Trump is targeting alleged drug boats. Why is he now pardoning a drug trafficker?

0:00WBUR Podcasts. Boston. is being painted a counter-narcotics operation, but it walks, talks, and looks like a regime change operation. The president talks a big game about stopping drug trafficking. So why is he planning to pardon a convicted drug trafficker?

0:29It's Monday, December 1st, And this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, some key Republicans on Capitol Hill are joining Democratic calls for oversight of the military strikes on alleged drug votes in the Caribbean. Also, it's World AIDS Day, but you wouldn't know it listening to the White House. This is coming on 10 months of attacks on the HIV response. So it's not at all inconsistent with how the administration, in this administration, has been behaving towards HIV. Why State Department employees are reportedly being told to refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day.

1:14That's coming up in about 15 minutes. But first. Congress is investigating the Trump administration's bombing campaign in the Caribbean, which, according to an NPR analysis, has killed at least 82 people across at least 21 airstrikes in the last three months. The White House says the victims were smuggling drugs, but has provided no evidence to support those claims. Then, over the weekend, we learned that in the first strike of the campaign on September 2nd, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth himself ordered the use of lethal force, including a second follow-up strike to kill all the survivors. Hags have called that reporting fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory, and then went on to defend the killings.

2:03But there are good reasons to question the administration's narrative that its aggression in Latin America is all about stopping the drug trade. The latest being President Trump's plan to pardon the former president of Honduras, who was convicted last year of drug trafficking. For more, we called up Juan Sebastian Gonzalez. He was on the Biden administration's National Security Council. He's now at Georgetown. He spoke to Scott Tong. As you know, the Washington Post broke the story that the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, gave the order to kill all on board a boat in the Caribbean Sea. It reported there were two survivors of the first strike, and then a commander ordered a second strike, reportedly to comply with Hegseth's order.

2:47Your response to this news and this conversation? Well, first of all, just the sheer unilateral strikes are legally questionable, and they stretch, I think, the authorities of presidential power. But the concept that you would actually go after two people that were defenseless clinging on the side of the boat, a lot of legal experts consider that a war crime. So it's incredibly concerning that if proven true that the administration has actually gone forward with this, and the Senate Armed Service Committee, the chair-ranking Republican chair and the minority have come out asking for an investigation, rightly so, to have some congressional oversight.

3:24Yeah, and these strikes, according to the administration, are part of a broader effort to crack down on what the administration calls narco-terrorists, and it is singling out Venezuela as a key country in this. What does the evidence show as far as Venezuela's role? Well, there's a huge contradiction because there's basically 10 % of the U.S. Navy has been deployed to the Caribbean to combat what is essentially 5 % of all cocaine that enters the United States. No fentanyl comes from Venezuela that transits through Venezuela. All the cocaine comes from Colombia. And so that massive deployment at the same time that the president has pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez when Honduras is the focal point in Central Central American cocaine trafficking, which amounts to 90 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States.

4:15So it really undermines the administration's entire argument for the naval deployment in the Caribbean. Yeah. And I do want to ask you what you make of this just to catch everyone up. The former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was convicted in a U.S. court of trafficking drugs into the United States, accused of taking bribes to allow this cocaine to move large quantities to move into this country. What do you make of the president's president Trump's decision that he says he will pardon the former president Hernandez? Yes. I mean, it's hard to overstate how jarring that is in a country that is still living with the consequences of a narco state that was built by Hernandez and bankrolled in part by his brother, Tony Hernandez, who is already serving a life sentence for trafficking.

5:02So you have a brother who was convicted and sent into life and then a sitting president who, according to U.S. prosecutors, used the drug money that Tony Hernandez funneled into the National Party's campaign. That's the party of Juan Orlando Hernandez that basically fueled the rise of Hernandez and allowed him to sustain what they explicitly described as a narco state. He said that this was, the president alleged was that this was a Biden setup, but the investigation into Juan Orlando Hernandez started well before he even assumed office in 2014. And the Department of Justice usually does not, except in very rare cases, indict a sitting president.

