There is nothing quite like pardoning a guy and then watching him file paperwork to run against your preferred candidate. President Trump is experiencing that exact scenario with Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, and he is not pleased about it, as The American Tribune reported.
Cuellar, the Democrat representing Texas' 28th District since 2005, and his wife were accused of taking nearly $600,000 in bribes and laundering the money, according to The Hill. They were facing up to 20 years in prison before Trump granted them a full and unconditional pardon. The president says he did it largely because Cuellar's two daughters wrote him letters that moved him, and because he believed the Biden administration had weaponized the justice system against Cuellar over his border security stance.
Now Cuellar has won the Democratic primary in March 2026 and is headed to the general election this November. Trump apparently assumed the man would quietly ride off into the sunset of not being in prison. Instead, Cuellar dusted off his campaign signs.
Trump took to Truth Social to express his feelings in the way only he can, which is to say, at considerable length. "Nobody knows Henry Cuellar better than Donald J. Trump. I studied his records, learned about his financing, and listened to his two wonderful daughters beg me to help the mother and father that they love," the president wrote.
He described Cuellar's border views as basically a watered down version of his own. "He was a weak and incompetent version of me, who wanted the Border closed to criminals, drug dealers, people from mental institutions and, above all, murderers and heavy handed criminals," Trump wrote. That is quite a compliment if you squint hard enough.
Trump acknowledged Cuellar's immigration positions were better than most Democrats but still not up to snuff. "Henry's views on these subjects were not strong, but they were better than other Democrats," he wrote.
The president then announced he is backing Judge Tano Tijerina for the seat, describing him as "much more powerful on the Border issue, cutting Taxes, our Military, and just about everything else than is Henry Cuellar."
You have to admire the audacity of running for office as a Democrat after a Republican president personally kept you out of prison. It takes a special kind of confidence to accept the biggest favor of your life and then immediately do the one thing your benefactor would find most annoying. Cuellar looked at 20 years of freedom and thought, you know what would go great with this? A competitive congressional race against the guy who gave it to me.
Trump called it disloyalty. Others might call it the most awkward thank you card in political history.
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