From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Why China, Russia & Iran's Influence In Latin America Spells Trouble for the U.S.

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

Many Americans likely couldn't place Guyana on a map, and yet the geopolitical conflict currently taking place in this country could be severe enough to lead us into the next world war.   National Security Expert and Center for a Secure Free Society Executive Director Joseph Humire joins Sean and Rachel to break down this complex issue -- from explaining the long history of conflict between Venezuela and Guyana to discussing how China, Iran and Russia working together to infiltrate the country and ultimately take down the U.S. poses a threat to America that the Biden Administration is largely ignoring.   Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everyone, welcome to Fun on the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host of the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Well, Sean, I am so excited to be back at the kitchen table with one of our best national security experts. It's Joseph Humeyer. He's been on the show before. We've had tremendous feedback for his knowledge of what is happening in the Western Hemisphere. Joseph, as you know, is an author, and he is the executive director of the Center for a Secure, Free Society. He's constantly traveling the world, especially in Latin America, figuring out what's going on there, and also across the globe. So we're looking forward to talking to him about the latest developments of the threats that are coming to America, but are brewing in Latin America. So with no further ado,

Joseph, welcome to the kitchen table. Thank you, Rachel. It's a pleasure to be on. Pleasure to be back on the show. So every time we talk to you, things get worse. Surprise, surprise. Surprise, surprise. And again, right in our relationship yes i just said correlation organization so yes yes yes no you're like the spotlight on what is happening and you're such a a great source for us to understand what's happening in the western hemisphere we want to start we want to talk about guyana and mexico and i want to start with guyana because i know you were just recently there um guyana is the third smallest country in Latin America. It's also the fastest economy in the world.

And there's a reason for that. And so I just thought maybe a lot of people don't even know. Some people might think it's in Africa. It's right here in South America, right near Venezuela. Guyana is in our hemisphere. And some amazing discoveries happened. Oil exploration, oil discoveries. Maybe you could just break down why Guyana is such a hotspot in the world and what is happening with Venezuela, etc.

For sure. And you're right, Rachel, not just a lot of Americans, a lot of Latin Americans don't know where Guyana is. They actually probably do think it's in Africa, because it's an English speaking country. It was once a colony. It's pretty much part of this kind of Caribbean coast part of South America that's not Spanish speaking, not part of like the rest of the region. But the reason it's important, you mentioned this, you alluded to this. Okay, so it is the fastest growing economy in the world. I mean, they're growing upwards of 30% per year. I mean, that's, you know, when the post pandemic and everybody's having economic troubles, inflation, they're booming. And the reason they're booming was because in 2015, they made the largest offshore oil discovery in the world in the 21st century. They found 11 billion barrels of light crude oil off of their coastal waters in Guyana's

territory. So what that basically did, it prompted Guyana to enter into the international arena. By 2019, they started to bring some of that oil to market, and that's when the growth started to happen. And they would have a tremendous economic success story except they have a major roadblock, and that roadblock is their neighbor, Venezuela. Why is this happening? So I could give you the historic reasons,

which I'll cover very briefly, but then I'll give you the real reason, which is a little bit more geopolitical. The historic reason is Venezuela and Guyana have a border dispute. It's about a 126 year old border dispute. It basically goes around who controls this part of Guyana, which is called the Esequibo. It's about two thirds of the landmass of Guyana. It's a dense jungle. It's right there on the western side of Guyana near the Venezuelan border. It's a dense jungle. It's right there on the western side of Guyana near the Venezuelan border. And Venezuela claims it. They said that back in 1899, when they delineated the border, Venezuela claimed that that was done through backdoor shenanigans,

that Venezuela was, who had already claimed independence from Spain by that point, said that they weren't properly represented. Fast forward many, half a century later, in 1967, Venezuela took its case to the United Nations and they signed what's called the Geneva Agreement, which is the agreement to come to agreement. They just basically tabled it for the future. They said, you guys will resolve this at some point through international arbitration. And the future came in 2020. The ICJ took the case on behalf of Guyana. Guyana is the one that submitted the case to the ICJ.

They took the case and they're supposed to arbitrate about it today. So all that history is important to understand the context, but in reality, the conflict has nothing to do with this border. Maduro wants everyone to believe that it has to do with the border because he can drive up national sentiment. Nine out of ten Venezuelans, not to say all ten Venezuelans, all were indoctrinated to believe that this is their territory. In fact, if you go to Venezuela and you ask them to draw a map of Venezuela, they're all going to draw it with that finger on the right, which is the Ezequibo.

