Post from Truth Social

A template post carrying a personal video

The written text uses the endorsement template that went out at least six times on 2026-09-18 (Whatley, Ricketts, Husted, Garrity, De La Cruz, and now Tijerina). Each one reads "has my Complete and Total Endorsement ... HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN! President DONALD J. TRUMP". Only the name and office change. It was posted at 18:29 UTC, which is 2:29 pm Eastern. Trump was most likely in Washington, between the Ireland trip and the Xi state visit prep. A mid-afternoon slot inside a batch of identical posts points to staff doing the posting.

The attached video is different. It is Trump speaking to camera, and the transcript leaves no doubt about that: "I gave him a pardon because I thought he was treated unfairly." It starts out as a scripted ad. "Tano is a true American patriot, a highly respected judge, and a very successful businessman and rancher" reads like prepared copy, and so does the list of votes on taxes, farmers, the border, the military and the Second Amendment. Then he departs from the script in ways staff wouldn't write. "He is so law and order conscious, he's going to be great" is an added line. The endorsement closes on "He is my complete and total support, commitment, and endorsement," where "has" has turned into "is" and one noun has become three. In short, the post text is an aide product and the voice in the video is his, partly improvised.

The pardon he keeps explaining

The core of the clip is not Tijerina. Trump brings up the opponent, Henry Cuellar, and then twice explains his own decision to pardon him. First: "I gave him a pardon because I thought he was treated unfairly, but he's not good, a real total disaster." Later, after moving through tax votes and culture-war votes, he comes back to it unprompted: "And the reason I gave him the pardon was because as bad as he is, he was treated really unfairly, and so was his wife. And I felt, frankly, very sorry for their daughters who wrote me a letter. And I said, I have to do the right thing." He then notices the detour himself: "Getting back to Tano."

What this shows psychologically is a grievance that hasn't been put to rest. After the December 2025 pardon, Cuellar filed for re-election as a Democrat, and Trump publicly criticized his lack of loyalty at the time. Nine months later, a campaign ad that could have attacked Cuellar in one sentence spends about a quarter of its length defending the act of mercy. Three defenses show up, each with its own wording:

• Rationalization keeps the self-image as a fair-minded benefactor intact: "I have to do the right thing."
• Splitting runs through the same sentences. Cuellar is "not respected at all," "a real total disaster from every standpoint," and "a puppet for the radical left communist," yet he was also "treated really unfairly." The two sides are never reconciled. The unfair treatment is a finding about the Biden DOJ, and the disaster is a finding about Cuellar. That split lets Trump keep both his generosity and his contempt.
• Devaluation of the ungrateful recipient does the rest. "But he shouldn't be a congressman" turns the pardon into a favor that was wasted, not one that was mistaken.

The narrative is a small contamination sequence: a good deed ("I felt, frankly, very sorry for their daughters") followed by ingratitude, with Trump cast as the magnanimous figure who was let down. The intensity stays low. There are no capitals in the video, no threat, and no call to punish Cuellar beyond voting him out. That points to maintenance of a narrative about fairness more than to a fresh injury.

Who gets called communist

The attack on Cuellar moves from specific votes to identity. It ends with "He will fight the communists, the Democrats, the same thing, frankly, who want to ruin your life and ruin everything around you and ruin our country." Equating "the Democrats" with "the communists" is a routine device for Trump, and it is set up as a false dichotomy: one side stands for "Texas values," the other wants to "ruin your life." "Voted in favor of child sexual mutilization" uses his standard pejorative for gender-affirming care. "He thinks it's fine" credits Cuellar with a belief that no vote shows. None of this names an act or target beyond the ballot box. "Fight" is the language of an election contest, and the danger assessment rests on that: the only action requested is to "go out and vote" on November 3rd.

Within the week's context, this post is one of a daily batch in the midterm stretch. The archetype is the King handing out patronage: endorsement as a personal gift ("my complete and total support"), set against a man who once got a royal pardon and then crossed him.

Language in the clip

Reading the transcript needs caution. "Tiarena" and "to the arena" are almost certainly speech-to-text renderings of "Tijerina," and "week on the border" is "weak." "Mutilization" could be a transcription artifact or his own blend of "mutilation," so it gets little weight. What survives the caution is structural. The pardon digression returns once after he has left it, he flags his own tangent with "Getting back to Tano," and the closing line slips from "has" to "is." These are mild features, consistent with his long-standing extemporaneous style when he leaves a script. On their own they show no change from baseline.

Where the facts land

Since Trump is the speaker in the video, his factual assertions there are his own. The pardon and the Biden-era indictment hold up. The vote claims are weaker. Cuellar voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included the tips and overtime deductions, so "voted against no tax on tips" describes a party-line vote on the whole package. The bill never eliminated tax on Social Security. It added a temporary senior deduction, so the third item describes a provision that did not exist. The sports claim is backwards for the recent vote: in January 2025, Cuellar was one of two House Democrats who voted for the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. The copy describing Tijerina's record as county judge (property taxes, health care) is campaign material that can't be checked from here, and Trump is reading it as written.

Fact Verification

• Dec 17, 2025, H.R. 3492, the Protect Children's Innocence Act. Marjorie Taylor Greene's bill makes it a federal crime to perform gender transition procedures on minors. It passed 216-211. Cuellar voted yea, one of only three Democrats to do so, with Vicente Gonzalez and Don Davis (House Clerk roll call 351).
• Dec 18, 2025, H.R. 498, the Do No Harm in Medicaid Act, which bars Medicaid funding for those procedures for minors. It passed 215-201. Cuellar voted yea, one of four Democrats (roll call 362).
• July 13, 2023, the Rosendale amendment to the FY2024 NDAA, which barred TRICARE and the Pentagon from covering or providing transition surgery and hormones. It was adopted 222-211. Cuellar was the only House Democrat to vote aye (roll call 301).
• Dec 11, 2024, the final FY2025 NDAA, which ended TRICARE coverage of gender dysphoria treatment for minors. It passed 281-140, and Cuellar was among the 81 Democrats voting yes (per Erin in the Morning's roll list and Roll Call's party breakdown).
• July 21, 2026, Nancy Mace's amendment to the FY2027 NDAA barring TRICARE coverage of gender-related medical treatment. It was adopted 219-208, and Cuellar was one of five Democrats voting aye (roll call 267).

LGBTQ outlets (The Advocate, Erin in the Morning, Truthout) have singled Cuellar out as a repeat Democratic defector on exactly these votes.

Only three votes could be stretched toward the claim, and none holds up:

• He voted with every other Democrat for the motions to recommit on H.R. 3492 and H.R. 498 (roll calls 350 and 361). These are procedural votes to send a bill back to committee, and he then voted for both bills on passage.
• He voted against the House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on May 22, 2025 (roll call 145, all 212 Democrats no). That version carried a Medicaid and CHIP funding ban on transition procedures. The Senate parliamentarian struck the ban, so it never became law, and voting no on a tax-and-spending package is not a vote in favor of the procedures.
• He voted for the 2021 Equality Act (roll call 39), a general anti-discrimination bill that says nothing about medical care for minors.

The line reads as boilerplate. The Eric Flores endorsement video, posted seconds later in the same batch, uses the identical sentence about Vicente Gonzalez, whose record on these bills matches Cuellar's.

Every direct floor vote on the subject shows Cuellar voting to restrict or criminalize the care Trump describes, often as the lone Democrat or one of a handful. The claim inverts his record. | | "The election is on November 3rd." | True | The 2026 U.S. general election is on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. |

Overall Veracity: 53%