Fox News Alert, we're at war. This enemy, they don't wear a uniform. They're moving fentanyl by the truckload. I want you to look at the contraband that's in front of me. We have right in 20 kilograms of fentanyl that's in front of me on this table. That's enough to kill 10 million people. The work that we do is to protect people and make sure that we remove these weapons and drugs off of our streets and hold those criminals accountable who would go forward and continue to use that to harm individuals. Cartels are now officially in the Pentagon's crosshairs, and it's not just the wall anymore. Trump ordered the kill shot. The days of local drug busts and random motels, they were fun, but that's breaking bad stuff. Trump wants to take the fight to El Chapo's front yard. We're talking about sending military forces to fight against the drug cartels in Latin America. Do you think it's worth sending our forces, our U.S. forces there, to take this on? Cartels where? Central Latin America. Well, Latin America's got a lot of cartels, and they've got a lot of drugs flowing. So we want to protect our country. We have to protect our country. We haven't been doing it for four years, and we love this country like they love their countries. We have to protect our country. So we're playing a tough game. According to the New York Times, behind the scenes, Trump's moving all the pieces into place to pull this off. Mexico has got a big pro-blame-o. Yes, but it has nothing to do with Mexican territory. It has to do with their country. It does not involve our territory. So it would be within the United States? In the United States, exactly. El Presidente doesn't comprehend that. This isn't a Mexican standoff. This is an order. The CIA is already flying surveillance drones over Mexican territory, gathering intel on the battle space. And Trump's not sending diplomats. He's sending Hegseth, maybe with a new title. Secretary of Defense, Secretary of War, Department of Defense, Department of War. Well, that's what it was for many, many years. You gave me that knife hand, Will. We'll see. Stand by. I don't get in front of the commander in chief on that. But our job is to ensure our enemies know exactly what they will do to them if they threaten us up to and including total war. So we'll be prepared. Stand by. There might be some news on that. This is about protecting the homeland from groups like the Sinaloa Cartel. They import fentanyl from China and traffic it into the United States. Look at that. Trump designated them terrorists. And if they get cute, they're getting Soleimani'd. You know who did the roadside bomb, right? Soleimani. Where is he? Where is he? Former U.S. Army Special Forces and president of World Strat, Jim Hanson. Jim, what kind of operations do you envision happening in Central and South America in this cartel war? Jesse, I don't think anybody would be more thrilled than me to watch some helmet cam footage of a bunch of JSOC pipe hitters repelling out of helicopters and stacking cartel members like cordwood. Now, that's the ultimate. I don't know that we'll probably open with that. You know, there's likely to be a lot of increased surveillance. There may be some raids to pick up some people to arrest and put in trial. There'll be some interdiction off the coasts. The Navy can cover a lot more territory than the Coast Guard can. And together, they can cover both the exfil from, you know, Central and South America and the infill to us. So there's a lot of things to start with, but this is a tremendous step they're taking. All right. So they could seize some guys off the field and bring them here and put them on trial. Could they also just drone strike these cartel bad guys right in their backyard? You know, that's a lawyer question, but I'm going to give you the common sense answer. If their cartels are killing people in the United States and the MS-13 and Trendirogua gangs are, why can't we kill their leaders just the same way President Trump pointed out? We took care of Soleimani. That would be an imminent threat, right? I mean, if these guys are cooking up all this fentanyl and sending it into the cities and people are acting like zombies and keeling over, that's an imminent threat to the life and well-being of the American citizenry. Absolutely. And I think the rationale we use for other terrorists we've killed through multiple administrations, Barack Obama still I think holds the record for the number of people killed overseas by drone strikes, including one US citizen. So I think President Trump deciding that these guys who are definitely killing Americans with drugs, torturing and running people with human trafficking and child trafficking, those are things that I think all of America can look at and say, we don't need to allow that and anything we do to them is probably justified at this point. Now, the Mexican president, she's played nice so far on trade, but it's a big no bueno, she says, if we start launching direct action into her territory. It's not even really her territory, I guess technically it is, but the cartels control almost that entire country. What does that do to Mexico? Yeah, I mean, that is not her decision. She's the one who runs a country that allows that to happen. So if she wants to go ahead and try and tell President Trump, we can't do that, we're going to do what we need to and she's going to go ahead and face the consequences. That's something they've allowed for far too long. All right. Well, it looks like that time's up. Jim Hanson, good to talk to you. Let's bring in Jonathan Fahey, former acting ice director and former DHS deputy assistant secretary. Jonathan, great to have you on the show. I want to play some sound here from the secretary of state Marco Rubio. He said this about targeting cartels as terrorists. Their behavior is going to have to change one way or another, but it allows us to now target what they're operating and to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever, to target these groups if we have an opportunity to do it. We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug dealing organizations. I mean, I think it's a proper assessment. I don't know what you think about this, Jonathan, but it's interesting because these cartels are no longer just providing these illegal products by the thousands of pounds. They're killing thousands of Americans. You're exactly right. And if you think about it, just during the Biden administration, 400,000 people died of overdose deaths just in that four year term. And as we know, there was just a complete dereliction of duty on the border, as well as taking it to their cartels, and just for some context, that's 100,000 more than during the first Trump administration. So a massive increase. We need to take it to them because, yeah, people are dying and President Trump isn't going to just stand by and just say, "Oh, this is now the status quo. 100,000 Americans a year are going to die of overdose. This is unacceptable. He's going to take it to them." And there's another benefit to this by even talking about this, the messaging is so strong on this, this will inspire cooperation from all these countries where we may be acting in. So all of these will be a good thing and we'll track this at the end of the year where these overdose deaths go. And I'm interested in when you get pushback on this because the upside is enormous on this and the downside is also enormous. I mean, if you don't do this and you continue to let tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands Americans die, I mean, this is something that there is a fix to, at least there's somewhat of a remedy to this if we go forward. Yeah, exactly. And it's almost like we've had four years where we weren't even trying to do something during the Biden administration. Yeah, it's not acceptable because 100,000 people a year are dying. Those people, their families, their communities, everyone in this country is affected by this. So it's time to take it to these cartels and their good days are over. They had their heyday under the Biden administration, but the game is up and the Trump investigation is going after them. And I think this is very effective, not only substantively, but I think the messaging is quite clear on this.
Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.
