Trump to declare Mexican drug cartels ‘terrorist organizations’
In a long speech to conservative followers, the president-elect touched on some of his favorite topics, including tariffs and immigration, and denied that Elon Musk is undermining his power
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday added another item to his list of to-dos for his first day in the Oval Office after he is inaugurated on January 20. “All foreign gang members will be expelled and I will immediately designate the [drug] cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. I will do so immediately,” he said during a forum of the ultra-conservative non-profit organization Turning Point in Phoenix, Arizona, which is dedicated to spreading MAGA values in American colleges and universities.
Trump said his administration will unleash the full power of federal law enforcement — ICE, Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA], the intelligence community — and financial sanctions to drive out the foreign drug gangs. Every cartel “operating on American soil will be dismantled, deported and destroyed,” Trump said in a speech cheered by hundreds of his supporters.
This is not the first time that the president-elect has painted an apocalyptic picture that does not exactly match reality in order to announce a tough line against Mexican drug traffickers and also against the authorities of the neighboring country. In this case, Trump was talking about the case of Aurora, Colorado, which has become an example for Trump of everything that he feels has gone wrong in the United States in terms of security under the presidency of Joe Biden. According to this exaggerated story, Aurora is under the control of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
Amid the usual mix of bluster and disjointed messages, Trump surprised those who follow his rallies with a new announcement. “We’re going to advertise how bad drugs are for you. They ruin your look, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, they ruin your teeth,” he said, while failing to detail how much the campaign would cost, although he did say that his administration would spend “a lot of money,” later clarifying that it would not be that much, comparatively.
These statements were reminiscent of the war on drugs launched by President Richard Nixon in the 1970s and which reached its climax in the 1980s and 1990s, with famous slogans such as First Lady Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no.”
The hard-liners of the Republican Party have been calling for the designation of organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel or the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel as terrorists for a couple of years, and for applying to them the same medicine that the Islamic State (ISIS) received in the Middle East. These die-hard Trumpists would welcome selective attacks to decapitate these organizations, even though such a thing would run completely contrary to international law, and would leave Mexico in a difficult position as the victim of an invasion of its national sovereignty from which it would be difficult to defend itself without unleashing a serious crisis in the region.
Tariffs
In his speech in Phoenix, Trump also discussed the call he had with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum last November. It was after he threatened to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico unless, in the latter case, more is done to solve the problems of immigration and drug trafficking.
On Sunday, the president-elect described Sheinbaum as a “lovely woman,” and said that he was very tough on Mexico and that he told Sheinbaum that ‘You cannot do this to our country,’” he told supporters, in reference to the fentanyl that enters through the southern border, and which in 2023 was responsible for some 70,000 overdose deaths.
It remains to be seen whether Sheinbaum will change the terms of the discussion on fentanyl with the United States compared to her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who basically just denied that the drug was being produced in Mexico.
Among the litany of other topics that Trump touched on, and which turned his appearance into one of his classic rallies with its dalliances, exaggerations, lies and half-truths, the president-elect referred to the recent crisis that almost ended with a government shutdown on Friday, and in which Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet and one of his most recent allies, played a role. In a series of messages on his social network, X, Musk shot down a bilateral spending deal that had been in the works for months, raising suspicions about his real influence in the Administration and in American politics, and about a possible conflict of egos between these two billionaires.
Trump said the idea that has been floated around that Musk wants the job of president cannot happen because the U.S. Constitution states that only a U.S.-born citizen can run for president. Musk was born in South Africa. “He’s not going to be president; that I can tell you. I’m safe. You know why? He can’t be. He wasn’t born in this country.”
Trump also weighed in on a debate that had been dormant on Saturday night: the Panama Canal. He threatened, in a message on his social network, Truth, to reassert U.S. control over the infrastructure, and accused the Central American country of charging excessive fees to use the passage, which allows ships to cross between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. He also warned that he would not let the canal fall into the “wrong hands,” in what could be read as a reference to possible Chinese influence over the canal. The Asian country neither controls nor manages it, although, according to Reuters, a subsidiary of CK Hutchinson Holdings, based in Hong Kong, manages two ports located at the Caribbean and Pacific entrances of the canal, respectively.
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