That's the territory. They consider that other territory that was unjustly taken away from them. But why I say that this doesn't have to do with that is because even if Maduro's military were to invade Guyana, a la Russia invading Ukraine with land forces, they would just go into a jungle and die because there's nothing there. There's no infrastructure. There's no resources, but there is no development so that they can have roads, electricity. But is that coast? I mean, is that part near where any of the discoveries are? Is the land claim going to also include these oil discoveries offshore? That's a great question. So technically, it does not.

Technically, the land claim is about the land. It doesn't include the water. But what this conflict really is about is about the water. And it's not just about the oil. Because, I mean, yes, they discovered 11 billion barrels of oil. That's good for Guyana. Maduro has more than 300 billion barrels of oil on the ground. He can't do anything with that.

So he's not going to be able to do anything with the 11 billion barrels. What they want is they want to open up Venezuela to the Atlantic Ocean because Venezuela only has a small sliver of the Atlantic Ocean. It's mostly with the Caribbean. So what this conflict really is about is about moving the maritime border, not the land border, moving the maritime border closer to those oil deposits, opening up Venezuela to have access to the Atlantic, particularly the South Atlantic, and then

bringing Iran, Russia, and Chinese Navy so that they can control the maritime security of that new maritime border. So there's a military term that we use. It's called sea line of communication. What that means is communication that happens from one port to another port that's guided by maritime security vessels, most of the times the U.S. Navy. So there is no maritime security. There is no sea line of communication between Venezuela and Guyana because of this border dispute. But what Maduro wants to do is he wants to create a sea line of communication between the port in Guyana and a port in a place called Margarita Island in Venezuela

to create all the oil that's going to be exported out of Guyana to pass through Venezuela so that they can get the bonanza of the proceeds. Russia, China, and Iran want to do this because they want to be able to control a new maritime security belt that's going to extend from Taiwan through the Gulf of Oman down through South Africa into the South Atlantic. That's what the Houthi thing was all about. The Houthi attacks on the Red Sea, literally blocking shipping throughout the Red Sea, not just choking off Egypt's economy and weakening Israel, but was pushing maritime traffic along South Africa. They were pushing it around an old route. And in order to connect that route to the Caribbean, you have to go through Guyana, Venezuela.

So this is not about enriching Venezuela with more oil. It's really about a realignment of the Americas strategically using Venezuela in partnership with China and Russia. And if that's the case in Iran, if that's the case, this is a significant threat to the United States for America. And so what interest has our government taken in this dispute? Have we provided aid to Guyana? What's been our involvement? So we have, like many conflicts around the world, have kind of a bipolar response to these type of conflicts. On one end, at a kind of tactical level, the United States military is very engaged and is actually supporting Guyana quite a bit. We're helping Guyana with develop its defense capabilities. We're helping them connect to third countries so they can purchase new armament.

And we're also basically trying to show a force to make sure that these external actors don't come in. On May, I believe it was May 9th, the United States flew two F-18 Super Hornets from a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that was floating in the Caribbean. They flew them over Georgetown as a show of force. Why? Because back in that time, now it's been made public, but back in that time, the intelligence was showing that two Russian warships and one Iranian warship are on their way to Venezuela. Georgetown is the capital of Guyana for those who don't know, correct? Correct, yeah. Georgetown is the capital of Guyana for those who don't know, correct? Correct, yeah. Georgetown is the capital of Guyana.

It's also where they have their major port facility. And so the U.S. Southern Command, U.S. government, U.S. intelligence got wind that Russian warships and Iranian warships are on their way to Venezuela to ostensibly hold a military exercise, naval exercise. So they had this show of force to say, listen, don't do it, don't come over here.

