From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Drug Cartels Adding To The Destabilization Of Mexican Border

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

On this episode, Sean and Rachel sit down with Senior Editor at The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson to discuss the role cartels play in the ongoing crisis at the southern border.   John explains how these illegal organizations have turned drug and human smuggling into a multi-billion dollar industry, the methods that they use to traffic immigrants into the United States, and how these criminal consortiums are destabilizing the Mexican government. Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner. However you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running's all about. Run your way at NewBalance.com slash running. Hey, everyone. Welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my wife and my life and the co-host for my podcast, Rachel Campos Duffy.

Or our podcast, I should say, not mine. Yeah, it is ours. Yours, mine, ours. I guess that's how it goes. So today's interesting because we had a guest on Fox & Friends last weekend who I thought brought up some points that I've been trying to talk about a lot. But of course, he has all this research behind it. I've been worried about the destabilization of Mexico because of the open border policy, because of how rich the cartels are becoming.

And John Daniel Davidson, who is a senior editor at The Federalist, has been following this and had a lot to say. And I thought, boy, I wanted the conversation to keep going. And that's why we had this podcast. John, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. So my daughter, who also, by the way, works at The Federalist, told me that you guys are doing a documentary from the border. Tell me a little bit about that before we get going on this. Sure. We did a documentary from the border. Tell me a little bit about that before we get going on this. Sure. We did a documentary from the border and we released it in August. We went down there and filmed it in June, which was right after the record breaking numbers from May, the arrest numbers from May came out 240,000 all time record monthly arrests at the border. We went down to

northern Mexico for about a week in early June and visited migrant shelters in two Mexican border towns, Matamoros, which is across the border from Brownsville, Texas, and Reynosa, which is across the border from McAllen, Texas. And those are both in the Rio Grande Valley, which has been the sort of the ground zero for the border crisis for years now. So what can you get from going on the Mexican side in terms of information? What kind of information are you getting from that side that maybe we're not getting from the reporting and the limited reporting that's coming out from our side of the border? So we see the bailouts, we see the chaos, we see the crime on our side. What are you seeing on the other side? Well, that goes to the heart of our documentary, which is called Cartel Country. And what you get on the Mexican side is a closer look at really what I call the industrialization

of illegal immigration. The fact that it's a giant black market that is being run by and for the cartels in Mexico and the smuggling networks that they contract with. It's hard to get a sense of that on the US side. And I've done a lot of reporting from the US side of the border over the years. But when you go across into Mexico, everything changes and you really are in cartel country. The cartels control everything that happens in Matamoros and Reynosa, those two cities in particular. And that goes for illegal immigration. Not a single person crosses the river in either of those two towns without paying the cartels and getting permission and being told when and where to cross.

And so that's what we wanted to look at specifically. So what confuses me though, is if you think about cartels, but you also think about the government of Mexico, I would think the government of Mexico would, if they wanted to, shut this down. So I guess my question for you is, is the government in partnership with the cartels? Are they operating exclusive of the government? What's happening on the governmental side? That's a good question. And it's a question not very many Americans really ask or I think understand enough to even ask. Yes, the short answer is that the government in Mexico at all levels is involved in cartel operations. And that's right down to the level of the local police forces in places like Matamoros and Reynosa,

all the way up to the highest levels of the federal government, the presidential levels, the highest levels of the federal government, the presidential levels, the highest levels of the military. And really what's happening is that the distinction between cartels and cartel operations and Mexican officialdom and Mexican government operations in many parts of the country are kind of melding together and the distinctions are becoming harder and harder to make. So in essence, John, you're saying the government is the cartel in a way. Yes. That's one way to put it. In some places, the government is the cartel. And so certainly in some of these cartel-controlled border towns, that's true. So for example, when we were outside one of the migrant shelters in Reynosa, which is in a

cartel-controlled neighborhood, a police car came around the corner and drove past the front of the shelter, probably because they were told that we were there with cameras and we were filming. And my immediate reaction in my gut was, oh, we're going to have trouble now. Not because I thought, oh, here comes the law, but because I thought here comes the cartel. And in fact, that's what we were told time and time again by Catholic church employees that run the diocesan shelter, the pastor who runs a Bible school that was turned into a shelter when the migrant crisis began two years ago. The first aid and Red Cross workers, the migrants themselves, everybody tells us the same thing. Cartels control everything here and they knew we were there the whole time and were following us around. So that's the reality on the local level. And then there's something else happening in the higher levels of Mexican

