Last month, Trump cheered a military assault by U.S. forces that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and brought them to the U.S. to face charges related to cocaine trafficking. Maduro, Trump said, led a “vicious cartel” that “flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans.”

But when it comes to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was tried and convicted in the U.S. in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in prison for taking bribes and allowing traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S., Trump has taken a decidedly softer tone.

Hernández, he said, has been “treated very harshly and unfairly” — so unfairly that on Dec. 1, Trump pardoned the former president after he served less than four of those 45 years.