In the run-up to the presidential election in Honduras, conservative candidate Nasry Asfura was more than five points behind in the polls. I needed a boost. On November 26, four days before the vote, he got it: a surprise endorsement from President Donald Trump. When The Economist Just before press time, Asfura had a lead of 44,000 votes and his primary opponent was calling for a recount. If his lead holds, Asfura can thank his campaign manager, an Argentinian named Fernando Cerimedo.
This is a political actor who is unknown to most people in Honduras or beyond and is becoming increasingly prominent in the network of strategists surrounding Trump.
He says he coordinated Trump’s contribution Social truth in which he supported Asfura with Dick Morris, a friend and strategist working in Latin America. He believes it gave Asfura’s campaign the boost it needed.
The 44-year-old Cerimedo experienced his first notoriety in Brazil in 2022. He hosted a live broadcast titled “Brazil was stolen” just days after Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist, lost his re-election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In it, he claimed that old voting machines had been manipulated to tilt the votes in favor of Lula.
In doing so, he repeated Bolsonaro’s claims that he made after he failed to win the presidency in the first round of voting in 2018. Bolsonaro’s claims about voting machines ultimately led to his being barred from running for public office. Cerimedo was investigated by Brazilian police but never charged.
His foray into the Latin American right had just begun. I already had a political marketing agency in Buenos Aires, Numen; an associated “training academy”; and a news website, La Derecha Diario, which promoted right-wing and libertarian ideologies. He says his wife encouraged him to join the presidential campaign of up-and-coming conservative lawmaker Javier Milei, whose scathing criticism of the Peronist establishment and its extravagant public spending caused a stir.
He began working on digital media strategy with Santiago Caputo, who remains one of Milei’s main consultants. Cerimedo claims he was the one who encouraged Milei to bring a chainsaw on stage at campaign events as a symbol of his plans to cut spending.
In the run-up to the 2023 election, an unexpected interview request came The Tucker Carlson Showthe American conservative commentator’s podcast. “Fernando immediately said, ‘Dude, I’ll take care of it,'” says Damián Merlo, a consultant in Miami who forwarded Carlson’s request and later joined Milei’s campaign (he also works closely with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele). “Five minutes later he called me. He said, ‘We’re in.'”
Carlson’s interview gave Milei a timely boost. It also made him an international sensation and caught Trump’s attention. “Milei’s interview was great. We couldn’t believe it,” says Merlo. Cerimedo has since distanced himself from Milei after a disagreement with his inner circle, but the Argentine president has developed a close relationship with Trump.
U.S. support was crucial in stopping a run on the peso ahead of Argentina’s midterm elections in October.
The list of places in Latin America that have remained untouched by Cerimedo’s hand is getting smaller and smaller. In 2022, he worked on the campaign to prevent the attempt to introduce a controversial left-wing constitution in Chile. Numen Academy graduates include Catalina Paz, daughter of Bolivia’s new president, Rodrigo Paz. She now advises her father’s government. Cerimedo also worked on the media strategy for that campaign, helping Paz to a victory amid the turmoil in Bolivian politics that distanced the country from the left-wing forces of MAS for the first time in two decades.
Cerimedo continues to work with Paz as a senior advisor, commuting between Bolivia, Honduras and his home in Buenos Aires.
The Latin American left calls him the “Prince of Darkness.” Cerimedo says it does not use “troll farms” or conduct smear campaigns through “bot” accounts. Instead, he says, he simply monitors online conversations and then uses that information to influence public opinion with personalized messages.
He attributes his success in part to his business partner Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, who runs the technical side of Numen. Cerimedo denies allegations of shady operations and invites journalists to his modern Buenos Aires office in the Puerto Madero district. “He doesn’t shy away from it because he’s not doing anything illegal and nothing is wrong,” Merlo said.
Cerimedo also has its limits. He says he was not involved in Trump’s pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras. Hernández was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking when he was released on December 1. “The pardon was a surprise,” he says, adding that Asfura’s campaign felt it could hurt his chances. Sometimes Trump surprises even his most committed supporters.
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