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| -Land of the Free |
| Trump Endorses Using Military to Crush Cartels: ‘I Would Do That' |
| 2023-04-21 |
| [Breitbart] Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively that he supports a proposal from Reps. Michael Waltz (R-FL) and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) that would authorize the use of military force against Mexican drug cartels to target the criminal enterprises and dismantle them. “I would do that,” Trump said when asked about the congressmen’s Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) legislation that they have recently proposed. Trump had earlier this year released a policy video in which he explained he supported using the military to target the cartels, but this is the first time he has weighed in on the specific proposal before Congress to do so. In response to Waltz’s AUMF plan, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said he opposes it and even threatened to interfere in U.S. elections to help Democrats and oppose Republicans in response to it. “In addition to being irresponsible, it is an offense to the people of Mexico,” Lopez Obrador said in March. "And it would impact my income" Trump, in his exclusive interview here with Breitbart News last week after his speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual gathering, noted that he does in fact have a good relationship with Lopez Obrador. Trump called Lopez Obrador a “gentleman,” even though he is a “socialist” and argued that if elected back to the White House he believes he would be able to work with the Mexican leader to crush the cartels and use U.S. military assets to help. “I also have a very good relationship with the president of Mexico,” Trump told Breitbart News. “He’s a socialist but he also happens to be a gentleman. You can’t have everything, right? But he’s a great person. Certainly, I would deal with him. This is an invasion of our country — this isn’t just people walking over. This is an invasion. Many of these are people we do not want in our country. They’re very bad for our country. They’re very bad and dangerous. But this is an invasion of our country. Nope, we will stop it and we will stop it immediately.” Trump is right that he and Lopez Obrador had a decent working relationship when he was president. In fact, that relationship was the foundation for one of Trump’s most consequential policies, the Remain-in-Mexico plan, which had asylum seekers stay on the other side of the border while their claims were processed rather than being released into the United States as current Democrat President Joe Biden is doing by the millions. Waltz, in an exclusive interview last month at the House GOP conference retreat in Orlando, told Breitbart News that what his AUMF would open up is the use of military resources like space and cyber assets. “It essentially authorizes military resources,” Waltz said. “So, space assets for targeting. Your Border Patrol — our law enforcement and border entities don’t have their own space assets. The military does. Offensive cyber — as opposed to just defending our networks here at home, but actually getting inside somebody else’s networks and start disrupting their money, their logistics, their ability to communicate. That all sits inside the Defense Department. So, this would authorize the use — this would authorize the use of military force, but I think it’s more accurate to call it resources.” Waltz during that interview compared his proposal to something that former Democrat President Bill Clinton did with the Colombian government in the 1990s to use the U.S. military to help dismantle two major Colombian cartels. That mission, titled Plan Colombia, saw the U.S. military cooperating with the Colombian government to successfully destroy the Cali and the Medellin cartels. Asked about that comparison that Waltz made back to Plan Colombia during the Clinton years, Trump told Breitbart News that “absolutely” he could see something like that with Lopez Obrador and Mexico if he’s back in the White House. Trump also noted that many people streaming across the border are sick or susceptible to spreading serious diseases, something recent statistics confirm. As Breitbart News reported this week, for instance, more than half of the border crossers brought to New York City are not vaccinated against polio. “We’re being invaded. They’re invading our country,” Trump told Breitbart News. “They’re killing people. The crime is up because of the people that are coming in. Not all, but many, and they’re coming in from prisons and mental institutions. These countries are doing it. I had it stopped. I had it totally stopped. If other countries wouldn’t do it, we weren’t going to give them any money. We give a lot of money to these countries. I would have that stopped immediately and we would bring people out. But absolutely, this is an invasion. We have soldiers coming into our country. They’re making people sick. Many of these people are sick with very contagious disease and they’re spreading this all over our country. This is an invasion of our country. It has to stop. So if somebody is talking about military, I certainly wouldn’t rule that out.” |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #8 No. Just... no. What better way to piss Mexico off than to piss on its sovereignty? Offer them help? Yes. Intelligence and intercepts? Yes. Special forces training for their troops? Yes. Invade their country? No. It will be Afghanistan all over again. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2023-04-21 16:35 |
| #7 Abu, to a Democrat there's no such thing as "enough" money. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2023-04-21 15:33 |
| #6 We are in a reverse Opium War with China. |
| Posted by: mossomo 2023-04-21 13:37 |
| #5 #3, Our intel community and the cartels? Seriously? If they weren't in bed together the cartels would already be kaput. I'm hoping for Trump to send the Air Force to bomb the cartels, send the Navy to blockade Mexican seaports and line the border with machine gun nests. Mexico and China are waging war against us and it's about damn time we fought back. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2023-04-21 12:43 |
| #4 In response to Waltz’s AUMF plan, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said he opposes it and even threatened to interfere in U.S. elections to help Democrats and oppose Republicans in response to it. Heck, I thought the Democrats were already getting enough money from the cartels and the CCP. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2023-04-21 12:35 |
| #3 Clear and Present Danger is about a clandestine war that Americans are unaware of. It is unrealistic because it pits our Intelligence community against the cartels. Trump is talking about opening protecting our border from trafficking. It is the exact opposite of the Biden policy, nor is it an undeclared affair. It involves finishing the wall and nooses for traffickers. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2023-04-21 12:33 |
| #2 Forget Russia and Ukraine. The real threats to our country are China and Mexico. Too bad our government is so corrupt that nobody is willing to acknowledge it. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2023-04-21 12:18 |
| #1 I read Tom Clancy's A Clear And Present Danger many years ago. The application of that reaction is fraught with difficulties in The Real World™. |
| Posted by: magpie 2023-04-21 11:26 |