Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) absolutely dismantled ABC’s fake news anchor George Stephanopoulos on live television.
The exchange erupted over President Trump’s newly announced full pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
On November 28, 2025, President Trump announced he would grant a full and complete pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in U.S. court on drug-trafficking and firearms charges.
Hernández, extradited in 2022 and sentenced to 45 years in federal prison, has long argued that the Biden DOJ politically targeted him using the coerced testimony of cartel members tied to Honduras’s radical leftist Libre Party.
Hernández is now scheduled for immediate release.
Hernández himself issued a written statement from prison, which was exclusively obtained by The Gateway Pundit:
“I write to you from a federal penitentiary, unjustly serving a 45-year sentence, effectively a life sentence given my age. Just as you, President Trump, I have suffered political persecution, targeted by the Biden-Harris administration not for any wrongdoing, but for political reasons.
My wrongful conviction is based on the uncorroborated statements of convicted drug traffickers, one of whom even recorded a video exposing senior members of the Honduran radical left party, Libre, discussing bribes with traffickers, yet admitted during my rigged trial that they had no evidence to support their accusations against me, just “the word of a drug trafficker.”
Read more:
EXCLUSIVE: Read Juan Orlando Hernandez’s Heartfelt Letter to President Trump That Secured His Pardon
But none of that mattered to George Stephanopoulos, who instead pushed the same scripted narrative repeated across the media ecosystem.
When asked whether he supported the pardon, Schmitt pivoted to expose Stephanopoulos’ framing for what it was, a coordinated effort to paint Trump as “soft on trafficking” at the very moment he has launched the most aggressive counter-narco-terrorism campaign in U.S. history.
Stephanopoulos attempted a second time to corner Schmitt, but he instead called out ABC’s coordinated effort to distract from overwhelming public support for Trump’s crackdown on cartel terrorists.
Schmitt also dismantled Democrats’ cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.
George Stephanopoulos:
Senator, let me just begin where we left off with. Congressman Schmitt, do you support this pardon of the former Honduran president?Eric Schmitt:
I’m not familiar with the facts or circumstances, but I think what’s telling here is, to try to imply that somehow President Trump is soft on drug smuggling is just ridiculous. It’s totally ridiculous.He’s provided border security like we’ve never seen before. The fact is, these cartels now, because the southern border is closed, they’ve gone to the high seas.
President Trump is acting with his core Article 2 powers. No serious legal expert would doubt that the President has authority to blow narco-terrorists out of the water who are poisoning 100,000 Americans every year.
If you watched the SEC Championship Game yesterday, the Big10 Championship Game — combine those two stadiums with the number of people there — that’s how many people are dying each and every year from the poison that’s coming from these narco-terrorists.
The fact is, George, President Trump has been delegated the authority by Congress to designate terrorist organizations. He’s done that. He sent a letter to Congress saying he was going to initiate these strikes. We’ve had regular briefings about it, including from Secretary of State Rubio, including from high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense. He’s executing those.
Now what we have are Democrats who have such X-ray vision and clairvoyance that they know the intentions of narco-terrorists on boats, yet were so blind that they couldn’t see they had a president for four years who was operating as a vegetable in Joe Biden.
Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical that this isn’t all about politics and trying to take out Secretary Hegseth. That’s what this whole thing has been about, George. They didn’t want him confirmed. They didn’t want a realist in place.
They didn’t want to shift from their pet projects around the world and trying to build democracies in the sands of the Middle East by the barrel of a gun.
We have core national interests at stake — the homeland in the Western Hemisphere and the rise of China. That’s what this administration is focused on.
The Democrats are just upset about that, and they try to create some controversy each and every week, and it goes nowhere.
George Stephanopoulos:
What do you mean you’re not familiar with the facts and circumstances of the pardon? It’s been well-reported all across the country.As the former president of Honduras, he was convicted of conspiring to bring in 400 tons of cocaine into the United States — also guns and other materials. It’s been front-page news across the country. Aren’t you curious about that?
Eric Schmitt:
Well, I’m curious about your pushback on that particular point. With your previous guest, you had zero pushback because he’s giving the Democrat talking points, like you spew every single week — which is probably why your ratings are so bad.But to make the point, what I’m saying is that you’re trying to divert attention from what the American people actually support. Seventy-five percent of Americans support us blowing narco-terrorists out of the water.
WATCH:
JUST IN: Sen. Eric Schmitt EVISCERATES fake news George Stephanopoulos to his face
“You spew Democrat talking points every single week, which is probably why your ratings are so BAD!”
pic.twitter.com/CcRtp7GMos
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 7, 2025
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