officialdom. Well, first of all, our government is doing the last leg of the journey for the cartels. I mean, once they get across, the Biden administration with our tax dollars is flying them across the country. But let's stick into the Mexican side, because there is some facts that you brought up that I found. Even as much as I know about it, I was blown away. So 40% you say of Mexico is controlled, land is controlled by the cartels. I thought that was an astounding number to wrap my head around. It's a $13 billion business. Even the New York Times immigration reporter has reported on that. Sean was looking at some Fortune 500 companies that don't make that much money. And that's not

counting the drugs. That's just the human trafficking side of things, not counting the drugs and everything else. So what are the implications? I'm sure you've thought bigger about this. So what are the implications? Because we see this, this process going into overdrive, right? As the borders are wide open, our, the Democrat party and Joe Biden are clearly not going to do anything to close this down. So we're seeing this cartelization of the Mexican government. If you, I'm not sure that's the right phrase, but you get what I'm saying. As this goes into overdrive, what are the implications for us? Because they are our closest neighbors. They're our most important traders. They're right there and they're turning into a narco state right before our eyes. The way to think about this is not in terms of a domestic political dispute. And that's how we usually think about the border.

That's how we usually think about illegal immigration. It's sort of a proxy for culture war issues and domestic politics. We have to get out of that mindset. We need to start thinking about the border as a national security issue. example, for the simple reason that a failing state that we share that long of a border with is going to bring the problems in that failing state into the United States. It's not going to be any way to stop it. So it is in the American national interest to have a stable and prosperous neighbor. And what that means is we need to start thinking about these cartels specifically and the corruption in the Mexican government as an American problem. It's not just a problem for Mexico. It's not just a problem for the migrants. It's not just a problem for people who live in South Texas.

It's a problem for all Americans. And it's a problem that our government needs to treat as a national security problem. And if that means designating cartels as terrorist organizations and attacking them with the U.S. military, as Trump wanted to do, by the way, and of course, his defense secretary, Mark Esper, was aghast at the idea that you would send cruise missiles to destroy cartel drug labs, something, by the way, which if Trump had done would have been wildly popular. We have to start thinking in those terms, though. We have to start thinking in terms of national security. We haven't even talked about the drugs. You mentioned the 13

billion. That's just sort of like icing on the cake for these cartels. The real income, the real power that they have comes from the manufacture and importation of drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine into the united states from labs that they control in northern mexico and which they're working with china that's right as well that's right i i tell people you cannot think of these cartels as drug gangs you have to think of them as like halliburton if halliburton, if Halliburton was into extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and massive industrial theft. Sinaloa cartel, which is the largest cartel in Mexico, is in 52 countries. CJNG, the next largest cartel in Mexico, is in 48 countries. These are international criminal enterprises with unlimited resources,

and we cannot ignore them anymore. John, I'm sorry to tell you this. I think you're thinking about this like in an old school way. The new way of thinking about this, John, is, I mean, the Taliban used to be our enemy in Afghanistan, and now they're our partner. That's right. That's right. Joe Biden might just say, you know what, the cartels now are a partner in Mexico and we're all friends and everything's going to be fine. That's certainly the position of the Mexican president. Yeah. So I have a serious question for you, actually.

But that's how stupid the Biden administration is. We'll call our enemy our friend and everyone will buy it and everything is fine. But here's what troubles me. So when Trump was the president, he in essence told the Mexican government, listen, if you don't help with the migration flows, now this is not cartels, but back to migration. If you don't help with the migration flow, I'm going to slap tariffs on automobiles and other products you make, and it's going to decimate your economy. That got their attention and they started to help us out

in regard to the remaining Mexico policy and stopping the flow of illegal migration through their country into ours. That's right. But it seems like right now, if we had another president like Trump or Ron DeSantis, if they actually now wanted to get a partnership with the Mexican government, there's no one there to partner with because like you're saying, they are the cartel. So we're in a real problem with how far the government has slipped over the last couple of years and the amount of money that the country makes off of migration and drugs into the United States. Yeah, it's a good point. And it's hard to tell to what extent the United States has leverage over the Mexican state when it comes to things like tariffs or being able to sort of inflict economic pain.

