Donald Trump is angry that Representative Henry Cuellar is running again as a Democrat rather than switching parties after the president pardoned the Texas congressman and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case.
Trump blasted Cuellar for “Such a LACK OF LOYALTY,” suggesting the Republican president could expect clemency to bolster the GOP’s narrow House majority heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
Cuellar, in a television interview Sunday after Trump’s social media post, said he was a conservative Democrat willing to work with the administration “to see where we can find common ground.” The Congressman said that he had prayed for the president and the presidency in the church that morning “because if the president succeeds, the country succeeds.”
Quoting fellow Texas politician, the late President Lyndon Johnson, Cuellar said he was an American, a Texan and a Democrat, in that order. “I think anybody who puts party before country is doing their country a disservice,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Trump noted on his Social Truth platform that the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden brought charges against Cuellar and that the congressman, by running again as a Democrat, was continuing to work with “the same RADICAL LEFT” that wanted him and his wife in prison — “And they probably still do!”
“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something the Voters of Texas, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy!” Trump said. Cuellar’s two daughters, Christina and Catherine, had sent a letter to Trump in November asking him to pardon their parents.
Trump explained his pardon he announced Wednesday as a matter of stopping a “weapon” prosecution. Cuellar has been an outspoken critic of Biden’s immigration policy, a position Trump has seen as a key alignment with the lawmaker.
Cuellar said he has good relations within his party. “I think the general Democratic Caucus and I, we get along. But they know I’m an independent voice,” he said.
A party switch would have been an unexpected bonus for Republicans after the GOP-led Legislature redrew the state’s congressional districts this year at Trump’s request. The Texas maneuver began a gerrymandering run in the middle of the decade that plays out in several states. Trump is trying to defend the Republican House majority and avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats dominated the House midterms and used a new majority to disrupt the administration, launch investigations and impeach Trump twice.
However Cuellar’s South Texas district, which includes parts of metro San Antonio, was not one of the Democratic districts that Republicans swung substantially, and Cuellar believes he remains in a good position to win re-election.
Federal authorities had accused Cuellar and his wife of accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for the congressman advancing the interests of an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar was accused of agreeing to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and to make a speech in favor of Azerbaijan on the floor of the US House.
Cuellar said his wife was innocent. The couple’s trial was expected to begin in April.
In the Fox interview, Cuellar insisted that federal authorities tried to catch him in a “sting operation to try to bribe me, and it failed.”
Cuellar is still facing a House Ethics Committee investigation.