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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you catch that Republican presidential debate? At one point, Fox News moderator asks frowny Florida governor a question that feels super left field. Would you support sending U.S. special forces over the border into Mexico to take out fentanyl labs, to take out drug cartel operations?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Frowny Florida governor was down. Yes, and I will do it on day one. On day one. The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander-in-chief to protect our country and to protect the people. So when they're coming across, yes, we're going to use lethal force. Yes, we reserve the right to operate. And it's not just Ron DeSantis. The top three candidates are all into the idea of bombing or sending troops into Mexico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're going to ask one of the bottom candidates if that's a good idea on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained? Absolute truth.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Están escuchando a Hoy Explicado. Today, explain. Alex Ward, national security reporter at Politico, and I write a newsletter called National Security Daily. Why are Republicans talking about going to war with Mexico?
--:-- Alex Ward: Because they feel that it's basically the last resort to stop the scourge of the opioid epidemic in the United States. And also because they are fearful that the border, in their estimation, is wide open, allowing drug cartels to enter the country.
--:-- Alex Ward: And so, you know, a wall hasn't been built. Immigration reform hasn't happened. Other measures haven't been taken. And so we're now at our last string, and that last string is sending special forces and possibly bombing parts of Mexico where drug labs and cartel operations happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this isn't just DeSantis. There are other Republicans who want to do this?
--:-- Alex Ward: Yeah, there's actually been sort of bubbling up from Congress and from the inner reaches of the Republican Party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's start with Congress. So you have Congressman Dan Crenshaw. If we don't accept the fact that we are already at war, then we're going to lose it pretty quick.
--:-- Alex Ward: Mike Waltz. Cartels are running our border. The cartels are destabilizing the entire Mexican government. We need to go on offense.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Both Republicans, they introduced a bill seeking an authorization for the use of military force to go after cartels, which, broadly speaking, gives the U.S. government broader authorities to use the military to start bombing parts of Mexico where the cartels are, but targeting the cartels specifically.
--:-- Alex Ward: This has to be a whole-of-government approach with CBP leading the charge, but also with the DEA, the CIA, the FBI, the military. This is a serious problem. This is some of the most well-equipped, well-armed, most dangerous people on Earth just south of our border.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You've got Tom Cotton who's open to sending U.S. troops into Mexico to target drug lords. If Al-Qaeda or ISIS set up shop in Juarez or Monterey or Tijuana and they were killing 100,000 Americans every single year, what would you expect our government to do?
--:-- Alex Ward: Whatever it is, that's exactly what we should do to these cartels. They're not alone in Congress, but they're sort of more prominent ones.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But to be clear, all of that would be happening without Mexico's support. So they're basically saying the U.S. needs to take unilateral action against the cartels, even if the Mexican government doesn't help, even though the U.S. would try to pressure them to do so.
--:-- Alex Ward: Now this is permeating up to, let's say, the presidential level. The president pulls me aside on at least a couple occasions and suggests that maybe we have the U.S. military shoot missiles into Mexico. Shoot missiles into Mexico for what? He would say to go after the cartels.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when Trump was president, he considered using military force against drug cartels. He didn't for myriad reasons, one of which was he was worried about an influx of asylum seekers coming north to the border.
--:-- Alex Ward: That border has been a big issue for him, and he was worried about the optics of that. But it is now a part of the campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So not only DeSantis, but Vivek Ramaswamy. Here's what we're doing. I'm taking over in January 2025. We take undeployed troops by the hundreds of thousands. We secure the southern border. Full stop.