Certainly what the Trump administration got right was enough with these carrots. Let's try a stick. And boy, that got their attention quickly. And what happened to illegal immigration? It plummeted to near historic lows after that. It was in May of 2019, I think, when the rubber met the road there and Trump said, look, we're going to impose tariffs on imports if you don't do something about these caravans and this illegal immigration. But that was the right instinct, even though it still amounted to outsourcing control of our border to the Mexican state. In other words, we were outsourcing border security to Mexican officialdom, saying the Mexican National Guard needs to police the southern border of Mexico. The Mexican INM needs to round up illegal immigrants inside Mexico so that they don't get

to our border. And that's fine as a stopgap. But as far as a permanent solution, the only thing that will secure our border is to recognize we don't have a partner in Mexico, certainly not a long-term partner, given the progress of things in Mexico, and that we need to take control of the border for ourselves and change our laws so that the inducement to come to the border, to undertake the very dangerous journey and very costly journey is no longer there. And that means deporting people so that they can go back to their home communities and countries and say, it wasn't worth it. I didn't get in. Don't go. You won't get in. They'll deport you.

That's the only way to send the message to all these different parts of the world that are sending record numbers of migrants to the United States border. It's not worth it. Don't come. Kamala Harris going to Guatemala and saying, don't come, isn't going to do it when those same people in Guatemala are getting messages through Facebook and WhatsApp from their relatives and neighbors that they just got in and were released and they're on their way. We'll have more of this conversation after this. So I first came to Edward Jones with a great deal of trepidation when I first met with my advisor and I really was feeling vulnerable about what I would have to share. I was, of course, pleasantly surprised to find that there was absolutely no judgment and a lot of support. And when it was time to get serious, he really took my hand and helped me to

do that. Edward Jones, we do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. Yeah, I mean, the sophistication of the operation is astounding. You're right. They're reaching people, luring them on this journey through social media. I just was reading an article about how now Texas teenagers are being lured by the cartel via social media, being asked to be mules who pick up people at the border and run them to Houston. Not only illegal, highly dangerous operation. And some teens have gotten caught up in this and they think they can just make a quick buck. And they're dealing with evil, dangerous cartels. On that note, John, my question is this, because what, again, fascinating to me about your your article was sort of this confirmation that, you know, we're melding, you know, in Mexico, the cartel and the government are one.

current Mexican president actually went and visited his mother and paid his respects. I mean, you see that there is this, you know, this alliance of some sort, this coalition between the cartels and the government, which then you said is impacting trade and imports and exports here. So like if you're an American company and you want to get your products out to Mexico or vice versa, you're actually dealing with the cartels. If you're the DEA and you're trying to deal with some drug matter, you think you're dealing with the Mexican government, law enforcement, you're actually maybe endangering your people because you're actually dealing with the cartels. I mean, talk to us a little bit, unpack that a little bit about, you talked about the national security implications, but what does

it mean for our own, I mean, it's our biggest trading partner. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's a good question. And it's another thing that I think a lot of people don't think about when they think about Mexico and the state of things there. You're right. Depending on what industry you're in, you are going to be dealing with the cartels. Because as I mentioned in my piece, the cartels don't just do drug trafficking, drug manufacturing and drug trafficking. They don't just do migrant smuggling or human trafficking. They don't just do kidnapping and extortion. They do all those bad things.

But increasingly, and this is a more recent development, the cartels, as they have become like these large, powerful organizations, they have gotten into things like port operations, water distribution, fuel transport and distribution, fishing, like offshore fishing rights. Avocados, right? I think they're involved in avocado business. They're involved in all the avocado business. They're involved in all sorts of other agricultural, industrial enterprises throughout Mexico. So yeah, to your point about like, you know, even if you're just like a, you know, a food importer, right, or, you know, a produce broker in the United States, you may be dealing with your counterparts in Mexico who, you know, they may not be members of the cartel sort of officially, but certainly their operations are overseen by the cartel and they are making payments and they are accountable to a cartel. So yeah, like increasingly every aspect of Mexican political and economic life

is implicated, you know, in the cartel activity. So to give you an example of how difficult it is for like a DEA agents to work in Mexico, by the way, it's almost impossible now after Mexico passed a law, basically saying that targeting the DEA operations in Mexico saying that no Mexican intelligence official can share information with DEA agent without reporting it up the chain, which just means it's going to get compromised and it's going to get back to the cartels. I met a few years ago in Mexico City with a DEA agent

who told me that his whole job consisted of trying to figure out which of his counterparts in the Mexican government was working for which cartel. So he would just run information through these traps to see where it came out on the other side. So he could figure out and kind of map out which of his counterparts was being paid by which cartel so that he could try to tailor his operations in a way that wouldn't get compromised. But he said it was incredibly demoralizing and tedious work. And increasingly, that sort of work is just not getting done at all because Mexico has taken steps to make it hard for U.S. intelligence services and DEA to work inside the country. And that speaks to just the total infiltration of the cartels into every aspect of Mexican life. Yeah, it seems like it's a mind-boggling problem to think that we're going

to stop the cartels in Mexico unless there's a U.S. invasion in Mexico. But I think you're smart to make the point that, listen, we have to deal with what we can deal with in our own country. Don't allow illegals to come in. If they do come in, we ship them out. We secure the southern border. And we go hard in our country against cartels. Obviously, I spent nine years in Congress. So everything comes to maybe a political point for me. It's hard to think how the American people, if they knew, could think that this is a good American policy, right? I think everyone would agree cartels are bad. They chop people's heads off. They shoot people. They sell drugs.

I mean, these are the worst people of a community sell little children for sex right yeah yeah and and i and i just and i just wonder is there is the problem that that the american media and the democrat party have other motives as to why they won't talk about how horrific the border is and how powerful the cartel is or is something else at play because Because as a political issue, it really doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. I think for the media, it's straightforward. They know that talking about the border will make Democrats unpopular. They know that most Americans know that the border is really messed up and it's really out of control and that really bad things are happening down there.

And so they don't want to shine a light on it just for the same reasons that they don't want to shine a light on any of the failures of the Biden administration or congressional Democrats, because essentially, you know, they're in league with them. And so that's why, you know, you only get intense border coverage when you have someone like Trump in office and then all kids in cages and these war crimes are being perpetrated by the White House at the border. But I think for ordinary Americans, it's easy to have a kind of like distance, a mental separation about what's happening at the border versus what's happening in my communities. Because the border is a long ways away. It's sparsely populated. It's in some ways an exotic place, I think, for a lot of people. You know, if you've been there, you know, it's not exotic, but only in the sense that it's a much different place than where most

Americans live. And so it's easy to separate it. What they don't realize, I think fully, is that cartel country is also here. The operations of the cartels, even the illegal immigration operations, they reach deep into the United States. Rachel, you mentioned that the teenagers that are accepting cash from these cartels and these smugglers to transport migrants from border communities into larger Texas cities, those advertisements are going out on TikTok and Facebook, and they are intentionally targeting minors because they're more likely to be able to get minors to agree to something like that. Of course, if an adult does that, it's a felony. So yeah, I think a lot of it is messaging

and trying to cover things. I tell other reporters and my colleagues, if you just bother to go down to the border, yeah, it's hard work. It's often not a lot of fun. Sometimes it's dangerous. But if you just go down there and talk to people and do a little bit of just traditional reporting, it's a smorgasbord down there because the corporate press does not want to cover it. And so there's a lot of stories down there that don't get covered and that don't get covered well. So it's interesting. Two things that what you just said sparked in my brain. So one, I did go down to the border and I was amazed at how much our side, whether it was the National Guard who I saw on just within hours of being on the river grand, um, and that it was obvious that the cartels were running it. I could see the Mexican military on the one side of the river. I could see our guys on this side of the river. And like I said,

all three, all three levels there of operation of law enforcement. And it was obvious that no one crossed that bridge or that, that river until the cartel. So the cartels are in complete control and we're just sitting there. And then as I would see people cross the river, I would ask, you know, the Texas law enforcement, which are the only people being, you know, transparent and open about what's happening and feel free to talk. And they would say no one. I'm like, why aren't they telling them to turn around? Our guys are right here. Why aren't they telling them to turn around? Our guys are right here. Why aren't they telling them to turn around? Because the cartels are in charge. And also they said if anything happened to those migrants when they turn around, there were legal ramifications and no one wants to get their their their career in a jumble. The other part, I guess, of what you're saying, and it goes back to the question Sean asked, like, why are the Democrats so complicit? And I'm sure, you know, you've put so much thought into all of this.

They can't possibly think this is good for national security either. There's no way that the people at the New York Times or the Washington Post are looking at what's happening at the border and they're well aware, whether they want to shine a light on it or not, they know what's going on, border and they're well aware whether they want to shine a light on it or not, they know what's going on, that they think this is a good idea to turn our closest neighbor, our closest trading ally into a narco state. So is it that they care so much more about social issues, gay rights, about social issues, gay rights, abortion, some of these, you know, pet the climate? Is it that those things are just so much more important than sort of the nuts and bolts of, you know, what a country is about, which is ultimately national security? Yeah. And having defined borders. Right. I think that the explanation of the Democrats posture toward this issue, there's there's two things that explain it.

One is that I think from at least since the Democrats posture so much, because I think there's a power play there, John, that they think maybe these will be future voters. I'm not convinced of that. But I'm talking about the media itself. Like I said before, I don't make much distinction between the media and the Democrats. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think it was my boss, Molly Hemingway, said recently that media doesn't work for Democrats. Democrats work for the media, which, you know, when you see the revolving door between the corporate press and the Democratic Party, I think that's a fair assessment. I think that Democrats and many Democrats in the media, at least since the time of Barack Obama, have viewed foreign policy challenges and problems through the lens of domestic politics.

And that's true whether it's Russia, whether it's Iran, or whether it's Mexico and the border. So to the extent that the problems we have at the border are national security and really foreign policy problems, they're going to be approached by Democrats in the media as a domestic political issue. And so for them, I think they see their coalition as being wealthy white women and overeducated college graduates and increasingly fewer minorities, fewer blacks, fewer Hispanics. and coalition in bringing in large numbers of migrants and basically giving them legal status, whether that's through asylum or through any one of the many other means in federal law they had to do so. So they're willing to tolerate chaos at the border and posture as sort of moral paragons of righteousness, that they're going to welcome in these migrants and they're

going to be compassionate. But really, I do think that there are cynical motivations behind that. And the biggest proof that there is for those cynical motivations is that it is not compassionate to allow what's happening at the border to continue. It is the height of cruelty to subject these people to what's waiting for them on the journey through Mexico, and even oftentimes after they've entered the United States. Yeah, I think if Democrats liberal the media in a pyramid, I think your answer kind of fits the middle top of the thought pyramid in the Democrat Party. But I think at the very top, the you know, the the Bill Gates, the Barack Obama thinkers, I think that they believe in, you know, one world government.

There's one world order. And so with that, there are no borders. And America will lead the way showing how we can operate with, with no borders. That's funny. I was going to say cheap labor, but you're right. I think at the very, very top, there's going to be a quality of, of incomes around the world, or I should say a quality of poverty around the world. One country shouldn't be richer than the next. I think that these, and by the way, you'll, you'll, we'll, we'll, we'll diminish democracy and that the smart people, you know, run our economies. That's right for us and our currencies and our energy. I mean, I do think that's I do think this this this nouveau nouveau Marxism is like neocommunism or yeah, is where this is where this is going.

Because because I got to tell you, it it john it makes no sense if if again the democrats you i think you make a good point they're supposed to be compassionate people this is the most uncompassionate policy that anyone could ever think of to put to put an 11 year old girl in the hands of our cartel and allow them to ship them up to the united states the parent michael that's a great idea but smart people kind of on both States. The parent might go, that's a great idea. But smart people kind of on both sides of the border would go, hey, that's not really good for the 11-year-old child. Just like the parent might say, it's okay, my 11-year-old does crack cocaine. We also go, hey, no, she can't do crack cocaine. It's not good for her. Adults at one point step in and

make decisions. But to your point, Democrats in the media are like this. We're willing to take the sacrificial little lambs that come across the border, whether it's with drugs or the sex trade. It's worth it for this philosophical program. It's an ideological program. Every once in a while, they accidentally say it out loud. Like when Hillary Clinton was giving a speech to all those bankers a few years back, and she said, we want open markets and open borders. Yeah. They accidentally will say- I don't remember that either, but it sounds like her. She did say that. Yeah. It was in a speech to a bunch of, it was a bunch of financial

folks and it wasn't supposed to be a public speech, but it leaked out open markets and open borders. Every now and then they tell us who they are. That's right. That's absolutely true. But yeah. And then the other component, the corporations, of course, for their short-term profits do like this cheap labor. And so that, that, that sort of feeds it. But I think, I think you guys are absolutely right. and so that sort of feeds it. But I think you guys are absolutely right. I think at the very top of it is this ideological plan.

