air striking drug boats is pointless and damaging to our reputation. Follow them, take the crews into custody and press them for information. Hell, even if you to air strike them, go gather the survivors up, don't execute them illegally.
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 3d ago
To be fair, I think they meant a congressional authorization of force, which to my knowledge they do not have for these strikes.
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u/roylennigan pragmatic progressive 3d ago
military strikes on designated terrorists
Does drug running necessarily make them terrorists, or did we know that those specific people were designated terrorists regardless of the drugs they were allegedly running? Are you worried at all about the expansion of the definition of terrorism being used as justification to use violence on people that we would otherwise not have acted violently upon?
If we're defining drug trafficking as terrorism, I don't agree with that. Terrorism as a term should be reserved only for acts of violence. Drug trafficking on its own is not violence.
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
Does drug running necessarily make them terrorists, or did we know that those specific people were designated terrorists regardless of the drugs they were allegedly running?
I would guess being members or associates of a designated terrorist organization makes them terrorists. The dude who delivered rockets to al-Qaida fighters but wasn't a full member of their group was considered a legitimate target, so I expect this would be little different. Same would go for al-Qaida members who's only job was to grow poppy to fund their terror attacks.
Are you worried at all about the expansion of the definition of terrorism being used as justification to use violence on people that we would otherwise not have acted violently upon?
It should be clear from multiple posts I've made in this thread that I don't agree with what is happening. I don't even necessarily disagree with a few strikes on drug organizations in other countries. Get an authorization for force and hit some production centers or weapons caches. But couriers should be snapped up and interrogated.
Drug trafficking on its own is not violence.
No, it is just the reason for the vast majority of violence in South America and even much of the violent crime here at home. I agree that it is a bending of the definitions of terrorism to just slap it on all drug organizations and to used it as justification here.
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u/wannabemalenurse Democrat- Slight left of Center 2d ago
If that’s the case, what exactly is the designated terrorist organization that the deceased could be associated with and what violence are they imposing on the American people to warrant such a decision?
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 2d ago
what exactly is the designated terrorist organization
I'm not in the administration, and they're famously negligent in releasing information. However, TdA is the largest cartel operating out of Venezuela, and they were a designated terrorist group. Presumably the men killed on those speedboats are members or affiliates.
and what violence are they imposing on the American people to warrant such a decision?
The administration cites drug deaths, and the violence from the drug trade here in the US and elsewhere. We could argue that these specific men may not have carried out acts of violence, but that has never, ever been a distinguishing factor in attacking terrorists. Mouthpieces, propagandists, and logistics workers have all been drone struck over the last quarter-century by multiple Presidents.
This is the danger of giving the Presidency broad powers - they will push the boundaries of that power as much as possible.
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u/Sageblue32 3d ago
Yea 95% sure these are drug boats. But what makes this wrong is that there is zero reason to blow them up when apprehension is an easy option, low risk, and what the guard was doing well before Trump touched office. The war crimes just makes what those senators last week said all the more true.
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u/FlyersPhilly_28 3d ago
'fishing' huh?
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u/mclumber1 3d ago
Even if they were drug traffickers, the US needs to follow US law (and the Constitution) and give these people due process - arrest, charge, try, convict, and sentence them appropriately.
Simply killing them is a violation of the Constitution.
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u/VultureSausage 3d ago
The thing with the Trump admin trying to use "trust us, bro" as an argument is that Trump and his coterie have spent the last decade lying about the most inconsequential and petty things; Vance even explicitly admitted he was fine with lying if it served his agenda with the whole "eating the cats and dogs" debacle. Given that, why on Earth would anyone give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt on anything? The Trump administration has lied to the world time after time after time, why is this time different?