--:-- Alex Ward: If we've done it to ISIS in a different part of the world, this should be simple. You have Trump and his acolytes basically saying that DeSantis is stealing Trump's policy, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: They're basically saying that, oh, wait, bombing Mexico and parts of Mexico to go after cartels is Trump policy. The drug cartels are waging war in America. And it's now time for America to wage war on the cartels.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I should note that pretty much every Republican candidate supports designating the cartels as terrorist organizations. So, like, that's the minimum bar.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think the big takeaway here is from what once was kind of a fringe idea within the Republican Party has made its way through Congress to a Trump administration, now into this campaign to the point that you have the three polling Republicans, Trump, DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, all supporting this idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you could imagine that a Republican – should a Republican win in 2024, the strike Mexico to go after the drug cartels idea isn't going to go away. In fact, it will probably be one of the earliest foreign policy commitments that people will see if they fulfill.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is going after the drug cartels in Mexico with forces with bombs with a full military engagement whatever it might end up being, is that going to war with Mexico? It not really.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let take a quick step back. So the one thing they all the candidates pretty much say is they want to work with the Mexican government to rid themselves of the cartels or at least to substantially curb the amount of fentanyl that comes into the United States, which we should foreground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The opioid epidemic has been, you know, killing tons of people in this country. I'm sure this podcast has talked about it quite a bit. More than 90,000 people died of an overdose in 2020 in the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's a 30% jump from the year before. A lot of us didn't notice, but Rachel Lambert did. The opioid crisis, which includes a lot of fentanyl, is killing more people than the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined on a yearly basis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is obviously something that's top of mind, not only just Republicans, but for Democrats. But this has sort of been the latest and biggest Republican suggestion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So to the point about war, if the Mexican government doesn't help, then what they're basically saying is we would do special targeted either cyber operations or special forces operations or limited strikes on labs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There is a call to send troops in, but it wouldn't be like a massive invasion. It would be kind of like anti-terrorist operations in, say, Syria and Iraq or Libya or elsewhere against terrorists like ISIS or Al-Qaeda or anything like it, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, if we're going to treat the cartels as terrorist organizations, then we're going to fight them like terrorist organizations. And so we're going to do counterterrorism operations now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in differing cases, you know, you have countries that either sort of tacitly get permission or openly get permission and others that simply don't, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, lest we forget that the operation to get bin Laden was in Pakistan and Pakistan did not particularly like that we did that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are there any Democrats taking this idea seriously or is this strictly a Republican thing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Has the president of the United States, the current one, said anything about this notion?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, here's what Adrian Watson, who's the National Security Council spokesperson, told me. The administration is not considering military action in Mexico, and they actually think that designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations would not give them any more authorities than they already have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In fact, this is sort of the administration's argument, is that what you're doing by designating them as terrorists is just opening up military options. All the other options like economic sanctions and more law enforcement authorities have already been granted by this administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs Chair, has said it was a bad idea. I wouldn't recommend anything be done without Mexico's support and they have to request and so on and so forth.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are capabilities that we in the military have, but these are very, very difficult policy decisions. And having spent a fair amount of time in Latin America, I would argue that the best thing that can be done is by, with, and through the local governments that are friendly to the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, I should say it's not solely Republicans that are calling for treating cartels like terrorists. I think it's time to label cartels what they are. They are terrorists, and they're terrorizing not only migrants and people along the border. Now they're terrorizing Americans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After there were four Americans kidnapped in Mexico, Rep. Gonzalez, who's a Democrat from Texas, he said that the U.S. should start treating cartels like terrorists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, he didn't say, you know, he would support an authorization for the use of military force, but he has basically said, look, these cartels are terrorist-like organizations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think we all know how these presidential primary debates work, Alex. You've got, you know, one party's presidential candidates sort of trying to win the votes of one side, and then they have to sort of regress to the mean and try and capture both sides.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is this just some of the top Republicans in the field trying to sort of out-extreme each other? Or do you think there's a genuine desire here to go to war, war-war, with Mexican drug cartels?
--:-- Alex Ward: A couple of things here. The first is that I think they are finding it to be lucrative for their campaigns.
--:-- Alex Ward: DeSantis, for example, is fundraising off of the proposal that he said at the debate. He's selling T-shirts that you can buy for, I believe, like $44 that say that he will leave drug lords, quote unquote, stone cold dead.
--:-- Alex Ward: And that's in all caps. So clearly they're finding that this could be a resonating message to his base.
--:-- Alex Ward: And, you know, DeSantis had a military career. He was a military lawyer. And so this is a way for him to sort of say, look, I've served, I've got military credentials, and here's the things I'm thinking about.
--:-- Alex Ward: I look tough here. And also to match, I think, Ramaswamy and Trump. But point is that there seems to be an audience.
--:-- Alex Ward: I think that's part of it. The other aspect that I don't really want to miss is that, you know, this really is, like, the major concern.
--:-- Alex Ward: I've been talking to Republicans for a long time, you know, even before really the primaries got underway in earnest.
--:-- Alex Ward: And when I was saying, what do you think the big foreign policy challenge is going to be or the big foreign policy thing is going to be? Obviously, China is sort of above all.
--:-- Alex Ward: But second was fentanyl. And it seems to be that their constituents are really concerned about what's going on.