5:40So they waited until right after he left office to go after him and unseal the indictment. So a lot of this investigation actually took place during Trump's first term, and that undermines the argument that this was a Biden setup. Yeah. And in your view, how important was this conviction of Hernandez? Incredibly important because, you know, Honduras today, the entire political system has been infected by drug money. And he allegedly, you know, funneled something like 450 tons of cocaine through Honduras. Again, 90 % of the cocaine that enters the United States goes by land through Central America.

6:17And Honduras has really become the focal point largely because of Juan Orlando Hernandez. And I mean that, I think, again, when you're actually deploying an aircraft carrier strike group to the Caribbean to go after 5%, but then you're pardoning somebody who actually built this drug enterprise in Honduras, essentially fueled the rise of a narco state, is a total contradiction. And it is not an effective counter-narcotics policy. Yeah. So then coming back to Venezuela here, and you've talked about the preparations, the military forces that are in and around Venezuela. In your view, what is this administration's actual thinking here?

6:58If it is not the evidence of drugs, what's going on here? Yeah, well, certainly you don't deploy warships to dismantle drug gangs. And the administration's designation of Cartel de los Soles, which is best understood as a corruption network embedded in Venezuela's security services, is really about putting pressure on Nicolás Maduro, who lost the election last July, to leave office. But it is being painted a counter-narcotics operation, but it walks, talks, and looks like a regime change operation. We've been talking to Juan Sebastian Gonzalez of Georgetown University's Americas Institute. He served in the National Security Council in the Biden administration.

7:36Juan, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you.

7:42We've got more on this story after a short break. Thank you.

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9:05Let's get more now on how the politics are shifting around the administration's pressure campaign against Venezuela. Franco Ordonez covers the White House for NPR. Here's his conversation with Peter O'Dowd. So according to NPR's analysis, the U.S. has carried out at least 21 strikes on suspected drug boats since September, and at least 82 people have died. But right now, there's this scrutiny on an attack on September 2nd specifically. What has NPR learned? Yeah, I mean, kind of like you said, NPR has confirmed that Hexeth did order the first strike on the alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, and then a follow-up strike that killed all the survivors.

9:47Now, according to the Washington Post, that first strike initially left two survivors clinging to the boat, which is raising a lot of questions about the legality of those strikes. Critics are pointing to the fact that under the Geneva Conventions, wounded combatants are to be cared for by either side in a conflict. OK, so here's President Trump yesterday aboard Air Force One when he was asked about it. But no, I wouldn't have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. If there were two people around. But Pete said that didn't happen. Does that make you lose?

10:21I have great confidence. Did you say here's no second strike? I don't know. I'm going to find out about it. But Pete said he did not order the death of those two men. So the president is standing by his defense secretary. But what are we hearing from Secretary Hegseth himself? Yeah. Hegseth posted on X that these strikes are specifically intended to be lethal. And he argues that the strikes are lawful both under U.S. and international law. And he actually seemed to be making light of the scrutiny later in the day on Sunday, actually posting a mock cover of a children's book from Franklin the Turtle franchise.

10:59But in this case, the turtle is on the edge of a helicopter. He's wearing a helmet and he's firing missiles at a boat. And Hexeth captioned it on his personal on his personal X account for your Christmas wish list. All right. Well, Democrats have been critical of these strikes for weeks. We're also now seeing Republicans have a similar reaction. Representative Mike Turner is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. He said this on Face the Nation yesterday. Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious. And I agree that that would be an illegal act. Is it notable to hear a key congressional Republican reacting this way?

11:39What does it mean? It's very notable. I mean, considering how much Republicans have been kind of in line and deferring to President Trump, I think it is very significant that you're hearing him. And Turner is not the only one. You have two congressional committees that are vowing to, you know, kind of increase scrutiny of the books. Now, there are, of course, Republicans who are behind Hegseth and behind Trump and behind the administration. Senator Mullen of Oklahoma, for example, he is also a member of the Senate Armed Service Committee. He has dismissed the report. But again, a few Republicans are raising questions and even suggesting a possible war crime.

