The Trump administration has literally killed more than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all.

If that doesn't make any sense to you, then join the club.

The news that Trump is going to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison just last year came as a shocker. The White House has said repeatedly that drug traffickers are narcoterrorists who are waging war on America, justifying their killing the boats every time. Yet Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to import 500,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States and stuff it "right up the noses of the gringos" and Trump says "CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON."

While president, Hernández received millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and from notorious drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, who was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for the murder of some 34,000 people. In return, according to prosecutors, President Hernández allowed vast amounts of cocaine to pass through Honduras on its way to the United States.

Prosecutor Jacob H. Gutwillig told jurors during the trial that Hernández had accepted "cocaine-fueled bribes" from cartels and "protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system." Hernández ran the country from 2014-2022; his National Party had been in power since 2009.

Sounds like the very type of menace — or terrorist — that the Trump administration is trying to use as a justification for military action in Latin America today.

"Former president Hernández was found guilty of taking bribes from El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel to allow 400 tons of cocaine to flow through Honduras into the United States, essentially running Honduras like a narcostate," noted Quincy Institute research associate Lee Schlenker.

"Trump accuses Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro of conspiring to flood the United States with deadly drugs through the dubious 'Cartel of the Suns,' but far from pardoning Maduro or praising his acolytes, like (he promises) with Hernández, Trump has brought us closer to a U.S.-led military intervention in Latin America than we've been in over 35 years by threatening air strikes against Venezuelan territory," he added.

We assume the difference here is politics. And ideology. Maduro is a socialist and doesn't want to do business with Washington. Hernandez was tolerated if not preferred by previous U.S. administrations from Obama through the first Trump White House, because he and his National Party were business friendly, anti-communist, and supported by the neoconservatives now gunning against Maduro.

While he was useful, Hernandez played the game and Washington turned a blind eye to his crimes which not only included the drugs but human rights abuses against his people via the military and police, election fraud, embezzling from the nation's social security system and World Bank Funds, and even bragging at one point that he was siphoning off international funds through phony NGOs.

Hernández left office in 2021 and wasn't indicted until 2022 (by the Biden DOJ), though he and his family were already being investigated during the first Trump tenure. His brother Tony, a former Honduran congressman, was convicted of drug trafficking in 2019 and given a life sentence. DOJ prosecutors say he "was involved in all stages of the trafficking through Honduras of multi-ton loads of cocaine destined for the U.S."