--:-- Alex Ward: And I should say this is not a Republican to Democrat problem. I mean, opioids are killing Americans from all parties.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there is a frustration with the lack of action here, despite all the focus on it and all the policies advocated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like there's still fentanyl coming to the United States and Americans taking them and dying.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think that the frustration of like, you know, someone do something and well, someone's willing to say, look, I'd be willing to send American sons and daughters to fight in Mexico to solve this problem.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That might resonate with folks, not just Republicans, but also Democrats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I'm not sure it's just like appealing to a base thing, although I think that's part of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think there also is a genuine message like, OK, like imagine DeSantis gets to the general, right? He'll challenge Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, you wouldn't? You're not going to send troops into Mexico? How much do you care about the 70,000 or so Americans that are dying a year?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, I could imagine, you know, that actually being somewhat of a powerful moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then if Biden starts going to, well, it's a law enforcement function, it's more complicated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, all of that may well and be true, but it doesn't sound as good. And it doesn't sound as urgent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I think this is DeSantis and a bunch of Republicans saying, like, we hear you. We know this is an urgent matter. We understand this is a life and death situation for a lot of families.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, we're willing to go to the extreme to solve it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alex Ward, Politico also an author. His book all about President Biden foreign policy is coming out early next year but it already got a title The Internationalists the Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can preorder it now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In a minute on Today Explained, we're going to hear from a presidential candidate who didn't make it to the stage for the debate, but who has a few opinions to offer on this idea of invading Mexico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Explained. 2024 Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ron DeSantis and the former president both famously live in Florida, which famously does not border Mexico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we thought maybe it'd be good to hear from someone running for president who has lived a little closer to the country some candidates want to bomb.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we reached out to former Congressman Will Hurd.
--:-- Will Hurd: Just call me Will. It's real simple. You know, I didn't like being called congressman when I was in Congress, so you can call me Will.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm going to call you Will. Okay, Will, did you watch the debate last week?
--:-- Will Hurd: I did watch the debate. Obviously, you were unhappy to not be there, I'm sure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's correct. The fact that I had eight national polls and eight state polls that had me meet the requirements, but the RNC cherry-picked.
--:-- Will Hurd: But hey, we're driving forward and we're tied in New Hampshire with Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, two people that have higher name ID than I do and who spent tens of millions more dollars than me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. I want to ask you a little bit about the race towards the end of our conversation, but I want to start with something Governor DeSantis said about Mexico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mexico. Would you support that kind of American military use?
--:-- Will Hurd: Yes, and I will do it on day one.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And maybe for people who are familiar with Republican policy positions on Mexico, that wasn't surprising.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But for some of us in the audience, I think that was a bit of a head scratcher.
--:-- Will Hurd: What was your response in that moment?
--:-- Will Hurd: Well, look, everybody wants to try to talk tough and someone like Ron DeSantis, who was a jag in the military and understands military protocol, knows that deploying unilaterally the military into Mexico is really a non-starter.
--:-- Will Hurd: That's going to ultimately have significant foreign policy implications with our largest trading partner.
--:-- Will Hurd: But here is how he should have said it, and here's how I say it. We should treat the drug smuggling organizations and human smuggling organizations as terrorist organizations.
--:-- Will Hurd: And what do I mean by that? We should be using more intelligence to try to dismantle these networks.
--:-- Will Hurd: We should be cooperating with our allies throughout Latin America, especially Mexico.
--:-- Will Hurd: And we should be making this a national intelligence priority.
--:-- Will Hurd: There's a thing called the NIPF, the National Intelligence Priority Framework. And this is how the president outlines what is a priority and which agencies are going to focus on it.
--:-- Will Hurd: When you look at the war on drugs, you have DEA. When you look at smuggling, human smuggling, you have the Homeland Security Investigations.
--:-- Will Hurd: Both of these entities are not equipped for large-scale intelligence operations. That's why you need signals intelligence, human intelligence, NSA, CIA, places like that.
--:-- Will Hurd: And if there is cooperation with Mexico, utilizing some of our military assets is something that should be explored.
--:-- Will Hurd: But that needs to be in cooperation with the Mexican government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you're talking about utilizing our federal apparatus better to go to war with the drug cartels, do you mean literally declaring a war on these drug cartels like we did in the war on terror?
--:-- Will Hurd: So the designation and all that, there's potential legal issues that could actually increase the amount of illegal immigration that's coming into our country.
--:-- Will Hurd: And so the real way you do this is the president moves tackling drug trafficking organizations and human smuggling organizations higher up on that NIPF, that National Intelligence Priority Framework.
--:-- Will Hurd: And that means some of the resources that we were using in places like Afghanistan and Iraq should be used towards Central and South America.