At a tactical level, we have that support. At a strategic and policy level, the White House is very ambiguous about what they're doing with this. Because I'll tell you something, Sean. You know, Maduro's talking about this now. You know, with Venezuela, there's all this talk about elections, right? They're having an election in July and everything the White House negotiating was to have free and fair elections. We know they're not going to have free and fair elections in Venezuela because they haven't had it in 20 years but they negotiated something last year in october in qatar in doha maduro calls it the doha deal the white house doesn't talk about the doha deal but the doha deal supposedly was about going to free and

fair elections in venezuela but my question to the biden administration is did you also talk about guyana because we knew when maduro came back from Beijing in September of 2023, he started this whole ratcheted up political pressure and military buildup along Guyana's border. The Guyanese knew it. That means you absolutely, the United States knew it as well. And the question is, did you not ask about this, which is a huge negligent, because as you mentioned, Sean, I mean, the elections are important, but in terms of U.S. national security, this is precedent. This is the most important. So if you did not ask about this, this is highly negligent. But if you did ask about this, what did they say? And nobody's talking about that. The Biden administration is muzzled. They don't say a whisper about what they talked about with this. And the only one that's talking about,

the only reason we know about the Doha deal is because Maduro mentioned it. I mean, this is just so troubling. I troubling i can't i mean my head's about to explode so if china iran and russia want to get a foothold into these very important into into the western hemisphere but into these very important maritime access ways they need venezuela yeah venezuela has this very close relationship with Iran. It's been providing weapons to them for a long time. So I'm kind of confused because now we got to move over to the to the Middle East with Iran. As far as I can tell, the Biden administration has been appeasing Iran as they're trying to get a foothold into the Western Hemisphere and Guyana and this waterway.

And they're also providing weapons to, I guess, to Cuba and to Venezuela. They're all working together. I'm confused. Why wouldn't Iran be like enemy number one? You're trying to threaten us in our own hemisphere. Yeah, Rachel, Iran's playing chess and the U.S. is playing checkers. Iran is actually thinking three, four steps ahead. They prepared this Venezuela option many, many years ago. Matter of fact, when they were arming the Houthis back in 2015,

that eventually started attacking the oil vessels in 2018 and eventually closed the Red Sea in 2023. When they did that the same time, the same type of armament they were providing to Maduro Venezuela. It wasn't reported on, but we knew that that was going on. Drones, fast attack craft, radar systems, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, Maduro's got it all. And so what Iran's been thinking for a long time was how do we able to destabilize the Middle East, destabilize Latin America, and then use these conflicts to change the international order. And that's where China and Russia come in. Because these three countries, China, Russia, and Iran, have held at least six, if not seven, joint naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean in the last five years.

The most recent was last month. They held it in the Gulf of Oman. The idea is to bring those exercises into the South Atlantic and eventually into the Caribbean to put a checkmate move on the United States. And we're talking about the navies of China, Russia, and Iran. Now ostensibly their navies aren't that great. They're not that big. But when you combine them in this kind of vacuum exhibited by U.S. weakness, then they can make these moves. This is the problem that we're facing. And I think the Guyana conflict is just the catalyst. I call

it the fourth flank of global conflict. You have the first in Ukraine, the second in Israel, the third in Taiwan, and this is the fourth. But the fourth, it can be even more worrisome for the United States because it's happening just 1,000 miles, 2,000 miles from the U.S. southern border. And that's the point. That's why they're doing this. They're doing this as a preparatory step to even Taiwan. Because once you do this, the United States has limited options to be able to go to the Indo-Pacific to help our neighbor, our allies in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. So this is very much a chess move that I think the United States, unfortunately, has not been prepared for. You know, the stupidity, so the fact that Donald Trump put maximum pressure on Iran, shut down, for the most part, their oil sales, was wrecking their economy. Joe Biden kept

the sanctions, but hasn't enforced the sanctions, has given Iranian money back to Iran. I mean, some calculations say that Iran has, you know, made an extra $100 billion from oil sales under the Joe Biden administration. And again, we might think that money is just used for terrorism overseas and attacks on Israel. To your point, no, it's actually being used to undermine global or Western Hemisphere supremacy of the United States military. And if you see if you're China and Russia and you see how stupid America or Joe Biden is and how he handles Iran, that's like the door is open. Listen, why shouldn't we actually try to get a foothold in the Western Hemisphere, again, to play chess, not checkers? in the Western Hemisphere, again, to play chess, not checkers.

