Trump Wades Into the Honduran Elections to Prop Up the Right

Foreign Affairs

Trump Wades Into the Honduran Elections to Prop Up the Right

The small Central American country goes to the polls Sunday.

(Photo by Orlando SIERRA / AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump issued an endorsement Wednesday for the upcoming presidential elections in Honduras, promoting the right-wing candidate Nasry Asfura of the National Party and attacking his rivals Rixi Moncada of the Libre Party and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party.

“The man who is standing up for Democracy, and fighting against Maduro, is Tito Asfura, the Presidential Candidate of the National Party,” Trump posted on his Truth Social account, touting Asfura’s accomplishments as mayor of Tegucigalpa and calling him “the only real friend of freedom.”

“Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists, and bring needed aid to the people of Honduras,” Trump added.

Asfura, who is popular for his successful revitalization projects in the country’s capital and calls himself “papi a la Orden” (“Daddy at your service”), has promised a major crackdown on crime in the country, with a particular focus on the widespread extortion that plagues Honduran citizens. He is also a proponent of strengthening ties and trade with the U.S. The National Party, under whose banner Asfura is running, has cultivated ties with the Republican Party in the U.S.—but its reputation at home and abroad took a beating after a former president and party member, Juan Orlando Hernández, was arrested and extradited to the U.S. Hernández made millions by conspiring with infamous drug lord El Chapo to ship tons of cocaine into the U.S. American authorities sentenced Hernández to 45 years in prison.

Moncada, the principal left-wing candidate, represents the Libre Party and the continuation of the policies of Honduras’s current president, Xiomara Castro. Castro—who is the wife of Manuel Zelaya, the former president of Honduras who was removed from office in a military coup in 2009—has governed since 2022, with Moncada serving first as her finance minister and then as secretary of defense. Moncada resigned her post earlier this year to run in the presidential election.

Under Castro, Honduras has strengthened its relations with Cuba and Venezuela and grown much closer to China. In 2023, Honduras, a close ally of Taiwan and one of the few countries that still maintained official relations with it, cut ties with Taipei to establish formal relations with Beijing.

Trump attacked Moncada as a communist who “says Fidel Castro is her idol.”

“Normally, the smart people of Honduras, would reject her, and elect Tito Asfura,” Trump said,  “but the Communists are trying to trick the people by running a third Candidate, Salvador Nasralla.”

Nasralla, the third major candidate in the race, is running on a centrist platform aimed at attacking corruption and increasing Honduras’s economic competitiveness. Nasralla, a former television presenter, founded the Anti-Corruption Party in 2013 and has run for president three times since, narrowly losing to the incumbent Hernández in 2017, an election year characterized by accusations of fraud and abuse. He joined Castro on the Libre Party ticket in 2021 and served as her vice president until 2024, when he resigned to begin his campaign for the 2025 presidential election.

Trump dismissed Nasralla’s centrism as a leftist ploy to damage Asfura, calling Nasralla “a borderline Communist.” Nasralla “is now pretending to be an anti-Communist only for the purposes of splitting Asfura’s vote,” he wrote.

Honduras, which will hold its national elections Sunday, is a fragile nation suffering from massive organized crime problems. One of the most violent countries in the world, it has been under a continuous state of emergency since the end of 2022. It is also a vital node in the transportation network for illicit drugs; every year, hundreds of tons of Colombian cocaine pass through the country to markets in the U.S., and even fentanyl has begun flowing through the country’s disordered ports and unguarded borders.

Honduras’s role in the drug trade, its ties to China and regional left-wing powers appear to have put it directly in Trump’s sights. His administration has made asserting American influence in Latin America and tackling the flow of drugs and organized crime into the U.S. central to its foreign policy platform, inaugurating an era of American intervention in Latin America at a level not seen since the end of the Cold War. 

Castro’s proximity to Venezuela and its strongman leader Nicolás Maduro seem to be a particular sore point: “Will Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” Trump asked in his Truth Social post. The Trump administration has declared Maduro a narcoterrorist, has accused him of deliberately funneling drugs and criminals into the United States, and has placed a $50 million bounty on his head. The administration is currently deploying significant naval and air forces around Venezuela in an attempt to put pressure on his regime. Asfura’s election would eliminate one of Maduro’s few remaining allies in the region, isolating him yet further.

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