Trump Straight Up Admits He Pardons People to Get Something in Return
When Donald Trump gives, he expects something in return.
The revelation came amid an attack Wednesday night against Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, who Trump apparently believed should have become a Republican after he received a presidential pardon last year.
Speaking at a campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas, Trump insisted that he never expects quid pro quos when it comes to presidential pardons. But he then proved that untrue minutes later.
“I made no deal,” Trump declared, recalling his exchange with Cuellar. “I didn’t say, ‘Oh, I’ll give you the pardons if you turn Republican.’ I didn’t say that. No, I could have done that very easily but—where a crooked politician would have done that.”
“But I thought there would be a good chance that Cuellar might say, ‘Wow, he did something really wonderful, you know, somebody has a heart.’”
The president then suggested Cuellar had been villainized by the Democratic Party and that he would have been welcomed into the Republican Party with open arms “if we asked.”
Just moments afterward, Trump mused about how Cuellar’s daughters had “begged” Trump to pardon their father, and wished that they had used the “same level of charm to convince their mother and father to do the right thing.”
“I guess I expected maybe he wouldn’t run, or maybe he’d run maybe as a Republican, I don’t know,” Trump said.
Trump had shared similar thoughts on Truth Social hours prior when endorsing Cuellar’s opponent. The president accused Cuellar of a “tremendous act of disloyalty” and said Cuellar was an “extremely ungrateful person.”
“Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a long-term jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary,” Trump added.
The FBI raided Cuellar’s home and office in 2022 as part of a federal probe into the Texas Democrat’s ties to Azerbaijan. Cuellar and his wife faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy—including allegations that they improperly accepted $600,000 in bribes from the central Asian country—before Trump intervened. At the time, Trump chalked up the charges to an improper intervention by the Biden administration, suggesting that his predecessor had weaponized the legal system to punish Cuellar for criticizing America’s immigration processes.
