{"id":51677,"date":"2025-12-25T01:27:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=51677"},"modified":"2025-12-25T06:28:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T12:28:45","slug":"trump-backed-candidate-asfura-wins-honduras-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=51677","title":{"rendered":"Trump-backed candidate Asfura wins Honduras presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Nasry Asfura has won the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/politics\/elections\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2025 Honduras presidential election,<\/a>&nbsp;delivering victory for the right-of-center National Party of Honduras (PNH) and shifting the political landscape of Central America.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The 40.3% to 39.5% result in favor of Asfura over Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla arrived after the vote-counting process had been delayed for days by technical glitches and claims by other candidates of vote-rigging. Rixi Moncada, the candidate of the ruling LIBRE party, came in a distant third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The results of the race were so tight and the ballot processing system was so chaotic, that about 15% of the tally sheets, which accounted for hundreds of thousands of ballots, had to be counted by hand to determine the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Two electoral council members and one deputy approved the results despite disputes over the razor-thin difference in the vote. A third council member, Marlon Ocha, was not in a video declaring the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Tito Asfura defeats Salvador Nasralla and Rixi Moncada after President Trump&#8217;s repeated endorsements&nbsp;(AP)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;Honduras: I am ready to govern. I will not let you down,&#8221; Asfura said on X after the results were confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The head of the Honduran Congress, though, rejected the results and described them as an &#8220;electoral coup.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;This is completely outside the law,&#8221; Congress President Luis Redondo of the LIBRE party said on X. &#8220;It has no value.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Asfura on X, saying the U.S. &#8220;looks forward to working with his administration to advance prosperity and security in our hemisphere.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Initially, preliminary results on Monday showed Asfura, 67, had won 41% of the ballot, inching him ahead of Nasralla, 72, who had around 39%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">President Donald Trump gestures to supporters during an election night watch party at the State Fairgrounds Feb. 24, 2024.&nbsp;(Win McNamee\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">On Tuesday, the website set up to share vote tallies with the public experienced technical problems and crashed, according to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/honduras-election-trump-vote-count-54881250f5c07df520c9c4e5b1ea6137\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Associated Press.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">With the candidates only having 515 votes between them, a virtual tie and site crash saw President Trump share a post on Truth Social.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;If they do, there will be hell to pay!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">By Thursday, Asfura had 40.05%, about 8,000 votes ahead of Nasralla, who had 39.75%, according to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/americas\/honduras-election-swings-again-conservative-asfura-takes-slim-lead-2025-12-04\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Reuters,<\/a>&nbsp;with the latter then calling for an investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;I publicly denounce that today, at 3:24 a.m., the screen went dark and an algorithm, similar to the one used in 2013, changed the data,&#8221; Nasralla wrote on social media, adding 1,081,000 votes for his party were transferred to Asfura, while 1,073,000 votes for Asfura&#8217;s National Party were attributed to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Rixi Moncada, LIBRE&#8217;s candidate, is a prominent lawyer, financier and former minister of national defense.&nbsp;(Associated Press&nbsp;)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Asfura, nicknamed &#8220;Tito,&#8221; is a former mayor of Tegucigalpa and had entered the race with a reputation for leadership and focus on infrastructure, public order and efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">His win ended a polarized campaign season, with one of the defining moments of the contest being Asfura\u2019s endorsement by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/donald-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Trump.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;If he [Asfura] doesn\u2019t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,&#8221; Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Nov. 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Before the start of voting Nov. 29, Trump also said he would pardon former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who once led the same party as Asfura. Hernandez is serving a 45-year sentence for helping drug traffickers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Nasralla is a high-profile television personality turned politician.&nbsp;(Associated Press&nbsp;)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In the end, the election saw the defeat of centrist former vice president of Honduras,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/ecuadors-presidential-election-goes-runoff-between-conservative-incumbent-leftist-lawyer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nasralla<\/a>&nbsp;and left-wing Moncada, 60, who served under President Xiomara Castro.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Moncada, a prominent lawyer, financier and former minister of national defense, focused on institutional reform and social equity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Nasralla, a high-profile television personality turned politician, mobilized a base but fell short of converting his popularity into a winning coalition. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">He was focusing on cleaning up Honduran corruption. The Honduran presidential race was also impacted by accusations of fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/trump-backed-candidate-asfura-wins-honduras-presidential-election#&amp;_intcmp=fnhpbt3\">foxnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nasry Asfura has won the&nbsp;2025 Honduras presidential election,&nbsp;delivering victory for the right-of-center National Party of Honduras (PNH) and shifting the political landscape of Central America.&nbsp; The 40.3% to 39.5% result in favor of Asfura over Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla arrived after the vote-counting process had been delayed for days by technical glitches and claims [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":51678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[35766,4254,6694],"class_list":["post-51677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-asfura","tag-candidate","tag-honduras"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51679,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51677\/revisions\/51679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}