{"id":295147,"date":"2025-12-02T16:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/295147\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T16:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:18:12","slug":"trump-tells-honduras-there-will-be-hell-to-pay-as-presidential-vote-count-stalls-honduras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/295147\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump tells Honduras \u2018there will be hell to pay\u2019 as presidential vote count stalls | Honduras"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras<\/a> of \u201ctrying to change\u201d the result of the country\u2019s presidential election, as the release of vote counts was paused with two rightwing candidates locked in a technical tie.<\/p>\n

The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.<\/p>\n

On his social network, Trump accused officials of \u201ctrying to change the results\u201d and warned that \u201cif they do, there will be hell to pay!\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was the latest in a string of dramatic interventions by the US president. Before the vote, Trump had thrown his support behind Nasry \u201cTito\u201d Asfura \u2013 who on Monday was ahead of his rival, Salvador Nasralla, by just 515 votes \u2013 saying that US support for the country was conditional on an Asfura victory.<\/p>\n

He also made the extraordinary pledge to pardon Asfura\u2019s ally, the former president Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a New York court last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating \u201ca cocaine superhighway to the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

Salvador Nasralla about to cast his vote on 30 November along with his wife, Iroshka Elvir. Photograph: Jos\u00e9 Cabezas\/Reuters<\/p>\n

As election officials pleaded for patience on Tuesday, Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s wife, Ana Garc\u00eda de Hern\u00e1ndez, disclosed that the former president had been released from a US prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod is faithful and never fails! Yesterday, Monday 1 December 2025, we lived a day we will never forget. After almost four years of pain, waiting and difficult trials, my husband, Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, became a free man AGAIN, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump<\/a>,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s pardon has baffled many observers, who have questioned why the US president has used his \u201cwar on drugs\u201d to justify overthrowing Venezuela\u2019s dictator, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, while simultaneously freeing a man convicted of such crimes.<\/p>\n

In Honduras<\/a>, the pardon has been viewed as yet another attempt by the US president to interfere in the election.<\/p>\n

Rixi Moncada, the candidate for the leftwing ruling party, accused Trump of \u201cinterventionism\u201d and of \u201cimperial, direct foreign interference\u201d in the electoral process. Moncada served as finance minister under the current president, Xiomara Castro, who could not run again because presidential mandates are limited to a single term.<\/p>\n

Before the election, Trump had claimed Moncada was \u201ca communist\u201d and that her victory would hand the country to \u201cMaduro and his narco-terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n

When the release of results was suspended on Monday, Moncada was trailing in a distant third place with 19.16% of the vote. Asfura was on 39.91%, closely followed by Salvador Nasralla, also a rightwinger, on 39.89%.<\/p>\n

Nasralla, an experienced politician and TV host who served as Castro\u2019s vice-president before breaking away to launch his own presidential attempt, was labelled by Trump as a \u201cborderline communist\u201d who was running only to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.<\/p>\n

The electoral court has up to 30 days to announce the outcome. All three candidates have voiced concern about the delay and urged greater speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s not keep the country waiting, on edge,\u201d said Asfura.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras of \u201ctrying to change\u201d the result of the country\u2019s presidential election,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-295147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}