Not content with exerting his influence to urge voters in Honduras’s presidential election to choose his favored candidate, U.S. President Donald Trump went further, making baseless claims that the vote count appeared to be fraudulent. Experts said, “The United States has covertly intervened in elections around the world for decades,” adding, “But no president has interfered as brazenly and openly as Trump.”

On the 1st (local time), President Trump posted on social media, “It looks like Honduras is trying to change the presidential election result. The vote count was halted at the moment when (Nasry) Tito Asfura was narrowly ahead,” adding, “If that happens, (Honduras) will pay a tremendous price.”

Earlier, on the 26th of last month, President Trump wrote on social media that the people of Honduras should elect Asfura, the right-wing National Party candidate, stating, “He is the true and only friend of freedom.” He also announced that he would pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (57), who is serving a 45-year sentence in the United States after a conviction for drug trafficking. Hernandez hails from the same party as candidate Asfura.

The New York Times (NYT) noted that following President Trump’s endorsement, Asfura managed to catch up to Salvador Nasralla, who had been in first place. With 57% of the votes counted, Asfura is ahead of Nasralla by only a few hundred ballots.

Given the extremely small margin, a reversal at any time would not be surprising; however, with President Trump raising allegations of electoral fraud, if Asfura loses, a refusal to accept the results cannot be ruled out. Honduras’s electoral commission explained that the pause in counting occurred because the system went down, causing a temporary interruption in tabulation.

Honduras is not the only case of President Trump interfering in another country’s election. In Argentina’s general election held in October, when his preferred leader, Argentine President Javier Milei, came under political pressure, President Trump threatened that the promised $20 billion in bailout funds would not be disbursed unless Milei’s Liberty Advances Party won. As a result, Liberty Advances succeeded in pulling off a dramatic turnaround.

In Poland’s presidential election in June, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared, “European leaders are weak,” and publicly endorsed Karol Nawrocki, then a far-right party candidate. President Trump himself bolstered him by inviting Nawrocki to the White House during the campaign. In addition, Vice President J.D. Vance lent support ahead of Germany’s general election by meeting with Alice Weidel, co-leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD).

In fact, U.S. meddling in foreign elections is nothing new. In a 2021 book, political scientist Dov Levin analyzed that the United States has intervened in overseas elections more than 80 times since World War II. Experts note, however, that whereas past interventions were covert operations by the CIA, President Trump differs in that he uses social media to openly tell people to vote for ‘my friend’.

Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told AFP, “During the Cold War, the United States covertly supported certain candidates for geopolitical reasons, but President Trump seems to believe there are friends in the world whom he wants to help.” Unlike in the past, this suggests motivations that are personal rather than strategic.

Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP that President Trump’s election interference is “a sustained attempt to reinforce a rightward shift that is already gaining strength (globally).” In Venezuela, where he cannot influence the election, Trump is weighing the use of military force to remove leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.

Carothers said, “Many European leaders may wish for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to lose the next election, but they would not act like President Trump,” adding that a country using election-interference tactics similar to Trump’s would be “probably Russia.”