I think you bring up, I think that what you've done really effectively for me is first of all, you've edified me. I've been saying for like two years on Fox and Friends, I've been like, come on, you guys, this can't be good for us to have this happening just on a national scale. You've been saying it's going to destabilize Mexico. you know just on a national scale i've been saying it forever i've been saying you're going to destabilize mexico you destabilize mexico it's

already got problems um and i think you've done such an effective job through your writing through your research through going across the border which is clearly the more dangerous way of viewing this um this problem i think you've you've shined some really important light on and really some good thought on how we should look at this as an American problem. We should really take it out of the realm, which is hard for politicians in the middle of these election cycles to take it out of domestic policy. But I think the American people are really smart. I think your writing is really smart. And I think that it allows people to kind of pull back and look at this from a bigger, bigger, higher up perspective. And it makes it a little more clear. I hope so, because it's going to become a more pressing problem as time goes on.

Nothing's going to change as long as Joe Biden is in office. So the problems that we've had, you know, 2021, all-time historical high for arrests at the border, broken this year, 2022, by even more arrests at the border. Every year now is going to be a record-breaking year for illegal immigration at the border, which means every year is going to be record-breaking profits for the cartels. And I'll say this too, going back to the profits the cartels get from this. This is a new thing, the monetization of illegal immigration for the cartels. They figured this out after 2019. And I've talked to a lot of people on both sides of the border that have explained this to me. In 2019, during the migrant surge, when you had these massive caravans coming through Mexico, this is of course what triggered Trump to threaten the terrorists on Mexico and said, you guys got to shut these caravans down. The cartels were

frustrated after that because so many people got across the border and they realized they'd missed out on huge amounts of income that they could have brought in by charging a fee for people to cross the river. So they were paying the coyotes. So the coyotes were making the money and paying a fee to the cartel for permission to get people across the border. That's right. Yes, but they weren't organized. The cartels weren't organized enough to make sure that everyone paid because the numbers were so many people. These groups these groups were so large. There was, there was, there was care, you know, the groups that would cross in El Paso. One group was a thousand people crossed at the same time in downtown El Paso.

People forget that in the spring of 2019, the cartels weren't ready for it in the intervening years, just since 2018, 2019, they got organized. And now they are making, they are, they have a sophisticated database and tracking systems. They know exactly who's paid. They know when these migrants are coming into the border towns, whether or not they've paid. And they have the police running these operations for them. sophisticated data tracking and databases that track not only the migrants, but their families back home so that they can sort of hold that over the migrants after they get-

Extort them. Exactly. After they get into the United States. So they have figured out how to monetize it. Some estimates say that in 2018, before the 2019 surge, the cartels through their fees were only making maybe $500 million a year. And that's ballooned into an estimated $13 billion a year. So this is a new thing. And they are going to keep working on this as a source of income as they have diversified all their activities. And they, make no mistake, would like to make this permanent. Of course. And yeah, absolutely. I mean, who would want to stop that money train from coming? One of the developments that you talked about when you were on Fox & Friends is that the one

person who has said that they declared the cartels a terrorist state was Abbott. Is he leading the way? Is that the answer? Well, I will never say that Texas Governor Greg Abbott is leading the way on the border. I agree. He did a good thing. So credit where credit is due. He recognized that we need to start treating these cartels as terrorist organizations. And while that may not have much of an effect in Texas, because as you say, the Texas National Guard and Texas DPS is not really in charge at the border, it at least sends the signal to other mainstream politicians that it's not a radical thing to think of these cartels as terrorist organizations, that it should be part of the political discussion

that respectable Republicans can start talking like this. And so I think that's the value in it. But certainly that needs to become the norm among Republicans in Washington. Chip Roy has done a good job talking about this. Ted Cruz has talked about this. But it needs to become more of a common thing for us to think about and talk about these cartels as foreign terrorist threats, because that's what they are. You know, I just I look at this. It has there has to be a political solution. And as Rachel and I would talk about some of the hard language that a lot of Republicans had on the border, she's Mexican-American. She would be a little concerned about how does that play with the Hispanic voter? We soon saw with Donald Trump that, listen, people want a secure border. And he

brought attention to the border like no one else. Even, you know, Ron DeSantis sending the migrants to Martha's Vineyard has brought attention in a way that the media never wanted to cover illegal migration. I do think that as we come into the next election cycle, this is going to be one of the main issues that people focus on because Republicans are going to focus on it, which means the media will have to cover it and they'll try to cover for Democrats. But it'll be really challenging because as every year goes by, the problem becomes more pronounced and profound in American communities that are far away from the borders. And I hope that your writing penetrates the politicians.