--:-- Will Hurd: We should be increasing our collaboration with some of our partners throughout that region.
--:-- Will Hurd: There are some really good organizations in Central America that would be willing to cooperate with us but don't have the resources.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Look, the U.S.-Mexico relationship, bilateral relationship, is probably the worst it's ever been since NAFTA.
--:-- Will Hurd: And President L Obrador denies that Mexico has a role in the fentanyl problem Yes the raw material is worked here But no, Mexico is not the country that introduces the most fentanyl into the United States.
--:-- Will Hurd: I maintain more fentanyl reaches the United States and Canada directly than Mexico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if we remember that this fentanyl problem, the drug trafficking problem, the smuggling problem, not only impacts America and our society, it actually impacts Mexicans and Mexican society.
--:-- Will Hurd: And so this should be an area that we cooperate. But unfortunately, President Biden and President López Obrador have been incapable of having a level of cooperation that this significant problem requires.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It sounds like you're saying we should just elevate the prioritization of this issue in this NIPF sort of triage system that we have, which, of course, yes, as you said, is wonky, is weedsy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not nearly as, I don't know, action-oriented sounding as, let's send in the troops on day one. Let's bomb the cartels.
--:-- Will Hurd: Yeah, it doesn't sound sexy. Right. Look, Sean, I can't fit that. What I just described, you can't fit into 280 characters.
--:-- Will Hurd: Now, I know on Twitter you can do longer now. But look, we don't want, as our commander in chief, we don't want a Twitterer in chief.
--:-- Will Hurd: We want someone who is actually going to solve the problem.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What about the pledge to deport millions and millions of undocumented immigrants?
--:-- Will Hurd: What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers.
--:-- Will Hurd: We have a lot of these people, probably 2 million. It could even be 3 million. We're getting them out of our country or we're going to incarcerate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we're getting them out of our country. They're here illegally. You know, everybody wants to boil it down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The border is complicated. Border security is complicated. The humanitarian crisis that's happening is complicated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we should care about these human smugglers in addition to the drug trafficking organization because they're ones stealing people's money and having them come to the United States of America illegally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when you think about the fentanyl of how it's coming in, the bulk of it is coming in our ports of entry. It's not just people carrying it in backpacks, humping it across the Chihuahuan Desert.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is coming in in large quantities. So this is the complexity of the task, and we need people that actually understand the problem, knows what the government should be doing and shouldn't be doing, and instead of just trying to come up with a bumper sticker that is pithy because that's not what solves the problem.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The top three polling candidates right now for the top job on your side of the aisle all support some sort of military escalation to deal with the problems on our southern border, in particular, the fentanyl crisis, the opioid crisis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You, I believe, nationally are polling below 1%. How do you feel in this position as having experience on the border, of having maybe more reasonable ideas of how to deal with our top trading partner while your party is drifting in the other direction right now?
--:-- Will Hurd: There's a reason that the GOP has lost every national vote for the last 20 years.
--:-- Will Hurd: And there's a reason that Republican primary voters are frustrated because too many politicians say one thing and do something else.
--:-- Will Hurd: Repeal Obamacare. But then when it came time, we didn't have anything to replace it with. Build a wall. Right? When you put these pithy things out there and that you know is not going to get done, that creates animosity and distrust amongst the voters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So while the top three polling candidates may be pursuing this, and I would still say it's not a winning strategy in a general election, and it's going to continue this 20-year drought of losing the general popular nationwide election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. You know, for some for a dark horse candidate like me. Right. Like I recognize I'm a dark horse. I have the lowest name ID near the lowest name ID in the bunch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't have as much resources. But but guess what? When you explain this to voters in New Hampshire and Iowa, they're like, huh, interesting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's why in a place like New Hampshire, you know, you know, my you know, I'm tied with people that are that are well more well known and work more capitalized than I am.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Will Hurd, he is running for president. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. I am not eligible.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by Hadi Mawajdeh with an assist from Miles Bryan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We were fact-checked by Laura Bullard, mixed by Patrick Boyd, and edited by Matthew Collette, who's still weighing his options.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The rest of the team today explained. Siona Petros, Halima Shah, Abishai Artsy, Amanda Llewellyn, Miles Bryan, John Ahrens, and Victoria Chamberlain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Supervising producer Amina Alsadi, executive producer Miranda Kennedy, co-host Noelle King.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Extra help this week from Jolie Myers, David Herman, and Sam Sanders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is distributed on the radio by WNYC, and we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll see you next time.
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