Rolling Stone is reporting today that Trump and Co have revived their plans to invade Mexico. I’m not kidding:
Within Donald Trump’s government-in-waiting, there is a fresh debate over whether and how thoroughly the president-elect should follow through on his campaign promise to attack or even invade Mexico, as part of the “war” he’s pledged to wage against powerful drug cartels.
“How much should we invade Mexico?” says a senior Trump transition member. “That is the question.”
It is a question that would have seemed batty for the GOP elite to consider before, even during Trump’s first term. But in the four years since, many within the mainstream Republican centers of power have come around to support Trump’s idea to bomb or attack Mexico.
Trump’s Cabinet picks, including his choices for secretary of defense and secretary of state, have publicly supported the idea of potentially unleashing the U.S. military in Mexico. So has the man Trump has tapped to be his national security adviser. So has the man Trump selected as his “border czar” to lead his immigration crackdowns. So have various Trump allies in Congress and in the media.
Apparently, no decision have been made yet. Once source told the magazine. However, “if things don’t change, the president still believes it’s necessary to take some kind of military action against these killers.” Another option on the table is to just send in Special Forces to “take out” the cartels, which I’m sure will work. (It’s not like that hasn’t been tried before in South America. It didn’t exactly work.) Apparently, Trump likes this idea, no doubt because it’s like a movie he saw once.
He’s told people that he will tell Mexico that if they don’t fix this problem immediately he will send in the military. Marco Rucio the new Secreatry of state reportedly supports this plan as long as the Mexican government is involved. I’m sure they’ll be just fine with Americans essentially invating. No problema.
Meanwhile, the pending Sec Def Pete Hegseth has thoughts:
Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth, whom Trump chose to lead the Pentagon, said last year that it could be in the national interest to deploy the military against Mexican drug cartels, which he referred to as “terrorist-like organizations poisoning our population.”
“If it takes military action, that’s what it may take, eventually,” said Hegseth. “Obviously, you’re gonna have to be smart about it. Obviously, the precision strikes. But if you put the fear in the minds of the drug lords, at least as a start, [and] they can’t operate in the open with impunity, [it] changes the way they operate. You combine that with actual border security … now you’re cooking with gas and you’ve got a chance.”
What a genius.
This has been on the agenda for a while even as Trump is supposedly the “peace president” who will end all warts forever. Obviously, he is anything but. He just wants his own wars — mostly on Americans and countries he perceives as being shitholes. It’s very disappointing that this never came up during the campaign.
I wrote this a couple of years ago on this subject:
I think Trump just said he’s going to declare war on Mexico if he wins
Published by digby on January 5, 2023
As president, Donald Trump weighed bombing drug labs in Mexico after one of his leading public health officials came into the Oval Office, wearing a dress uniform, and said such facilities should be handled by putting “lead to target” to stop the flow of illicit substances across the border into the United States.
“He raised it several times, eventually asking a stunned Defense Secretary Mark Esper whether the United States could indeed bomb the labs,” according to a new book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. White House officials said the official, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir, an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, often wore his dress uniform for meetings with Trump, which led him to falsely think Giroir was a member of the military.
Sadly, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if Ron DeSantis and others agree with this one, at least in the campaign. It’s very popular among the right, particularly among those who think the support for Ukraine should be switched to some kind of war with Mexico because they say we’re protecting Ukraine’s border but not our own. In honest moments they will say that we should be like Putin and invade. I’m not kidding.
This is a real thing on the right. I don’t know how widespread it is. But Trump is making it clear that he, at least, is serious about using military action against Mexico.
They’re serious.