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When President Donald Trump pardoned Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar last week, I noted that, on its face, it made no political sense.
Cuellar, indicted for allegedly accepting bribes from a Mexican bank and an Azerbaijani oil and gas company, was one of Republicans’ top pickup targets in 2026. Sitting in a south Texas district Trump won by 7 points in 2024, Republicans planned to blast Cuellar for his legal problems.
And then the Republican president made them all go away. Whoops!
I speculated at the time that Trump likely got screwed by Cuellar — that the president was expecting his pardon to make the conservative Democrat switch parties but that Cuellar pulled the double cross on Trump by filing to run again as a Democrat.
As always with this president, all we had to do was wait a few days for him to tell us that is exactly what happened.
In a very lengthy Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said the quiet part out loud (pay particular attention to the end):
First of all, the “God was very happy with me that day!” line is a window into Trump’s soul — and how he views salvation — that is worthy of a whole separate post, which I am working on.
But, for the purposes of this post, this is language that really jumped out at me:
“Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced that he will be “running” for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas (a State where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded!), as a Democrat….Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like.”
(Sidebar: Why is “running” in quotes?)
What’s clear is that Trump assumed, wrongly it turns out, that the transactional nature of how he hands out pardons (and governs more generally) was readily apparent to Cuellar.
In Trump’s world, Cuellar would have to switch parties and run as a Republican because a Republican president had pardoned him. Period. That’s the way the world works. I scratch your back and you are very much expected to scratch mine. Or, in the words of philosopher/serial killer Hannibal Lecter:
The Cuellar episode is illustrative of the very simple lens through which Trump sees the presidency (and the world): Everything is a transaction.
Trump is not in the business of doing things out of the goodness of his heart. That’s not a thing for him. If he does or says something, it’s because he wants something. And he expects everyone else to understand that and play by that set of rules.
Every relationship, every move, every decision is motivated by one thing and one thing only: Is this good for me? And by “good” Trump means: Does this make me more money or make me more powerful?
That’s it. It’s that basic. And you don’t even have to believe me! Just scroll back up and read what Trump wrote about Cuellar. It’s all right there!
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