Trump-backed candidate Asfura wins Honduras presidential election

Fox News Flash top headlines for December 24 Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on FoxNews.com. Nasry Asfura has won the 2025 Honduras presidential election, delivering victory for the right-of-center National Party of Honduras (PNH) and shifting the political landscape of Central America. 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. 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. 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. TRUMP PLANS 'FULL AND COMPLETE PARDON' FOR FORMER HONDURAN PRESIDENT CONVICTED OF DRUG TRAFFICKING Tito Asfura defeats Salvador Nasralla and Rixi Moncada after President Trump's repeated endorsements (AP) "Honduras: I am ready to govern. I will not let you down," Asfura said on X after the results were confirmed. The head of the Honduran Congress, though, rejected the results and described them as an "electoral coup." "This is completely outside the law," Congress President Luis Redondo of the LIBRE party said on X. "It has no value." Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Asfura on X, saying the U.S. "looks forward to working with his administration to advance prosperity and security in our hemisphere." Initially, preliminary results on Monday showed Asfura, 67, had won 41% of the ballot, inching him ahead of Nasralla, 72, who had around 39%. THE RESULTS ARE IN: 2025'S BIGGEST WINNER AND LOSERS FROM THE OFF-YEAR ELECTIONS President Donald Trump gestures to supporters during an election night watch party at the State Fairgrounds Feb. 24, 2024. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) On Tuesday, the website set up to share vote tallies with the public experienced technical problems and crashed, according to The Associated Press. With the candidates only having 515 votes between them, a virtual tie and site crash saw President Trump share a post on Truth Social. "Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election," he wrote. "If they do, there will be hell to pay!" By Thursday, Asfura had 40.05%, about 8,000 votes ahead of Nasralla, who had 39.75%, according to Reuters, with the latter then calling for an investigation. "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," Nasralla wrote on social media, adding 1,081,000 votes for his party were transferred to Asfura, while 1,073,000 votes for Asfura's National Party were attributed to him. FORMER MISS VENEZUELA BLAMES 'SOCIALISM AND OPEN BORDERS' FOR...

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