12:21That's a big deal considering how much Republicans are behind Trump this year. You mentioned both the Senate and House will have inquiries into some of these attacks. What will that look like? Do you expect anything from them? Yeah. I mean, I think that really is kind of the million dollar question. I mean, it kind of depends on so much. But it will potentially keep scrutiny up, which the administration will not like. You have more and more members of Congress, including Republicans, who are asking questions. There is, as we just kind of mentioned, there's been a little bit of a divide between some Republicans and this administration.

12:58I will certainly be watching if more Republicans start speaking out, if that gets more momentum. I think that could certainly have an impact. That said, you know, we've been down kind of this road many times before, and oftentimes the Republicans will eventually come in line with Trump. So we will see if this is another case. Take the Epstein case, for example. Jeffrey Epstein, the sexual predator, who is that, that has created a divide between Republicans in this administration. So this could be another example of that. There have been questions for a long time. Congress was not consulted on this.

13:34The administration did not seek congressional approval. So there's already a lot of questions about this. We'll see if there'll be some more. All right. Franco Ordonez, White House correspondent for NPR. Thank you so much. Thank you.

13:52Coming up, the United States has marked December 1st as World AIDS Day since 1988. But this year, employees at the State Department have been told they should not publicly commemorate the day or spend government money on associated events. More after the break.

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15:04Today is World AIDS Day. But for the first time since the World Health Organization designated World AIDS Day on December 1, 1988, the American government is not acknowledging it. According to a report in the New York Times, State Department employees may still, quote, tout the work being done to fight HIV, but should refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day. That means no more federal messaging, no public events or proclamations, even as global funding for HIV prevention and treatment is unraveling. Dr. Monica Gandhi is director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research. She told Peter O'Dowd her initial reaction to the news that the administration was no longer officially recognizing World AIDS Day was complete dismay.

15:531988 was when Dr. Jonathan Mann, who was heading up the WHO AIDS response, and actually that became UN AIDS, he had declared World AIDS Day. And we have had it steadily since. Every year on December 1st is a really important day where we acknowledge now the 41 million people living with HIV and the 44 million people who have passed from HIV. So it is really incredibly important that the motto is silence equals death. To commemorate just says to bring attention to it. Well, let me ask you about that, because we reached out to the State Department and spokesman Tommy Piggott told us that an awareness day is not a strategy.

16:37So why does, you know, frankly, an arbitrary day on a calendar actually matter? So it matters because it essentially brings attention, funding, commemoration, mourning, resilience to go forward. It's really important. And the State Department is false in their reporting in the sense that they have been acknowledging other days, for example, World Autism Day. And the important thing is this is coming on 10 months of attacks on the HIV response. Will, what you're referring to is the fact that the U.S. government has sharply cut foreign aid, including support for global HIV programs. This is known as PEPFAR.

17:18The administration makes the point that it wants to evolve the program and put individual countries more in control of their strategy. Have we seen any impact around the world in the past 10 months since the White House has made some of these policy changes? Yes. So the thing about what the White House did in this administration, which is really different than the last administration, is they did everything all of a sudden. And by doing everything all of a sudden, you don't actually give countries time to make that transition, to take on their own response entirely. It was not as if countries weren't doing that.

17:53They were absolutely starting to take on their own responses. But usually things happen gradually. There is no doubt that people have died, absolutely died, as a result of the U.S. administration's policies. There is an estimate from something called the PEPFAR impact tracker that more than 120 ,000 people excess deaths from AIDS have resulted from the current administration policies. I want to ask you about domestic policy because here in this country and really around the world, so much progress has been made against HIV and AIDS over the years. In President Trump's first term in his State of the Union speech, he said he'd take steps to end the HIV epidemic in this country by 2030.

18:34Let's listen. My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate...