Speaker 1: Alson Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to It could happen here a podcast
Speaker 2: about things falling apart in this week, podcast about Agenda
Speaker 2: forty seven, Donald Trump's plan for you know, what to
Speaker 2: do if he winds up winning re election and being
Speaker 2: back in all of our lives in the sense of
Speaker 2: having political power as opposed to just back in all
Speaker 2: of our lives, because he never shuts the hell up,
Speaker 2: and neither do any of the journalists who report on him.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about that all week. You've been listening
Speaker 2: to the episodes put together one of my colleagues. Today,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be talking about Trump's border policy, particularly
Speaker 2: has promised to declare war on the cartels and use
Speaker 2: the United States military to attack them. Before we get
Speaker 2: into it, I do want to note, if you notice
Speaker 2: this sounds a little bit different. I am in Texas currently.
Speaker 2: My father has leukemia. He's being treated for on chemo
Speaker 2: in the hospital. Just finished came out actually, but anyway,
Speaker 2: I had to fly down to Texas last minute, and
Speaker 2: I'm not recording this in my normal space. We should
Speaker 2: be back to normal, you know, very soon here. But
Speaker 2: I just wanted to explain if if you think it
Speaker 2: sounds different. It's not me fucking something up. I just
Speaker 2: had to fly across the country. So let's talk about
Speaker 2: Agenda forty seven and the cartels. Back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, when I was still a baby and in
Speaker 2: fact in Dallas, Texas, as i am right now, I
Speaker 2: worked as the secretary for a financial planner named Al Jones.
Speaker 2: I was bad at this job, and I didn't really
Speaker 2: know much about financial planning then, but I have since
Speaker 2: come to suspect that Al was not great at his
Speaker 2: job either. The first sign at this might have been
Speaker 2: the fact that when I took the job, Al got
Speaker 2: excited because I mentioned during our little interview that I
Speaker 2: wanted to be a writer someday and he was like,
Speaker 2: I'm a novelist, and I was like, or a financial planner.
Speaker 2: And then he hands me a copy of his self
Speaker 2: published novel Operation night Watch. Now, the plot to this
Speaker 2: motherfucker was barkingly mad. Spurred on by an epidemic of
Speaker 2: inner city violence. The government sent in a team of
Speaker 2: special Forces guys to take on the criminals. I think
Speaker 2: it's the government who sends them. They may just be
Speaker 2: a bunch like Green Berets and Navy seals who decide
Speaker 2: to fight crime on their own. It's been a while
Speaker 2: since I read the thing. I'm trying to have a
Speaker 2: hardcover delivered to me, but there's not a lot of
Speaker 2: them left, so you may get to hear more from
Speaker 2: this book. But anyway, the idea of this is that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's all of these very much racially coded criminals in
Speaker 2: the streets making life too dangerous for regular people, these
Speaker 2: evil drug dealers and robbers, and we just need our
Speaker 2: special forces guys to murder them, right. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of uncomfortable fetishization of brutal violence from this very
Speaker 2: mild mannered seeming dude who mostly held meetings at Texas
Speaker 2: roadhouses with old people to try to get them to
Speaker 2: invest in annuities or whatever a split annuity is. I've
Speaker 2: since forgotten so again, obviously, even at that point in time,
Speaker 2: mostly having lived either in the country the suburbs, I
Speaker 2: had spent enough time in Dallas to know that his
Speaker 2: description of inner city life was not precisely accurate. But
Speaker 2: what I remember most about the book is that it
Speaker 2: wasn't even really a story. It was and talking to
Speaker 2: Al made this clear. A literal description of the policy
Speaker 2: he wanted to see. The thin characters that he included
Speaker 2: in the story were basically just there to help dress
Speaker 2: up what was again a policy proposal, and that policy was,
Speaker 2: we should use the US military to kill quote unquote
Speaker 2: drug dealers. Right now, over the last fifteen years or so,
Speaker 2: mainstream Republican policy has actually caught up to my old boss,
Speaker 2: and now President Trump has included in Agenda forty seven
Speaker 2: a promise to invade Mexico with US special forces. That's
Speaker 2: not the extent of the promise. We will be talking
Speaker 2: about that all through this fun episode. On Deceiver twenty second,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, the Trump campaign uploaded a page titled
Speaker 2: President Donald J. Trump declares War on Cartels to his
Speaker 2: campaign website. And I don't know about you, guys, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sick in the motherfucker's voice, So I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: read how this opens. But if you go to the website,
Speaker 2: you can listen to him say this if that makes
Speaker 2: you happier. The drug cartels are waging war on America,
Speaker 2: and it's now time for America to wage war on
Speaker 2: the cartels. In this war, Joe Biden has cited against
Speaker 2: the United States and with the cartels. They're making more
Speaker 2: money than they've ever made before. Times ten. There's never
Speaker 2: been anything like it. They're major, major companies. They're bigger
Speaker 2: than even some of our biggest companies. Biden's open border
Speaker 2: policies are a deadly betrayal of our nation. He's definitely
Speaker 2: got a unique diction. Yet you know, Trump came up
Speaker 2: with that one more or less on his own. Didn't
Speaker 2: need to be scripted.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Trump goes on to state after this that when he
Speaker 2: is president again, the United States government will treat cartels
Speaker 2: the same way they treated Isis, which you might recall
Speaker 2: still exists and recently carried out an attack in Russia.
Speaker 2: Republicans might note that this attack was by Isis k
Speaker 2: or Isis Kruson, which is true. And boy, howdie does
Speaker 2: Afghanistan come back into the story in a little bit.
Speaker 2: So just keep that in mind. But first let's continue
Speaker 2: with Trump. He claims that under his presidency we had
Speaker 2: a quote very very strong border and in fact, the
Speaker 2: strongest border in the history of the country, and quote
Speaker 2: drugs were at a low for forty five years. Now,
Speaker 2: it's important to fact check things that both Joe Biden
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump say the use the diction he uses
Speaker 2: here does make fact checking slightly difficult. The strongest border
Speaker 2: kind of a meaningless term, right, But the claim about
Speaker 2: drugs being at a low for forty five years can
Speaker 2: be fact checked to some degree, although again his approach
Speaker 2: to grammar makes it hard to tell what he's claiming here. Right,
Speaker 2: is drugs at a low for forty five years? Mean,
Speaker 2: like drug use is at a low, drug smuggling is
Speaker 2: at a low? I don't know. He has made variations
Speaker 2: of this claim often, though, including a note on his
Speaker 2: campaign website in January twenty twenty three that under his presidency, quote,
Speaker 2: drug overdose deaths decline nationwide for the first time in
Speaker 2: nearly thirty years. So let's assume that that's kind of
Speaker 2: what he meant to claim, that drug overdose deaths were
Speaker 2: the lowest they've been for forty five for forty five years, right,
Speaker 2: which is again, I mean, it's just wrong on its
Speaker 2: face because earlier he said for thirty years, So like,
Speaker 2: which is it? Donald? But whatever, Let's say that what
Speaker 2: he meant to claim is that under his presidency, drug
Speaker 2: overdose deaths were at the lowest point in a long time. Right,
Speaker 2: If we're being fair. That's the fairest I could be
Speaker 2: to him. And it is true that the overdose death
Speaker 2: rate dropped during Trump's presidency for one year eighteen. That's
Speaker 2: the only year that it dropped. During each of the
Speaker 2: other three years he was in office, the overdose rate rose,
Speaker 2: and in fact, it rose by record numbers in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: PolitiFact also notes quote looking at overdose deaths from synthetic opioids,
Speaker 2: the closely watched category that accounts for the largest share
Speaker 2: of all opioid overdose deaths, the rate rose every year
Speaker 2: of Trump's presidency. This is worth noting because all of
Speaker 2: the things he wants to do at the border to
Speaker 2: the cartels, all of his justifications for really needing to
Speaker 2: crack down on human trafficking, for wanting to use the
Speaker 2: Navy seals or whatever to kill cartel guys to basically
Speaker 2: invade Mexico, it's to stop fentonl which he describes as
Speaker 2: an existential threat to the country. And you know, makes
Speaker 2: the claim that basically when I was president, you know,
Speaker 2: all that stuff was where we were taking care of it,
Speaker 2: it was all all declining, and then when Biden took over,
Speaker 2: it got a lot worse, No, the rate of finnyl use,
Speaker 2: wrote in Finyl related deaths in particular rose every single
Speaker 2: year of Trump's presidency, every single year anyway, Trump promises
Speaker 2: no mercy to the cartels and that he will designate
Speaker 2: the major Ones foreign terrorist organizations with the goal of
Speaker 2: cutting off their access to global financial systems. Incidentally, this
Speaker 2: would provide a pretext to basically charging every drug user,
Speaker 2: whether or not their drugs had anything to do with
Speaker 2: a cartel, with material support of a terrorist organization, and
Speaker 2: thus allow night marrish penalties for people caught dealing weed
Speaker 2: or LSD or whatever, on the justification that they're aiding
Speaker 2: the cartels with whom we are at war. Trump also
Speaker 2: states that he will ask Congress to pass legislation to
Speaker 2: allow the death penalty for quote drug smugglers and human traffickers. Now,
Speaker 2: He's made similar statements around drug dealers in the past.
Speaker 2: Here's how this particular rant on the Agenda forty seven
Speaker 2: website ends. The drug cartels and their allies and the
Speaker 2: Biden administration have the blood of countless millions on their hands.
Speaker 2: Millions and millions of families and people are being destroyed.
Speaker 2: When I am back in the White House, the drug
Speaker 2: king and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again. We
Speaker 2: did it once, and we did it better than anyone else.
Speaker 2: There's never been a better border than we had just
Speaker 2: two years ago. It was strong, it was powerful, and
Speaker 2: it was respected all over the world. And now we're
Speaker 2: laughed at all over the world. And we're not going
Speaker 2: to let that happen much longer. We have to take over.
Speaker 2: We have to be tough, and we have to be smart,
Speaker 2: we have to be fair. But if we don't do
Speaker 2: something immediately, our country is gone. Now that's all ridiculous,
Speaker 2: but it behooves us to look into the origins of
Speaker 2: this particular violent fantasy. When President Trump was still in office,
Speaker 2: he repeatedly floated variations of a single idea using US
Speaker 2: missiles to destroy so called drug factories, specifically those producing
Speaker 2: either fentanyl or methamphetamine. Obviously, cartels do operate sizable facilities
Speaker 2: and where they prepare drugs for smuggling and sale. They
Speaker 2: have places where they cut fentanyl, which generally comes from elsewhere,
Speaker 2: into other drugs, or make it into pills, etc. And
Speaker 2: they've got places where meth is cooked. Obviously, so as
Speaker 2: best as the New York Times has been able to trace.
Speaker 2: His obsession with military action against Mexico seems to have
Speaker 2: started in late twenty nineteen. So while the coronavirus is spreading,
Speaker 2: our president, rather than focusing on a response, it's kind
Speaker 2: of obsessed with the fentanyl crisis, which is serious. But
Speaker 2: his way of dealing with it was to hold these constant,
Speaker 2: large oval office meetings that people absolutely had to attend.
Speaker 2: Quote some part tennsis from the New York Times. Some
Speaker 2: participants felt the meetings were of little use because officials
Speaker 2: tended to perform for mister Trump, and he would perform
Speaker 2: for them. And that does put the fun idea in
Speaker 2: my head of Donald Trump and a bunch of friends
Speaker 2: all dancing about like, I don't know whatever kind of
Speaker 2: animal you would train to dance. I'm spacing on that
Speaker 2: right now. So why don't we just roll to ads
Speaker 2: for a second. Well, I think of animals. We're back
Speaker 2: to continue that quote from the New York Times. When
Speaker 2: the idea of military intervention was brought up at one
Speaker 2: such meeting, mister Trump turned to Brett Geroor, who was
Speaker 2: there in his role as the US Assistant Secretary for Health.
Speaker 2: Mister Gerrore was also a four star admiral in the
Speaker 2: Commission Corps of the US Public Health Service, and he
Speaker 2: was wearing his dress uniform. His main point was that
Speaker 2: the United States was unable to combat the crisis with
Speaker 2: treatment alone. According to a person briefed on his comments,
Speaker 2: it was clear from the way mister Trump singled out
Speaker 2: mister Gerror that he had mistakenly thought he was in
Speaker 2: the military because of his dress uniform. According to two
Speaker 2: participants in the meeting, mister Geror, in his response, suggested
Speaker 2: putting lead to target. The two participants recalled that seems likely.
Speaker 2: Gerroor denies this right. He claims, well, the President knows
Speaker 2: me really well. We met all the time. He would
Speaker 2: never mistake me for a soldier. And like, sure, buddy.
Speaker 2: For one thing, I totally believe he could meet with
Speaker 2: Trump regularly and Trump not remember him. But also, it
Speaker 2: kind of sounds assume I mean again, and these are
Speaker 2: all maybe not the best sources, but assume the people
Speaker 2: who are like he said we should put lead to
Speaker 2: target are telling the truth. That sounds to me like
Speaker 2: this guy wearing his uniform because he knows it'll impress.
Speaker 2: Trump was also trying to use military metaphors because he
Speaker 2: I think maybe was just trying to have this impact
Speaker 2: on Trump, right, make Trump think of him as like
Speaker 2: a military official giving advice. There's some claims that people
Speaker 2: in the administration were so concerned about this and were
Speaker 2: so terrified that like Trump might actually attack Mexico that
Speaker 2: they asked Jeror to stop wearing his uniform to meetings,
Speaker 2: basically being like, he's hypnotized by this shit man, Like
Speaker 2: if you dress like a soldier, he'll take you seriously
Speaker 2: when you say this crazy bullshit. Anyway, at the same
Speaker 2: time this is all going on, Attorney General William Barr
Speaker 2: had also started floating the idea to the President that
Speaker 2: maybe the United States should consider carrying out some attacks
Speaker 2: in Mexico to kill cartel guys to stop the fentanyl.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: His argument though, was not so much that we should
Speaker 2: do it, but that if we threaten Mexi with military action,
Speaker 2: that will force the Mexican government to be more aggressive
Speaker 2: against the cartels. Now, William Barr is not a guy
Speaker 2: I consider very smart, and this is in fact a
Speaker 2: dumb idea because like Mexico's government has tried a bunch
Speaker 2: of different ways to fight the cartels. They haven't destroyed
Speaker 2: them right now. The current president of Mexico is is
Speaker 2: more on the left, and he has a policy described
Speaker 2: as hugs not bullets, right, which is not using the
Speaker 2: stick to fight the drug cartels. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that hasn't been tried. The Mexican government and the Mexican
Speaker 2: military have carried out a number of very high intensity
Speaker 2: operations against cartels over the years. It's just like, it's hard.
Speaker 2: The cartel problem is a massive, massive, complicated thing, and
Speaker 2: the idea that like, if we threaten Mexico, they'll finally
Speaker 2: do it kind of understates the degree to which Mexico
Speaker 2: is capable of ending this epidemic or ending this problem
Speaker 2: right of somehow taking back this territory and rendering the
Speaker 2: cartels unable to function. I don't actually know that they are,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know that. I certainly wouldn't say
Speaker 2: that the current president's plan is working. But no one
Speaker 2: else has stopped them either, so I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think Barr is rather silly when he thinks that it's
Speaker 2: just a matter of threatening Mexico with an invasion that'll
Speaker 2: force him to take care of this shit. I don't
Speaker 2: really know that they have the ability to do that
Speaker 2: either way. So for his part, Barr does not seem
Speaker 2: to have actually wanted at military action in Mexico. Again,
Speaker 2: he's thinking that the threat will do the trick. And
Speaker 2: in fact, when Trump pushed back that like, well, maybe
Speaker 2: we could just shoot some missiles into Mexico, Barr pushed
Speaker 2: back on this and was like, well, if we fire,
Speaker 2: missiles will hit, we might hit the wrong target, right, Basically,
Speaker 2: civilian casualties you know, could happen, so we should avoid that.
Speaker 2: And that really kind of showcases how fucking dangerous someone
Speaker 2: like Barr is because his plan is he's thinking he's
Speaker 2: playing forty chess or whatever. It's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: the Mexican government will get scared and they'll take care
Speaker 2: of these cartels for us. But when you start floating
Speaker 2: that adu to a guy named Trump, he's gonna be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's just shoot him with missiles. And you may you
Speaker 2: may push back against that initially, but when your stupid
Speaker 2: plan to bully Mexico into destroying the cartel's doesn't work
Speaker 2: because they can't or because they don't want to be bullied,
Speaker 2: then what where are you, right, you can't step down
Speaker 2: at that point. You can't back off once you've threatened
Speaker 2: to bomb them, right, because if you threaten to attack
Speaker 2: and they don't do shit and then you just kind
Speaker 2: of like back off, you're gonna look weak. And that's
Speaker 2: the worst thing in the world to these people. Right.
Speaker 2: Trump's certainly not going to accept something like that. It's
Speaker 2: part of why, like what bar was doing here is
Speaker 2: just like incredibly irresponsible. Just with a guy like Trump,
Speaker 2: you can't pull that shit. So this means again that
Speaker 2: at some point, if this kind of process goes on,
Speaker 2: if Trump wins office, if he's to carry out something
Speaker 2: like what Bar was suggesting or something like what yourr
Speaker 2: was suggesting, at some point, Trump's kind of need to
Speaker 2: use military assets to strike Mexico if only save face.
Speaker 2: And again, the safest thing for him to use would
Speaker 2: be missiles to basically fire missiles, you know, guided missiles
Speaker 2: at factories or whatever making drugs. This avoids risking US servicemen,
Speaker 2: It certainly avoids the risk of them getting captured. Anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna quote from the New York Times against here,
Speaker 2: at least twice during twenty twenty, mister Trump privately asked
Speaker 2: as Defense Secretary mister Esper about the possibility of sending
Speaker 2: patriot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs and
Speaker 2: whether they could blame another country for it. Patriot missiles
Speaker 2: are not the kind that would be used. They are
Speaker 2: surface to air weapons, but mister Trump had had a
Speaker 2: habit of colleg all missiles patriot missiles. According to two
Speaker 2: former senior administration officials, I just find that fuddy, like, man,
Speaker 2: you are the you're the commander in chief, and you
Speaker 2: don't know, like you don't even know that. Like it's
Speaker 2: I don't expect the President to say, like I want
Speaker 2: you to fire this exact version of missile. You know,
Speaker 2: that's maybe a little more granular than is necessary for
Speaker 2: him to know. But like you should know that patriot
Speaker 2: missiles don't get fired at ground targets. That's not what
Speaker 2: they do. They're kind of a major part of like
Speaker 2: our military or min anti missile defense. It's just it's
Speaker 2: just very silly of him. All this nonsense came to
Speaker 2: a head for the first time in twenty twenty when,
Speaker 2: during one of these interminable fentanyl meetings, Trump looked over
Speaker 2: to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and asked, can we blow
Speaker 2: up these drug labs with a missile and make it
Speaker 2: look like another country did it? Now? That's you know, bad? Right? Like?
Speaker 2: It brings up a lot of questions, namely like what
Speaker 2: other country is in a position to fire missiles into Mexico?
Speaker 2: Right Like, if you're saying, oh, it wasn't US, are
Speaker 2: you say it's Canada because they'd have to kind of
Speaker 2: cross a lot of space to do that. He's saying
Speaker 2: Guatemalas firing missiles into Mexico because it doesn't really seem
Speaker 2: like a Guatemala move. You know, who are you going
Speaker 2: to blame? Thankfully? Esper was one of those rare Trump
Speaker 2: appointees who possessed a basic minimal capacity for rational thought,
Speaker 2: and we never, thankfully got the answer to the question
Speaker 2: what would have had happened if he'd fired a missile
Speaker 2: into Mexico. Esper argued against the idea, and then he
Speaker 2: wrote about it in his memoir, which I have an
Speaker 2: issue with. He's one of these guys who, yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: we should have noted about that when it happened, rather
Speaker 2: than waiting for your fucking book. But people got to
Speaker 2: get paid, I guess reactions from Mexico to these revelations
Speaker 2: about Trump considering missiling them and now the fact that
Speaker 2: he's got on his website like our plan is to
Speaker 2: use military assets to attack the cartels. Reactions from Mexico
Speaker 2: have been pretty universally negative for reasons I probably don't
Speaker 2: need to elaborate on. President Lopez Obrador told reporters in March, quote,
Speaker 2: this initiative of the Republicans, besides being irresponsible, is an
Speaker 2: offense to the people of Mexico, a lack of respect
Speaker 2: to our independence, to our sovereignty. If they do not
Speaker 2: change their attitude and think they are going to use
Speaker 2: Mexico for their propaganda, their electoral and political purposes, we
Speaker 2: are going to call for not voting for this party
Speaker 2: because it is interventionalist and human, hypocritical and corrupt. I
Speaker 2: don't know he's wrong there. I don't know how much
Speaker 2: ability the president of Mexico has to shift votes in
Speaker 2: the United States. But you know, it is interesting. You
Speaker 2: don't often hear a world leader, specific particularly not of
Speaker 2: the US's largest trading partners, say that they're going to
Speaker 2: take sides in an election, not that openly at least,
Speaker 2: but you know who never takes sides except for your side,
Speaker 2: because they're always on your side. The products and services
Speaker 2: that support this podcast and or program, we're back. So
Speaker 2: the opposition candidate in next year's Mexican presidential elections also
Speaker 2: made a statement that was it was a little bit
Speaker 2: more moderated than obradors, but it belittled Trump's comments about
Speaker 2: using military force on Mexico and stated, rather than threats,
Speaker 2: we should work in a smart way. So nobody's really
Speaker 2: happy with this down in Mexico. Not surprising to see why. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: in US politics, conservatives are now falling over themselves to
Speaker 2: justify military intervention in Mexico. As soon as Trump adopts this,
Speaker 2: it now becomes basically the standard Republican line that we
Speaker 2: need to be sending our special forces guys in to
Speaker 2: fight the fucking cartels. I'm not going to go over
Speaker 2: a laundry list of all the dumbfucks who have embraced
Speaker 2: this crap idea, but I do want to read one
Speaker 2: quote from an ABC News article quote House Oversight Committee
Speaker 2: Chairman James Comer, Republican Kentucky, on Tuesdays said that it
Speaker 2: was a mistake that then President Donald Trump did not
Speaker 2: bomb meth labs in Mexico after he had reportedly asked
Speaker 2: his defense secretary about the possibility. In twenty twenty, One
Speaker 2: of the things we learned post Trump presidency is that
Speaker 2: he had ordered a bombing of a couple fentanyl labs
Speaker 2: crystal meth labs in Mexico just across the border, and
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, the military didn't do it. Comer said
Speaker 2: on Fox and Friends, I think that was a mistake.
Speaker 2: Now I want to discuss for a second how impossible
Speaker 2: it is for this plan to work. Noted earlier, there
Speaker 2: are drug labs in Mexico, quite a few of them,
Speaker 2: making a variety and not just making but in many
Speaker 2: cases taking drugs that come from elsewhere and basically packaging
Speaker 2: them in a way that they can be sold or smuggled.
Speaker 2: That is, those facilities certainly exist, but they are not
Speaker 2: like the large centralized factories that I don't know, like
Speaker 2: a military rival would used to produce tanks. Right, most
Speaker 2: of this work, even if it is currently being done
Speaker 2: in a sizable facility, can be done in smaller facilities
Speaker 2: and can be moved pretty readily. And again, it's just
Speaker 2: not very intelligent to think that you can cripple this
Speaker 2: the same way you can cripple an enemy's ability to
Speaker 2: produce missiles or tanks. And even then that's not easy.
Speaker 2: We're actually really bad at it. We've repeatedly during wars
Speaker 2: bombed countries to attempt to destroy their ability to produce
Speaker 2: munitions and failed to really do that to a substantial extent.
Speaker 2: And so something like the narcotics industry, which is even
Speaker 2: more underground, even more hard to identify by nature of
Speaker 2: what it is, it's it's a big ask on the surface. Right.
Speaker 2: It's also worth laying out why it's dumb as hell
Speaker 2: to conflate drug cartels with ISIS, because a big part
Speaker 2: of why Trump, how Trump thinks things are going to go,
Speaker 2: is like, well, Isis took over Raka, took over Mosel,
Speaker 2: and then we beat them up, you know, we kick
Speaker 2: the crap out of them, We destroyed ISIS. That's what
Speaker 2: he I think, that's literally what he thinks happens, and
Speaker 2: it's certainly what he wants his voters to think happened.
Speaker 2: But that's not really what happened. Right when the physical
Speaker 2: caliphate was liberated, ISIS went underground, and they are still
Speaker 2: there and still have the potential to take in whold
Speaker 2: territory again. ISIS attacks in both Iraq and Syria have
Speaker 2: been raising steadily for years. There's a lot of reasons
Speaker 2: for this. Big part of why things have gotten worse
Speaker 2: in Syria is that the Biden administration has done fuck
Speaker 2: all to stop the Turkish government from attacking the autonomous
Speaker 2: region Rojava. Who are the folks who defeated ISIS in Syria,
Speaker 2: and that has degraded their capacity to keep a fucking
Speaker 2: little things. So number one, this victory he claims, wasn't
Speaker 2: a total victory. And number two, the reason why ISIS
Speaker 2: was knocked out of you know, Mosl and knocked out
Speaker 2: of most of their territorial claims in a fairly short
Speaker 2: period of time was because of a couple of things.
Speaker 2: Number One, the US was providing support, but we were
Speaker 2: not carrying out either operation on our own in both
Speaker 2: Iraq and Syria. We were supporting other extant militant groups
Speaker 2: that had a long history and a decent amount of
Speaker 2: support in the region, right And number two, and maybe
Speaker 2: you could make the claim that that's the case with the
Speaker 2: Mexican army, But the other aspect is that ISIS were
Speaker 2: not guys who had been in charge for forever in
Speaker 2: that region and had deep bases. Most of them were foreigners,
Speaker 2: and they were foreigners who had very quickly taken urban
Speaker 2: areas and then started running them like dog shit. Cartels
Speaker 2: have existed for a lot longer. They have effectively and
Speaker 2: do effectively rule large chunks of Mexico and have done
Speaker 2: so for longer than ISIS has existed. They have deep
Speaker 2: networks of local ties and in many areas, a reputation
Speaker 2: for providing services better than the Mexican government has done.
Speaker 2: I don't say this to whitewash how horrible these organizations are,
Speaker 2: but they are not ISIS, which just came up seemingly
Speaker 2: out of nowhere, took over a bunch of cities and
Speaker 2: then got fucking kicked out, and you know, never had
Speaker 2: a huge base of support among the populace, particularly in Iraq,
Speaker 2: because again there were just some assholes who showed up
Speaker 2: one day as opposed to the cartels, which you know,
Speaker 2: especially once the US starts bombing Mexico and killing Mexican civilians,
Speaker 2: which will happen anytime we're bombing them, just the idea,
Speaker 2: the amount of support it could potentially build for the
Speaker 2: fucking cartels is substantial. But even beyond that, the idea
Speaker 2: that you could knock these beat people out easily, they're not. Again,
Speaker 2: they have a deep base of support, a deep history
Speaker 2: in these areas. They have functioned for a long time,
Speaker 2: not just running things, but also constantly fighting against a
Speaker 2: military and the government that has a degree of capacity
Speaker 2: and technology at its back. So the idea that like,
Speaker 2: you're just going to be able to kick these guys
Speaker 2: out of whatever, Sonora, the way that you know isis
Speaker 2: was quote unquote kicked out of mosl It's fanciful, right,
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a farce. Now, speaking of farces, I
Speaker 2: want to talk about kind of the the thing that
Speaker 2: we should all see as the model for what might
Speaker 2: actually how it would actually work if Trump tried to
Speaker 2: go into Mexico to take out the cartels. And this
Speaker 2: brings me back to Afghanistan. Right during Trump's administration, the
Speaker 2: Department of Defense was empowered by the president to use
Speaker 2: vastly more force and their attempts to destroy Taliban drug labs. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Taliban funded a lot of their war effort with the
Speaker 2: sale of opium, you know, heroin, whatever, and it was,
Speaker 2: you know, believed that if we can cut, if we
Speaker 2: can destroy their ability to grow and process this stuff,
Speaker 2: we can cut the lake out from underneath the Taliban.
Speaker 2: And Trump really bought into this and allowed the DoD
Speaker 2: to accelerate their efforts to do this. Our forces started
Speaker 2: carrying out a mix of air strikes and special operations
Speaker 2: attacks on Taliban drug labs in twenty seventeen. It is
Speaker 2: the same plan that they executed that Trump is pushing
Speaker 2: for the United States to use in Mexico and in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: This plan was such an abysmal failure that not only
Speaker 2: did it not stop drug production, it actually accelerated the
Speaker 2: production of opiates in fucking Afghanistan at the highest level
Speaker 2: in recorded history. This program failed so badly that the
Speaker 2: Pentagon ended their strikes on drug labs in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: They gave up in two years because they didn't couldn't
Speaker 2: do it. They were bad at it. Now, the fact
Speaker 2: that this kind of plan that Trump is pushed would
Speaker 2: undeniably fail to actually destroy the cartels to stop drugs
Speaker 2: and human trafficking across the border, this does not mean
Speaker 2: that it would actually be a failure. For the reasons
Speaker 2: that Trump and many of the Republicans wanted to fail,
Speaker 2: which is that declaring war on cartels allows them to
Speaker 2: justify a major power grap and destroy or in the
Speaker 2: lives of US citizens they already see as enemies. And
Speaker 2: I don't mean to say that this is more serious
Speaker 2: than the lives that will be lost in Mexico. It
Speaker 2: certainly not. But this is very serious as well. Last October,
Speaker 2: a think tank, the Center for Renewing America, published a
Speaker 2: policy paper with the fun title It's Time to Wage
Speaker 2: War on Transnational Drug Cartels. Paper makes it clear that
Speaker 2: illegal immigration is just as much a priority as fentanel
Speaker 2: in carrying out these actions, and in fact, it lists
Speaker 2: the goals of this planned military policy in Mexico this way.
Speaker 2: Number one, ending the illegal flow of people trafficking victims
Speaker 2: and drugs across the southern border. Now, the paper suggests
Speaker 2: creating a new classification that is similar but different to
Speaker 2: foreign terrorist organization for the cartels. It lists a series
Speaker 2: of escalatory stages that Trump's administration should take, starting with
Speaker 2: putting pressure on the Mexican government to take care of
Speaker 2: things themselves, and since the Mexican government is not really
Speaker 2: capable at president of ending a present of ending either
Speaker 2: migration or drug cartels. Escalation is inevitable. So after this
Speaker 2: phase fails, phase two is to have the President start
Speaker 2: deploying military units, initially to interdict the coast, but also
Speaker 2: to coordinate with the DEA to target and kill cartel
Speaker 2: figures and destroy their assets. US ports will be closed
Speaker 2: whenever the number of illegal immigrant apprehensions that the border
Speaker 2: increases past a certain level. Right, So they are also saying,
Speaker 2: and again you get the feeling from this paper. While
Speaker 2: Trump always harps on the drugs and the horror is
Speaker 2: a fentanyl, it's very clear from this paper there is
Speaker 2: concerned and if not more concerned about the fact that
Speaker 2: non white people are entering the country quote well costly
Speaker 2: to the economy. This closing sorts would incentivize the Mexican
Speaker 2: government to crack down on human smugglers, migrant caravans, and
Speaker 2: cartel trafficking networks. Now into the fourth and final phase
Speaker 2: of this plan, the US government would basically carry out
Speaker 2: a full scale invasion of parts of Mexico in order
Speaker 2: to defeat cartels and secure the border. At no point
Speaker 2: are there any suggestions made as to how this might
Speaker 2: be done, or why it would be more successful than
Speaker 2: the attempts that failed in Afghanistan. Instead, they just move
Speaker 2: right onto the last phase, the victory phase, which includes
Speaker 2: these suggestions. Congress should enact legislation that creates enhanced penalties
Speaker 2: for US citizens found guilty of collaborating with the cartels.
Speaker 2: Punishment should include mandatory minimum federal sentencing of fifteen years
Speaker 2: in prison for working with cartels labeled as transnational criminal organizations,
Speaker 2: and mandatory minimum sentencing of twenty five years in prison
Speaker 2: for working with cartels labeled under the new Cartel statutory guidelines.
Speaker 2: Congress should enact legislation that defines material and financial supports
Speaker 2: for the cartels designated under the new statutory framework has
Speaker 2: tantamount to engaging in terrorism against the United States. This
Speaker 2: basically means, depending on how this is written, it could
Speaker 2: mean that doing drugs, possessing drugs, having friends who sell
Speaker 2: or use drugs could mean that you're committing terrorism by
Speaker 2: supporting the cartels. It is not impossible that that is
Speaker 2: how this law these laws should they be actually put
Speaker 2: on the books. Ever, should this program be enacted, That's
Speaker 2: not impossible that that's how it would be interpreted and
Speaker 2: why wouldn't they want to write this would allow them
Speaker 2: to lock up a shitload of people that they see
Speaker 2: as being on the left. If you think back to
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon. A big reason why, and this is a
Speaker 2: stated reason why, you know, the war on marijuana was escalated,
Speaker 2: is that it lets you arrest the fucking hippies and
Speaker 2: anti war protesters and put them in prison. You know,
Speaker 2: that is a big part of what a lot of
Speaker 2: people in Trump's orbit want to do with this. And
Speaker 2: I say that because the guy who wrote this fucking
Speaker 2: thing is a dude named Kim Kochinelli is a major
Speaker 2: anti left culture warfucker. One of his jobs under Trump
Speaker 2: was he worked under Chad Wolfe, who was the illegally
Speaker 2: the director of the DHS during the twenty twenty uprising.
Speaker 2: In September of twenty twenty, he ordered the intelligence branch
Speaker 2: of the Department of Homeland Security to downplay threats by
Speaker 2: white supremacists and instead focus on the danger of Antifa.
Speaker 2: Under his watch, DHS also compiled and tel reports on
Speaker 2: journalists in Portland, Oregon might have some issue with this
Speaker 2: guy personally, and defended the abduction by federal agents of
Speaker 2: civilians in unmarked vehicles, right, you know, when people were
Speaker 2: being abducted off the streets of Portland. He was a
Speaker 2: big fan of that. Ken Guchinelli really likes that idea.
Speaker 2: He is also essentially a white nationalist himself. In August
Speaker 2: of twenty nineteen, he announced a revised regulation to go
Speaker 2: into effect October fifteenth, twenty nineteen, that expanded the public
Speaker 2: charge requirements for legal immigration, made it harder to get
Speaker 2: green cards and visas if you were poor. Basically, he's stopped.
Speaker 2: He made they basically, if we might need something like
Speaker 2: food stamps, it's harder to get, you know, to immigrate
Speaker 2: legally to the United States. He was asked, doesn't this
Speaker 2: kind of contradict, you know, that poem on the Statue
Speaker 2: of Liberty about welcoming you know, poor and persecuted people.
Speaker 2: Kucinelli suggested a revision to the poem on the Statute
Speaker 2: of Liberty, on the Statue of Liberty, give me you're
Speaker 2: tired and you're poor, who can stand on their own
Speaker 2: two feet and who will not become a public charge,
Speaker 2: So that's that's cool. He also made a point that
Speaker 2: the poem referred to European immigrants, so you know, fuck
Speaker 2: those non white people, right, you know, like the poem
Speaker 2: was never meant for them. He's a fucking nazi, right,
Speaker 2: He's a white nationalist at the very least, like kN
Speaker 2: Kuchinelli is the kind of person that a decent society
Speaker 2: would google what the Romans did with the Tarpaian rocks
Speaker 2: when they had someone who was a trader to their system,
Speaker 2: and that's what should happened to Ken Cucinelli. But instead
Speaker 2: he's trying to get the US military to invent Mexico.
Speaker 2: So that's good anyway, that's a Trump's Agenda forty seven
Speaker 2: policy on the cartels. I hope you all had a
Speaker 2: lot of fun anyway, Bye.
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