And I guess my question is, I don't think I served in government, Joseph. There's a lot of people who are not that smart. There's some really smart people. But it begs the question, if you love America, if you love to have an influence in the world, and at least in our hemisphere, why in the hell wouldn't our administration be like, I know the American people don't really care about it, but we do a lot of things that are about their security that they don't know about. And this is one of them. Why don't they seem to

care? Why isn't there greater effort? That's a great point, Sean. And my only response I have is probably two things. One is ideological and the other is corruption. On the ideological front, there are people as senior leaders of government, including elected officials, that have this kind of notion that American exceptionalism is a myth or that it's not good for the world, that we need to just be another country. I mean, this goes pretty much the Obama doctrine. In fact, it was in 2013 that Obama's secretary, then Secretary of State John Kerry, before the Organization of the United States, he was at this conference where he said the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over. He basically said the Americas is no longer for the Americans. And what he did was he invited China, Russia and Iran to come in, who are already there. But you could draw a straight line from 2013 to 2023, where all that military armament starts to come in.

And so you have this ideological notion that America just needs to be part of this multipolar world that Russia and China are trying to build. The other part on corruption has to do with a lot of these government officials that have foreign interests. I mean, we talked about Rob Malley in Iran that was getting paychecks from Iran for who knows what. You talk about this former ambassador of the United States, Manuel Rocha, who was basically a Cuban spy. even before he went into the foreign service. I mean, how many more are there? How many more are in the United States government or in public service, not serving the interests of United States citizens, but serving the interests of crony deals with foreign powers, or actually,

or worse, maybe even foreign agents. So that's, I think, that's the heart of this. And one last thing I want to mention about this is, this also has a lot to do with what Maduro has been calling the end of the Monroe Doctrine, right? Because if you go back to the original 1899 Paris war between Venezuela and Guyana, the way the propaganda disinformation is going to sell it is the United States betrayed Venezuela and Latin America on the Monroe Doctrine, because the reason that they were negotiating, because back then, Guyana was a British colony. and the reason that the United States was involved in that negotiation was because Venezuela asked the United States to help them out, invoking the Monroe Doctrine.

And instead of, this is according to Maduro, instead of helping Venezuela kick out the Brits, we struck a deal with the Brits to basically delineate the border. That's a revisionist history. I can tell you the true history of that was actually that we actually helped take back some of the territory for Venezuela and establish a more neutral, arbitral border that was maintained for basically half a decade. But Maduro is going to use this propaganda to talk about how the monodructions over the United States is no longer the superpower. Welcome China, Russia, and Iran. They are now the new guarantors of peace. I mean, it's just hard to believe that

our military, our government leaders aren't seeing this breakdown of the Monroe Doctrine and how it makes us so much less safe. Would you explain the Monroe Doctrine and what are the consequences of ending that? Yeah, so 1823, James Monroe, President of the United States, basically makes a proclamation. You remember, we weren't a superpower back then, right? We were just an emerging nation. And he makes a proclamation to say that Latin America, the Western hemisphere, is off limits to European monarchies who are trying to colonize different parts of the continent. And it was a defensive posture. It was to say, we're not going to mess with your neighborhood. Don't mess with ours. We'll let ourselves be and we'll live in peace. It was to say, we're not going to mess with your neighborhood. Don't mess with ours. We'll let ourselves be and we'll live in peace. It was never an offensive thing that some people misinterpreted as us intervening in other parts. I mean, the Roosevelt corollary had more to do

with U.S. intervention, but Teddy Roosevelt had nothing to do with James Monroe. And so what happens is that defensive posture that basically was blessed United States geography with these two bodies of water has been diminished over time. And that's why I pointed to John Kerry, because when John Kerry said that, a lot of people were like laughing at it. They said, oh, of course, Monroe Doctrine, European monarchies. But what he was referencing was this new multipolar world. He was saying, we're entering into this new multipolar world that President Obama pushed the United States into. That's what the Iran nuclear negotiations have to do. That's what the reset with Russia has to do. That's what this idea of trading with China has to do, because we wanted to basically reset the world in a multipolar

fashion. The last time that happened was prior to World War I, and that's why we had a world war, because the Germans and the Ottomans ended up rising up because they wanted to preserve monarchy-style of government. Thankfully, we won that war, and then the Nazis, and we won World War II, and we had this kind of period of representative democracy and peace and liberty, not without conflicts. But now we're heading back into that same situation. Russia, China, Iran have a lot of differences. But they agree with one thing, that the United States should not be the leader of the free world. And they agree that the world should change into a different style of government where criminals are on top and law-abiding citizens are being persecuted. And you have to look at Ukraine. Ukraine war