So they start talking about it in these national security terms, start talking about the indentured servitude that you described happens to people who cross the border, the, the, and we need to tell more of the stories of what happens to these little kids who get caught in human sex trafficking. I think the compassion argument that the left has tried to bamboozle everybody with is is is not right. It's as you said, it's the opposite of compassion. John, I can't thank you enough for for for what you're doing and shining a light on this and for coming on Fox and Friends and for coming on from the kitchen table.

I think you're doing some of the most important work I've seen in journalism. Yeoman's work. Thank you. The story from the border on both sides, which is awesome. Quickly, John, before we let you go, where can we see the video or the documentary

that you guys did in August? It's on YouTube. It's at The Federalist. It's on Rumble and all other social media channels. It's called Cartel Country, The Untold Story of America's Black Market on the Border. And it came out in August from reporting that we did over the summer. Awesome.

It's John Daniel Davidson. He is the senior editor at The Federalist. Thanks so much, John. Thanks for joining us, John. Awesome conversation. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It was really enjoyable.

Wait right there. We're going to have more of that conversation next. What do Ontario dairy farmers bring to the table? A million little things. But most of all, the passion and care that goes into producing the local high-quality milk we all love and enjoy every day. With 3,200 dairy farming families across Ontario

sharing our love for milk, there's love in every glass. Dairy Farmers of Ontario, from our families to your table, everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. Rich, I thought that was a fascinating conversation. And you look at what John kids or on the cartels or the Mexican government or on this side of the border with regard to drugs. I think telling those stories, making sure Americans are informed so they can make informed decision with politicians and where they stand on this issue couldn't be more important. Yeah. You know, there are some real political risks for the Democrats in this. So they're losing their their hold of Democrats in Texas and Arizona. People who live on the border, most of them, most of these border communities are like 80, 90 percent Hispanic.

And of course, they're seeing the worst chaos. You had Myra Flores on Fox and Friends recently saying, I can't believe that they're complaining. They need federal help in New York. We're dealing with this on our own without federal help day after day after day after day. And these communities are seeing their services depleted, their hospitals filled, their fire departments, every bit of services in their community just completely overstressed because everything's being poured into dealing with this chaos that's been created by the Biden open border policy. So as they start and we're seeing these poll numbers, Sean, they're starting to pay a political price. Is that going to be enough if they if, say, this midterm election happens and they see

another precipitous drop in support among Hispanics? Or are they just so committed to what you so aptly talked about earlier, this ideological open borders, one world country, sort of neo-communism that we see happening at the WEF level? Is that just going to override this? Listen, I would tell you they can't politically sustain this, but I think I'd be wrong if I said that. I would tell you that they can't politically sustain defund the police. They can't politically sustain no bail for violent criminals. Or tearing down American energy and making us poor. Because John made a good point.

He's like, listen, the Democrat Party is our white, suburban, rich, liberal women, right? The coalitions are getting shaken up. We're watching political change in this time significantly and on how people vote and the way they think. Again, to the point you bring up all the time, the massive move in the Hispanic voter towards the Republican Party, the blue collar union worker that's come over to the Republican Party, the suburbs going more Democrat. It's a shakeup. And I think that, you know, a lot of these Democrats are OK with these policies. And maybe I say that they're OK with them because they're not well informed on them. Maybe they think that crime in the street really is Donald Trump's fault, that Donald Trump really wanted to defund the police. Maybe they thought that Donald Trump didn't believe in American energy or Donald Trump didn't want to secure the border.

Maybe CNN and MSNBC have lied to them so well they believe that. I doubt it. But but they're actually voting for politicians who are advocating for these very policies and they're winning. Yeah. So that's a bit that's I don't that's a sad answer, but I think part of it is, you know, people just want to live their lives and, you know, be left alone, be left alone. And they, they just kind of hope that things are going to, you know, the people in charge are doing the right thing, but I think things are breaking down and people are going, whether it's, you know, my kid, my kid, or my friend's kid comes home and says, he it's, you know, my kid, my kid or my friend's kid comes home and says he's a you know, she's now a boy. Whether it's, you know, the the economy, I can't afford food when I go to the grocery store.

