President Donald Trump went after Rep. Henry Cuellar for remaining a Democrat after receiving a presidential pardon on a Truth Social post. Trump said the Texas congressman should have joined the Republican Party, and he called Cuellar “a LOSER.”
Mediaite pointed out that the message landed shortly before Trump took the stage at a rally in San Antonio. He was heckled numerous times during that appearance. In the post, he also threw his support behind Cuellar’s Republican challenger, Tano Tijerina.
Cuellar was indicted in 2024 by the Biden Department of Justice. The charges were bribery, money laundering, and unlawful foreign influence. Prosecutors alleged that he took bribes from a gas company controlled by the government of Azerbaijan and from a bank in Mexico city.
The pardon and Trump’s case against staying a Democrat
Trump pardoned Cuellar in December. The congressman is a moderate Democrat. Trump has claimed Cuellar was singled out because he had criticized the Biden administration.
Trump said he expected a party switch after the pardon and was angry when it did not happen. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, so a change of party by Cuellar would have been a potentially consequential move.
Addressing Texans, Trump wrote that he was on his way and would “pay respect” to Tijerina. He said Tijerina, “out of love and passion,” is “running against a Dumocrat, Henry Cuellar, who, along with his wife, I pardoned, at the request of his daughters, because they said, ‘Please don’t let them take our parents away!'”
Trump said the couple “would have gone to jail on federal fraud and conspiracy charges, for over 20 years.” He added that “Henry Cuellar’s brother, a Sheriff, a short time later, was indicted on the same charges.”
He wrote that he “did the pardons, and made no deal, where a crooked politician would have,” but thought there was “a good chance that Cuellar, who was persecuted by Democrats because they didn’t like him, would have routinely gone over to the Republican Party – The people that saved him from years in prison.”
According to Trump, Cuellar said only a few days later that he would stay a Democrat. Trump has not held back in criticizing those he feels have let him down, as when he joked about Ken Paxton’s demeanor at the GOP convention but still urged Texans to elect him.
Trump wrote that many saw that as “a tremendous act of disloyalty” and that it “showed him to be an extremely ungrateful person.” He said he had heard that Cuellar’s wife “wanted him to turn to the man and the Party that helped him, but he wouldn’t do it.”
Trump warned that “because they’re vicious, the Dumocrats will have a chance to go after him again.” He called Tijerina “a STAR” who “hopefully, will WIN,” and described the contest as “payback for a disloyal and ungrateful person, a person whose life has been saved only to go back into the clutches of the people that tried so hard to destroy him.”
He ended with the line that matched his attack: “Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a longterm jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary.”
At the San Antonio rally afterward, Trump campaigned for Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. Paxton’s standing in the race has drawn scrutiny, as he privately said Trump’s GOP convention hurt him and dropped our numbers. Trump had endorsed Paxton in the Republican primary against Sen. John Cornyn. Polls show Paxton trailing his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico. No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994.
Published: Oct 8, 2026 06:40 am