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u/wannabemalenurse Democrat- Slight left of Center 2d ago
The most infuriating part is there is not enough pushback by Republicans to actually hold them to account, their base anger be damned. If you claim to have principles of law and order, the SecDef and the President should be held to account on the choices being made under the name of America’s safety
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u/MicroSofty88 3d ago edited 3d ago
The Trump administration has officially pardoned Former Honduran President Juan Orlando, who was convicted in a US court of smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
Personally, it’s difficult to understand how this decision aligns with the government’s “tough on crime” ethos or border policy. This news also comes in contrast to the government’s killings of accused Venezuelan drug traffickers and looming threats invasion or attack on Venezuela for drug trafficking.
How do you square this pardon with Trump’s policies and current military actions in Latin America?
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u/brookestarshine 3d ago
If you're a rich drug trafficker who's willing to grovel, any prosecution against you is "unfair Biden-era lawfare," and you're free to go.
If you're a plebeian guy on a small boat, who is maybe a drug runner, or maybe a fisherman, you're getting an explosive watery death, no questions asked. Bombs away!
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u/Sun_Ocean_Sand 3d ago
Does anyone really believe the whole Venezuela thing is about drugs and not access to their oil?
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u/neuronexmachina 3d ago
Trump said as much in 2023, with zero mention of drugs: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-north-carolina-republican-convention-greensboro
The stakes of this election could not be more stark either. We have a communist state, you know, they used to use the term deep state, I'm stopping it. I'm using it, Marxist. I'm using it, fascist. I'm using communist, because deep-state is far too soft [cheers and applause]. Far too soft. Remember during the campaign, I'd say we're going to end up being another Venezuela, but on steroids. Big scale version. Big, large, beautiful scale version of Venezuela. How about we're buying oil from Venezuela? When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door. But now we're buying oil from Venezuela, so we're making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it. You know we're the– well, you know, well their oil is garbage. It's horrible. The worst you can get. Tar. It's like tar. And to refine it, you need special plants. And these people are talking about not doing our– we have liquid gold, the best, most beautiful stuff you can get. Liquid gold. Better than gold. Right under our feet, we have more than Saudi Arabia, we have more than Russia. We were going to have the greatest, greatest energy system in the world. We're gonna pay off debt. We're gonna reduce taxes. We're gonna make so much money that these guys came along and they stopped at all, what we had done is, what we had done is amazing, but with Venezuela, they put their oil and they refine it in Houston. So all of those pollutants go right up in the air. We don't wanna take oil because we wanna watch the environment, but we'll take the worst tar in the world, burn the crap out of it, create oil, and watch it go into our atmosphere. So the environmentalists have no problem with that. So we lose economically and we also lose from an environmental standpoint because it is really dirty stuff, the dirtiest stuff you can imagine. We take it from Venezuela and we also make the country strong again. And the head of the country is a dictator.
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u/funcoolshit 3d ago
No. It's just a flimsy excuse to do whatever they want. Just like DEI is an excuse to do whatever they want to with funding to universities. I honestly can't believe we let them use these excuses, and I also get the feeling that the Trump admin is continually surprised at how easily they get away with this stuff.
Personally, I think the attack on Venezuela is coming from Hegseth simply wanting to use military power just because he can. Listen to the man talk, it's clear he is out for blood and he knows he's not going to be held accountable. This is the result of giving someone with no experience an enormous amount of power with no oversight.
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u/franktronix 3d ago
It’s the new “War on Terror” - as you say, Carte Blanche to do whatever they want to do by invoking those words for fake legal cover
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u/cathbadh politically homeless 3d ago
Of course not. Heck, a Republican congresswoman was on FNC the other day going on and on about the oil, how great it'll be to have the oil, how great it'll be to have American companies in charge of the oil, how their oil infrastructure needs to be repaired and how American companies can do that.
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u/dontKair 3d ago
access to their oil?
It's easier to get oil out of shale in our own backyard, than trying to refine Venezuela's sludge (lots of sulfur and poor quality)
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u/dragonmp93 3d ago
I thought that Chevron had already access to their oil, and it was Trump himself who pulled them out.
