Trump calls Democratic Rep. Cuellar a “traitor” for not switching parties after the pardon

Donald Trump is angry that Rep. Henry Cuellar is running again as a Democrat instead of switching parties after the president pardoned the Texas congressman and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case.

Trump criticized Cuellar for “this lack of loyalty,” suggesting that the Republican president may have expected clemency to bolster the GOP’s narrow majority in the House ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Read more: Trump pardons Texas Democratic Rep. Cuellar in federal bribery and conspiracy case

Cuellar, in a television interview on Sunday after Trump’s social media post, said he was a conservative Democrat who wanted to work with the administration “to see where we can find common ground.” The congressman said he prayed for the president and the presidency in church that morning “because if the president succeeds, the country succeeds.”

Citing a fellow Texan politician, the late President Lyndon Johnson, Cuellar said he is an American, a Texan, and a Democrat, in that order. “I think anyone who puts party before their country is doing their country a disservice,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Trump noted on his platform, “Truth Social,” that the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden brought the charges against Cuellar, and that the congressman, by running again as a Democrat, continues to work with “the same radical left” that wanted him and his wife imprisoned – “and may still want to!”

“Such a lack of loyalty, which the voters of Texas, and Henry’s daughters, won’t like. Oh, well, next time, there won’t be Mr. Nice Guy!” Trump said. Cuellar’s daughters, Christina and Katherine, sent a letter to Trump in November asking him to pardon their parents.

Trump explained that the pardon he announced on Wednesday was related to stopping an “armed” trial. Cuellar has been an outspoken critic of Biden’s immigration policy, a position that Trump saw as a key alignment with the lawmaker.

Cuellar said he has good relationships within his party. He said: “I think that I and the General Democratic Rally agree together. But they know that I am an independent voice.”

The partisan shift would have been an unexpected bonus for Republicans after the GOP-run Legislature redrawn the state’s congressional districts this year at Trump’s request. The mid-decade Texas maneuver began a scramble to gerrymander across multiple states. Trump is trying to defend the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and avoid a repeat of his first term, when the Democrats took control of the midterm elections in the House of Representatives and used a new majority to frustrate the administration, open investigations, and impeach Trump twice.

However, Cuellar’s South Texas district, which includes parts of the San Antonio metro, was not one of the heavily Democratic areas that Republicans flipped, and Cuellar believes he is still in a good position to win re-election.

Federal authorities accused Cuellar and his wife of accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for the congressman promoting the interests of an Azerbaijani-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar was accused of agreeing to influence pro-Azerbaijan legislation and delivering a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the US House of Representatives.

Cuellar said his wife is innocent. The couple’s trial was scheduled to begin in April.

In an interview with Fox, Cuellar insisted that federal authorities tried to ensnare him “in an operation to try to bribe me, and that failed.”

Cuellar still faces an investigation by the House Ethics Committee.