MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
How to square the following two facts? One, the Trump administration is escalating its campaign against drug cartels. It is blowing up boats in the Caribbean that it says are involved in narcotrafficking. Two, President Trump has just pardoned a former president of Honduras, a man convicted in the United States of drug-trafficking charges. The former Honduran president is Juan Orlando Hernandez. He was serving a 45-year sentence for conspiring to import cocaine to the U.S. Now he's been released from a West Virginia prison.
So what is the Trump administration drug strategy and how does pardoning an ex-leader convicted of drug trafficking help to advance it? Questions we're going to put now to Todd Robinson. He was assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs in the Biden administration, also a former ambassador to Guatemala. Ambassador, welcome.
TODD ROBINSON: Hi. Thank you for having me.
KELLY: How are you making sense of this timing? As we noted, in one moment President Trump is authorizing strikes against boats he says are carrying drugs, and then the next minute he's pardoning a former head of state convicted in a U.S. court of drug trafficking.
ROBINSON: Frankly, I'm finding it hard to understand what to make of this. It's clear that Juan Orlando Hernandez's party is a party that this administration feels comfortable with. But the idea that you're going to raise the stakes in the Caribbean and play Whac-A-Mole really against boats that are hardly a threat to the United States and then on the - at the same time, free a convicted felon who actually did traffic drugs to the United States, I find it confounding.
KELLY: Is it clear to you what the motive here is, what President Trump gets out of pardoning Hernandez?
ROBINSON: It's not clear to me, except for the fact that he probably thinks he's helping the party that he supports in Honduras' recent elections. But beyond that, I just don't - I don't understand it. I don't see it.
KELLY: So if we are searching for a coherent strategy to counter illegal drugs, where does the last week or two of these recent events - where does - where are we left?
ROBINSON: Well, I think your question has the primary word in it - coherent. I don't see a coherent strategy. A coherent strategy would involve not blowing up boats, but actually boarding them, arresting those involved, collecting evidence and intelligence on the boat and working your way through the networks that are involved in narcotics trafficking. It would seem to me that you would look more closely at the trafficking that's going through Central America, up through Mexico, through our southern border, where we know this is happening. And at the same time, you're going after those networks in the Caribbean. What they're doing now, I - frankly, I don't understand.
KELLY: So big picture, what is your understanding of why the U.S. has amassed an armada off the coast of Venezuela and is blowing up boats there that they say are involved in drug smuggling? What's the goal?
ROBINSON: They're clearly trying to put more pressure on President Maduro. Well, I should say erstwhile President Maduro because he actually lost the last election.
KELLY: Although he remains in power. Yep.
ROBINSON: Although he remains in power. Exactly. But I think they're trying to put pressure on him to leave - to leave Venezuela. The problem, of course, is it's not just Maduro. If he leaves and he leaves behind his cronies to continue to rule in Venezuela, then you're just changing one problem for another.
KELLY: Ambassador, to those who may be listening and thinking, hey, this guy served in the Biden administration, he's going to be critical of anything that President Trump and his allies do, you say what?
ROBINSON: I say I spent almost 40 years working at the State Department on behalf of the American people and the United States. My first president was Ronald Reagan, my first secretary of state was George Shultz, and I've worked proudly for all of those administrations. And I worked proudly for the Trump administration in 2018, when he sent me to Venezuela.
KELLY: Todd Robinson, former assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Ambassador Robinson, thank you.
ROBINSON: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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