has brought China and Russia together. I think that was one of the biggest mistakes that I think we made as a nation, not doing everything that could be done to prevent that war. And a lot of people predicted that was going to be the consequences. We've only seen more and more closing up. Back to your point about very clear on so many of his statements that Obama felt like the world would be better without the U.S. as sort of the main power. And Valerie Jarrett is a huge Iran sympathizer. And she has been behind a lot of these deals and has ties to there she grew up there um there's all kinds of issues and i think

i believe the carrie family has ties to iran at least um financially if i'm not joseph am i right about that yeah he was lobbying for iran when he got out of government right thank you so there's that as well the other ideological part and i think you can speak to this well we've talked about it before but i think it's important to note so there's this incompetence and negligence that sean was talking about like how do you not care about what's going on with iran and china and and hezbollah and and russia in our hemisphere but the other part is they're focused on other things. So the CENTCOM head is a woman, right? There's a woman in charge of Southcom, I'm sorry.

Southcom. And her main issue is female leadership. Our State Department is more interested in pursuing or pushing abortion, climate, and gay rights in Latin America against the will of many of our very few allies we have left in Latin America. We're pissing them off, pushing this woke agenda on this, this cultural Marxism. And we're hurting ourselves. I mean, can you talk about how that's also a part of the story of Latin America and what we're doing through our State Department and our military? Yeah, I mean, it just projects weakness. I mean, we've been projecting weakness for four years now,

and we basically go around Latin America, and we talk about all the issues that are important to our culture with no respect to their culture. I mean, they're not in this woke period, right? They don't have all this explosion of transsexual and all this DEI and diversity, inclusion, equality, and things like that. This is very much an American phenomenon. And we're trying to export it overseas in some form of cultural imperialism. And to be fair to General Richardson, she actually doesn't do too much of it as much as you would think the women's empowerment stuff. She's actually much more, she's a helicopter pilot. She's much more into like the nuts and bolts of the military. But I took, you know,

she's the head of combatant command. She's not a policymaker. She still has to adhere to what the State Department is going to do. So I think that we're projecting weakness. And on top of that, look, Rachel, I was in Colombia not too long ago. I was actually in Colombia when they announced the verdict on President Donald Trump in New York. And this is an anecdote, but this I was with some very important people in Colombia. And this is the way that they projected to me. They said America is no longer a superpower. They just don't realize it yet. Their Justice Department is just like our Justice Department.

They're providing lawfare against their political opponents. So America has no role to lecture or promote or to talk to us about the promotion of the rule of law. That was the impression. And these weren't like conservative Colombians. These were like middle-of-the-road Colombians in Bogota, some type of the government. And they're basically saying the United States is done for. Look at how they're treating their former president. And that was the impression. I don't know if people in the United States get how bad that looks. I mean, people always talk about January 6th. That was not a good look on the United States. But this is magnified times 100. When you go and you try to prosecute a president of the United

States over such trivial charges, which may not even be a crime, you're basically sending a message to the world that we're just as bad as you guys are, maybe even worse. Yeah. The American brand has been deeply damaged by that trial and the political people, the people who wanted this, the Joe Biden administration, which is obvious to me, it was all coordinated. They just don't care. It's really odd. Like they just don't care. And it's hurting investments. In America, it's hurting our reputation. It's hurting our ability to project power in our own hemisphere. It's so troubling. One point you like, I listen to these kids that are all woke, they go into college, and they're at the protests. And they're like, you you know america the imperialism and the colonizers

and how bad we are and then they're the colonizers and the imperialists who go to these countries and force their gay and trans global warming crap on the rest of the world um and you know put the screws to them unless they buy into their ideology giving up their own culture their own values their own religion their own faith. It's like, again, the left, full of hypocrisy, not seeing that they're, again, what these kids say on college campus is exactly what the administration they support is doing. They're imperialists. And there's a lot of commerce that, because we're pissing off so many of our allies and friends with this cultural ideology that we're pushing, we're leaving really important commerce on the table for China to gobble up.

