By John Pickard
The latest US Gallup poll ratings on Donald Trump show his support tanking on all aspects of his administration’s policies. His overall rating is minus-24, with 60% disapproval and 36% approval. In every one of the main aspects of policy, his approval is negative, some by nearly by two to one and some by more than that. In relation to immigration, for example, his disapproval rating is minus-25.
We can only hope that the lies, bluster, inanities and hypocrisy that spew from of the mouth of the most powerful man on the planet are at long last all beginning to have some effect on the polls. Even the more serious US newspapers are highlighting the huge inconsistencies and contradictions in Trump’s policies.
The latest is the flat contradiction between the sabre-rattling and the immense military pressure being imposed on Venezuela – in the name of the ‘war on drugs’ – and Trump’s inexplicable pardoning of one of the most serious convicted drugs importers into the United States: Orlando Hernández, previously President of Honduras.
Hernández, The New York Times reports “helped orchestrate a decades-long trafficking conspiracy. It ravaged his Central American country”. Hernández once boasted, the report continues, that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” His election as president was funded in large part by drugs money and he got a kick-back worth a million dollars from a top Mexican drugs baron to allow trans-shipment of cocaine through Honduras. Meanwhile, the people of the country were among the poorest in Central America.
The drug-smuggling business masterminded by Hernández, according to The New York Times, lasted more than twenty years and resulted in over 500 tons of cocaine being imported into the United States. Merrick Garland, who was US the attorney general, at the time of the trial said in 2024, “The people of Honduras and the United States bore the consequences,” but the trial, according to Trump, was political persecution.
Last Saturday, Trump told The New York Times that “many friends” had “asked him to pardon Mr Hernández”, adding “They gave him 45 years because he was the President of the Country — you could do this to any President.”
So, instead of serving the 45-year sentence the US court served on him, Hernández will walk, no doubt to the billons of dollars he has stashed in offshore accounts. Meanwhile, billions of dollars-worth of US naval hardware is being used to sink fishing boats – and kill any would-be survivors – in the name of a ‘war on drugs’.
It was always a matter of time before the image of Trump began to tarnish. We will see in the coming months how badly corroded and polluted that image really is now and to what extent it continues to be reflected in polls and in actual elections.
The New York Times article, which is worth reading in full, is sometimes behind a paywall and sometimes not. But if you’re fortunate, you can read it here.
[Feature picture of Orlando Hernández is from Wikimedia Commons, here]