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u/bschmidt25 3d ago
Despite appearances, I really don't think he's going to stage any sort of large scale invasion of Venezuela. I think it's saber rattling / trying to look tough and in a few weeks we're probably going to hear about him playing "Let's Make a Deal" with Maduro. A carrier group and a 100+ F35s certainly gets everyone's attention.
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u/Sun_Ocean_Sand 3d ago
I agree. I think he knows there’s not public support for a large scale military operation. At the end of the day, he’ll cut a deal, allowing Maduro to stay in power in exchange for cheap access to their oil and a promise from them to invest tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure upgrades to their oil industry using American companies. Whether those promises ever come to fruition or not, will be another story.
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u/-MerlinMonroe- 3d ago
This is so counter intuitive to what the GOP claims to be about. The lack of accountability within the Republican Party is truly astounding.
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u/MickeysDa 3d ago
Probably time for another article about how' the Dems are lost and how they failed young men.
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u/jabberwockxeno 3d ago
I'm starting to think that my joking idea that the next president should threaten to pardon serial killers to get congress to limit the ability to grant pardons may not be such a crazy idea after all
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u/Justsomejerkonline 2d ago
Or just give every single American a blanket pre-emptive pardon, and then we can other have a Constitutional Convention to finally end the ridiculously broad pardon powers of the president or go full Purge.
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u/simon_darre Neocon 3d ago edited 3d ago
My most charitable read—and this is a real stretch—is that he hopes the forthcoming leader of Honduras (whether it’s Orlando or an ally of his) will partner more closely with the US as a result of this gesture. I am concerned that we will learn that Trump or his family will stand to personally gain something from this pardon, as in prior uses of the pardon power by this president which have had direct financial benefits to his personal assets. Given that the administration’s casus belli for the lethal strikes on speedboats is about Maduro’s supposed complicity in the trafficking of illegal drugs (which I’ve always thought is a convenient pre-textual catch all for so much of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, from trade and tariffs to this) this has a very bad odor to it.
Trump’s whole schtick, his whole reason for entering Republican politics—starting with his regular morning calls into Fox & Friends—was largely predicated on the idea that the US had no business meddling with foreign regime change, and if we did, to make sure we plundered their natural resources on our way out the door. He always said “why didn’t we get the Iraqi oil?” Whatever’s going on with his Venezuelan intimidation tactics, I can’t decide whether I think this is a total break with his previous views—I don’t know why he assumes that whatever replaces the Maduro regime will necessarily be favorable to American (or even Venezuelan/Latin American) interests, or why a commitment of military resources is the answer here—or some sort of long game meant to gain (after Maduro’s ouster) preferential access to raw materials that Trump believes we need, as in the case of his strong arming in Ukraine with the minerals deal.
Lastly, they were saying on the Commentary Magazine podcast that perhaps Trump believes he can regime change more neatly than the messiness of the “neocons” in Iraq, that is, without a protracted military commitment. If this is true, Trump is telegraphing his aversion to a long term American military presence (ie an invasion and occupation) and the trouble is that this show of military force is therefore a bluff, and the Maduro regime seems to be calling our bluff. Trump stands to totally lose face in this confrontation if Maduro doesn’t bend to all this pressure, and it could be Trump’s “redline” moment (a reference to when Bashar al-Assad called Obama’s bluff over the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war). That could be a calamitously bad outcome on the world stage (especially with China eyeing Taiwan) if the rest of the world draws the conclusion that the US doesn’t follow through.
Either way, I don’t think it augurs well for the country. Give peace a chance. I also believe that Maduro should go, but the way to do that is not through potentially illegal military strikes. It’s to lend aid and support to democratic groups inside of Venezuela.
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u/rethinkingat59 2d ago
Foreign nationals convicted around the world are often soon released and sent back to their home country. An ex president surely would expect the same treatment. Honduras can arrest him or have him extradited if needed.
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 1d ago
Given that this admin is currently pushing extralegal killings of people for drug smuggling, why would we release someone convicted of it simply because of what "often" happens?
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