The things I could buy last year, I can't do this year, whether it's, you know, my gas prices, I can't put my kids in sports. I mean, things are breaking down on so many levels. It's not just this big national, you know, security stuff from Ukraine to the to to Mexico, what John was talking about. Things are breaking down. I think people are going, what's happening here? And it is disorienting. And you are seeing these huge shifts in, you know, what the parties stand for. You know, 10, 15 years ago, people would say that the republican party was the party of the rich and now you know it's as you said it's it's obvious that you know from green energy to you know making sure that they can get cheap you know illegal labor to clean their homes

um you know there's it's the democrats are the rich party a party of the rich and the working class are moving over to to the to the Party. Democrats are the party of the rich, big business, of Wall Street. Big banks. Yeah. What they say Republicans are, that's actually what Democrats are. That's their base. There's been massive shifts, but I think what's affecting people on their everyday lives,

and because times were so good just two and a half, three years ago, I think it's hard for people to forget that. I mean, we were all doing so much better in the Trump economy pre-COVID, right? And people had confidence we would bounce back from COVID, but then Donald Trump lost the election. And I think things have just gone so bad, so fast that people are waking up and going, this is just not sustainable for my family. Yeah. And I think maybe to answer your question then differently, if there is a consequence at the ballot box, I think that Democrats, you always say the Democrats, they said the quiet part out loud or they took their masks off. Sometimes some of them have. Yeah, they do.

I think they will put their masks back on. They won't say the quiet part out loud anymore if they get crushed in this next election. But I don't think they're going to they're going to deviate from these policies. This little top elite group that runs the George Soros, the Bill Gates, the Barack Obamas, they're going to continue to push this policy. They'll try to reframe it. They'll call it something else. But this they're they are driven to accomplish this this global change. And the global change is to take away your freedom, to take away your autonomy, to take away

your money, to take away your family. They want it all. They want you fully dependent on them. You know what, Sean, you bring such a good point because I talked to a Border Patrol agent and and I also spoke with Tom Holman and I was like, how much of these border policies are driven by the NGOs? pressure groups that are affiliated with the Democrat government. So there are these immigration rights groups and and and and they're pushing they're the ones really pushing the Biden administration to do what's actually not in their political interests. And the reason is there's a lot of money behind it. There's money from these big, you know, said these are Soros funded, but other organization funded non-government agencies who are purporting to look out for the interests of the illegals, but they're pushing something that's bigger than what the illegals are.

It's really about what you're talking about. And you know what? You bring up that point, and it's interesting. They push these policies, but they don't want to live with the policy. Yeah. I'm going to be a sanctuary city and state in New York, but, oh, I'm agh be a sanctuary city and state New York. But oh, I'm I'm aghast that you're sending all these migrants to my sanctuary city, Martha's Vineyard.

They're open to everybody. But what they get, what was it, 100, 200, 50, 50, 50, 50 migrants come into Martha's Vineyard and it's like, we got within 24, 48 hours, get the military in here, ship them out. So again, but they say they you saying as they as they saw the buses going away, they sang to the migrants, saying them back across the bay. But it's important. They want you to live with these policies, but they don't want to live with their hospitals full or their schools packed or their crime on their streets or their kids getting fentanyl pills that look like Skittles. They don't want that in their community. They just want that in your community. And which,

by the way, is rageful that that again, I want this for you, but not for me. Yeah, it's elitism. It's racism. It's all those things that they accuse you of. What a great conversation. Yeah, I appreciate John joining us and I appreciate it. It's kind of scary, but important to know information's power, right? Information is power. And I'm so happy that, by the way, we talk about who picks what topics. This was a Rachel topic. She picked one, not on the, the, the well family. I'm not done yet. We're going to bring it back. This is an important topic. We have to continue to, to, to examine it, talk about it. Thanks for picking a great topic and a great guest. I appreciate that.

I appreciate that. John was great. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcast. Give us high ratings. And again, make sure you subscribe. We appreciate it. Yeah.

And we hope to see you around the kitchen table a little later this week. Next time. Bye-bye. Come back.