The Dictatorship
Hondurans face election as Donald Trump stirs political waters
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The day before Honduras elects a new presidentsuddenly the main topics of conversation here shifted from domestic matters to U.S. President Donald Trump and the former Honduran president he said he will pardon.
Trump cannonballed into the deep end of Honduran politics this week, first endorsing presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura from the conservative National Party and then announcing the pardon of ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández — of the same party — sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison for helping move tons of cocaine.
Trump’s influence
Until the U.S. president’s splashy entrance, the main concern around the election was that the three candidates with an apparent chance to win were all undermining the process’ credibility and warning of manipulation.
On Saturday, Hondurans were trying to sort out who would benefit from Trump’s actions and what exactly he was trying to do.
Wild card
The endorsement of Asfura seemed straightforward enough: one conservative backing another. But throwing in Hernández, someone whose lengthy U.S. federal trial in a New York City courtroom was covered daily in the Honduran media, was a wild card.
It could hurt Asfura by reminding voters of the depths of the corruption of his party. Or it could help him by firing up the National Party’s base.
Trump also dismissed the other two leading candidates Rixi Moncada of the governing social democrat LIBRE or Liberty and Re-foundation party and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who he called a “borderline Communist.”
Eve of the election
Moncada, the former finance and defense secretary in the outgoing administration of President Xiomara Castro, pounced on the U.S. president’s intervention.
Before she stepped to the podium before cheering supporters, a giant screen played video loops of Hernández’s arrest.
Moncada framed it as Honduras’ organized crime interests and the country’s handful of economically dominant families deciding in the days before the election that their candidates wouldn’t be able to beat her, so they went to Washington for help.
It was Castro who had Hernández arrested weeks after he left office, something Moncada said that Honduras’ powerful economic interests allowed, because he was no longer of use to them. But now, desperate, Trump was sending who she called “the biggest capo in the history of Honduras” back to try to energize conservative voters.
“What has happened yesterday (the pardon) is a new crime and that new crime we will judge tomorrow (Sunday) at the ballot box,” Moncada said to cheers. “They won’t come back.”
The night before, Nasralla tried to use Trump’s interference to bolster his own cultivated outsider status, even in his fourth bid for the presidency.
“I don’t answer to dark pacts, or corrupt networks or criminals who have killed our people,” he said Friday night.
Divisive figure
It was all giving Hondurans a lot to talk about Saturday.
At an intersection in a wealthier Tegucigalpa neighborhood, Adalid Ávila sold oranges, bananas, pineapples and rambutans from the back of a pickup truck. About 100 yards away a banner fluttered from a highway overpass with a picture of Hernández the day he was handed over to U.S. authorities in 2022.
It warned people not to forget allegations that he had also diverted money from social security as president.
But Ávila said a lot of people still think highly of Hernández, so he didn’t think Trump’s pardon would have much effect on the election.
Endorsement of Asfura
The 21-year-old vendor said that he planned to vote for Asfura, who he remembered as Tegucigalpa’s mayor for building tunnels and bridges – including the one the banner hung from — that somewhat relieved its crushing traffic.
“He’s hardworking, he inspires you,” Ávila said. He did think that Trump’s endorsement could help Asfura, because Hondurans know how much help the U.S. can be, he said.
Most of all, Ávila wants Honduras’ next president to be “honorable,” to work for the people and not forget the campaign promises, he said. He worried that the leading candidates won’t accept Sunday’s result.
“People aren’t tolerant in this country,” he said. “There’s always revolution, because no one likes to lose.”
Hope for peaceful vote
Melany Martínez, a 30-year-old nurse, waited in a long line Saturday morning for a “baleada,” a Honduran delicacy of beans, cheese and cream wrapped in a soft, fresh tortilla.
She called Trump’s endorsement of Asfura an “alert” to Hondurans and she wondered what the U.S. president’s angle was.
“I think the people’s decision must be taken here, because in the end we’re the citizens,” she said. Trump’s pardoning of Hernández struck her as wrong, because he had been convicted of a crime.
She too hoped for a peaceful election with a respected result. But she had heard talk in the street about the chance of trouble and even suggestions to stock up on household essentials.
As a nurse, she wants the next president to focus on education and health, two areas that have been chronically ignored.
Oliver Erazo, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, said that he didn’t expect Trump’s interference to have a big impact on voters’ decisions.
“The social and collective behavior of the electorate was already defined a week or two ago, especially when it comes to the National Party and the Liberal Party,” he said.
___
Marlon González contributed to this report.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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