The day before Honduras elects a new president, the main topics of conversation have suddenly shifted from domestic matters to U.S. President Donald Trump and the former Honduran president he had pardoned.

Trump cannonballed into Honduran politics this week, first endorsing presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura from the conservative National Party and then announcing the pardon of ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández — of the same party — sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison for helping move tons of cocaine.

On Saturday, Hondurans were trying to sort out who would benefit from Trump’s actions and what exactly he was trying to do.

Trump also dismissed the other two leading candidates, Rixi Moncada of the governing social democrat Libre Party and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who he called a “borderline Communist.”

Moncada, the former finance and defense secretary in the outgoing administration of President Xiomara Castro, pounced on the U.S. president’s intervention.

Before she stepped to the podium before cheering supporters, a giant screen played video loops of Hernández’s arrest.

Moncada framed it as Honduras’ organized crime interests and the country’s handful of economically dominant families deciding in the days before the election that their candidates wouldn't be able to beat her, so they went to Washington for help.

It was Castro who had Hernández arrested months after he left office, something Moncada said that Honduras’ powerful economic interests allowed, because he was no longer of use to them.

“What has happened yesterday (the pardon) is a new crime and that new crime we will judge tomorrow (Sunday) at the ballot box,” Moncada said to cheers.

“They will not come back.”

Hernandez has been appealing his conviction and serving time at the U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton, in West Virginia.

Shortly after Trump’s Friday announcement, Hernández’s wife and children gathered on the steps on their home in Tegucigalpa.

Ana García said they had just been able to speak with Hernández and tell him the news.

“He still didn’t know of this news and believe me, when we shared it his voice broke with emotion,” she said.

García thanked Trump, saying that Trump had corrected an injustice, maintaining that Hernández’s prosecution was a coordinated plot by drug traffickers and the “radical left” to seek revenge against the former president.

It was all giving Hondurans a lot to talk about Saturday.

Alexis Ramirez who makes a living shining shoes in the streets of the capital felt that Hernandez’ arrest and extradition was politically motivated.

“They didn't prove anything against him," he said.

Others like electrician Sady Domínguez didn’t understand why Trump was getting involved.

AP video shot by Elmer Martínez