Trump Defends "Narco President" Amid U.S. Aggression in Venezuela's "Anti-Drug Operation"

U.S. President Donald Trump has confirmed his decision to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, calling his prosecution "a Biden setup."

"They asked me from Honduras, many people from Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup," he declared to journalists this Sunday, justifying his pardon of the former Central American leader, who is serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. prison.

Last year, Hernández was convicted in U.S. courts of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect cocaine shipments bound for the United States from traffickers he had publicly vowed to combat.

"He was the president of the country and basically they said he was a drug trafficker because he was the president of the country and they said it was a setup from the Biden administration, and I looked into the facts and I agreed with them," he added.

When journalists asked Trump to substantiate his claims, the president responded: "I mean, you could take any country you want. If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for life."

A Double Standard?

The U.S. president's statements come amidst an unjustified aggression by his country in the Caribbean and the killing of 83 people aboard what Washington terms "narco-boats."

Furthermore, the United States has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, without evidence, of leading a drug trafficking cartel and has doubled the reward for his capture.

Maduro denounces that Washington's real objective is "regime change" to seize Venezuela's immense oil and gas wealth. The leader states his country is a victim of "a multifront war" orchestrated from the U.S.

On November 24, the State Department designated the so-called 'Cartel of the Suns,' which Washington links to Maduro, as a terrorist organization. This designation was rejected by Caracas, which called it a "ridiculous falsehood," while reiterating the non-existence of that organization and warning it is "an infamous and vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela, under the classic U.S. format of regime change."

Internationally, organizations like the UN and the DEA note that Venezuela is not a main route for drug trafficking to the United States, as over 80% of narcotics arrive via the Pacific route.

Russia, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the governments of Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil have condemned the U.S. actions. Experts classify the attacks on vessels as "summary executions" that violate international law.

For its part, Venezuela has characterized the killings of citizens in the Caribbean as "executions" and announced the creation of a special commission to investigate these events.