I want to move to Mexico, but I want you to talk a little bit. I talk a lot about China in Latin America. You've really woken me up to the role of Iran and Hezbollah. Who knew that Hezbollah was operating in Latin America? Tell us what we need to know about Hezbollah and also your concern about Chinese influence over important resources in Latin America that could damage us. No, yeah. I'll talk about Hezbollah real quick in China as well, which one quick thing on the kind of like this kind of understanding that you're kind of facing these bigger threats while you're trying to fight over these small issues that are kind of, in many ways, not even representative of a culture. This actually, in some ways, represents what's going on in Guyana. Because I was in Guyana, I spoke with a lot of the senior

leaders, including the president. In Guyana, for a long time, since 1967, when they gained their independence, they thought they were going to be part of this new world, this, you know, South-South alignment, this Caribbean community in Africa and Latin America. They embraced the Chinese. China owns a lot of the infrastructure projects in Guyana. And now that the conflict is about to happen, now that the balloon is about to go up, who are they turning to? The only people that might do anything to support them? United States, United Kingdom, France, the old colonial powers. So they're having this issue of like, if you want to basically grow and become part of this, you know, Western world, you have to embrace that you're actually part of Western civilization.

Latin America is part of Western civilization. It's the new part of the West, but it is part of the West and none of itself. So that's to talk a little bit about Hezbollah is interesting because they've been in Latin America for a long time. But I want to point to a couple of things because since October 7, since the attack on Israel by Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah's networks in Latin America have gotten much more deadly. There's been at least three plots that have happened, one in Brazil, one in Argentina, one in Peru, that involve in Iran or Hezbollah, a Quds Force or Hezbollah operative, contracting sicarios. Sicario is a Spanish word for assassin. Contracting assassins to carry out targeted assassinations against Israeli businessmen in those countries. We've had a series of targeted assassinations against high-profile political figures in Latin America in recent years. The

former presidential candidate of Ecuador, Fernando Villavicencio. The former prosecutor of Paraguay that died on a beach on his honeymoon in Colombia. The former prosecutor of Argentina. And what we're seeing is we're seeing that, and this is a conversation in the counterterrorism community of Latin America, is we're wondering how far has Iran and Hezbollah penetrated the criminal organizations? Have they penetrated to the point that they're now using the criminal organizations to carry out their assassinations, their operations with complete plausible deniability? That may be why we're catching them a little easier, because they're easier to get caught, but it also is worrisome when you have all these illegals coming across the U.S. southern border.

Are any of these guys trained by Iran? And I think there's a high-ranking Iranian intelligence operative in Venezuela with the sole mission of training other people on how to create targeted kidnapping and assassinations with the mission of revenging Qasem Soleimani, the general that was killed on October 3rd. He's in Venezuela with the mission of assassinating Trump officials. So that's already in the hemisphere. I could tell you right now, we've seen elements of this in Ecuador, we've seen elements of this in Bolivia, and we've seen elements of this in Mexico. Now that dovetails into China. You know,

we talk a lot about the trilateral relationship with Iran, Russia, and China, the multipolar forces they like to call themselves. You know, Russia has a big role in a lot of this. They're the very big destabilizer. Putin's a killer, a kleptocrat. But really, the relationship that worries me the most is China and Iran, because as different from Russia, they have this oriental look at the world and world history. Russia was part of the West at one point. Marxism, for all its failures, is a Western failed ideology. But the way the Chinese and Iranians view the revolutions is completely different from anything of western thought or western civilization and because of that in what way can you explain that well in two important ways one's in terms of trade and the

other in terms of warfare in terms of trade they believe that the real international trade corridor the silk Silk Road, the original Silk Road, passes through what was used formerly the Persian Empire. It means it passed through Central Asia into the Middle East and Africa. So they believe in a South-South world. They don't believe in a North-South world. Russia is in the North, so they obviously are going to believe in a North-South world. So they have a different paradigm of how international trade should work in the world. So they have a different paradigm of how international trade should work in the world. The second is warfare, because the Western thought on war has always been, even from the Prussian theorist Karl von Clausewitz,

has always been that warfare begins when the first shot rings downrange. Meaning that when we look at bombs and bullets happening, we think the war is now starting. That was kind of how when Russia invaded Ukraine. But the Eastern thought of war, Sun Tzu and others, is that the bullets don't start until the end of the war. The warfare is constant and ongoing. So when Iran attacks Israel through its proxies in Hamas and the Houthis in Hezbollah, that's not the beginning of the war against Israel. That's the end of the war against Israel. And so that's, I think, we don't understand their doctrine on warfare. China calls it unrestricted warfare, which basically means

anything goes. They have 26,000 warfare. None of them, not none of them, but very few of them involve their military, drugs, transnational crime, immigration, money laundering. It's all methods of warfare for them. So I think in many respects that China-Iran relationship is much more symbiotic in terms of the thinking of war and the thinking of trade and the thinking of how to manage the world. And they're bringing that into Latin America and they're bringing it to Mexico. I mean, Mexico is now the center for that. And this is a great this is actually a really great transition into Mexico because I had never thought of it.

Like I just thought, OK, the the Chinese, we know the Chinese are involved with fentanyl, and they have a relationship with the cartels, and it's getting the fentanyl all over. We had Eric Prince on a week ago, and he said something to me that kind of blew my mind, but totally made sense, because I couldn't understand, why would you want to put fentanyl in your drugs when they could kill people and kill your customers? And I've asked that question on television to different people who've come on to talk about fentanyl. Nobody kind of answered that in a satisfying way to me. And then Eric Prince said, oh, yeah, the Chinese are working at lacing the drugs with fentanyl

because this is a big FU to the United States. This is a way to kill us off. And I did have one DEA agent I had talked to on Fox and Friends who said, you know, the Chinese, this is a form of warfare for them. He did say that, but it was still very difficult for me to understand. Talk to me about what... Hold on. Let's move. We're going to keep the conversation going in regard to the Western Hemisphere.

Let's move to Mexico and have the conversation on Mexico right after this break. The Fox News Rundown, a contrast of perspectives you won't hear anywhere else. Your daily dose of news twice a day. Featuring insight from top newsmakers, reporters and Fox News contributors. Listen and subscribe now by going to Fox News podcasts dot com. OK, we're back with Joseph Humeyer. Sean had to run. He's got, of course, the bottom line to do. Had to jump in the car. Our conversation went so long on the first part. I'm going to handle the second part about Mexico with Joseph myself.

Joseph, first of all, can we just talk geopolitically? Of all the countries in Latin America, and I guess Mexico is part of North America officially, but our Hispanic countries below our southern border, I would imagine Mexico is the most important. Explain strategically what the place that Mexico has in our hemisphere and specifically for American geopolitics. And then we'll move on to what the Chinese are trying to do there. Well, I think Mexico and the United States are intertwined in ways that I don't think we even fully understand. Let me give you this story real quick. You know, I served in the Marine Corps and I was in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. So I served in the Marine Corps during that time.

You know, what was the third nationality with the highest casualties in the first year of the Iraq War in 2003, after the US and the UK? It was actually Mexican nationals. Why? Mexican had nothing to do. They weren't part of the coalition. They had nothing to do. Why? Because there's so many Mexican nationals, US residents serving in the armed forces, particularly the Marine Corps out of Camp Pendleton, California, that when they died, they were Mexican nationals. I gave you that as a data point. I didn't know that. United States flag that I would see in some of the in some of the forward operating locations was the Texan flag. The Texans are very proud of Texas. And I would see the Mexican flag every now and then because some of the Mexicans are still proud of themselves and their country. So my point to that is we're intertwined in ways that we don't fully understand. We're like in many ways one of

the same, especially when you go out to the West Coast. Assad, the obvious, they're our largest trade partner. They surpassed China as of two, three years ago. We share this border that obviously is a big problem right now in contention. But we just have this saying in the Latin America policy community that the United States' worst nightmare is when you have a country with the desperation of Haiti, with the aggression of Cuba, with the oil of Venezuela, but the size of Brazil. And that country is Mexico. but the size of Brazil and that country is Mexico. But that country is Mexico. When Mexico gets a leader, that's going to be revolutionary socialist, like all these other Marxists that have taken over the rest of South America.

And we had it with president Lopez Obrador. The only thing that reigned in Lopez Obrador's worst instincts was that institutional strength that the United States has in their military, in their trade. And, and president Trump did a great job of reigning in AMLO to make sure he said, you don't have to have the same ideology. You're a socialist, I'm a capitalist, but we're neighbors and we need to get along. And AMLO respected that. The minute President

Biden came in, that relationship went one direction, which is AMLO running the table on the United States. And that's where the border starts to get overrun. It was telling to me in that 60 Minutes interview that happened a few, at beginning of May when they asked the 60 Minutes reporter asked President Lopez Obrador, like, what do we need to do to have greater cooperation on the border with with Mexico? And he said three things. He said, we need to give 20 billion dollars to poor Latin American countries. OK, whatever. Lift the embargo on Cuba and the sanctions on Venezuela. Like what? What does that have to do with the border? He was messaging. He was saying, I'm part of a network

and we're using immigration as a weapon because your future depends on us. So that's how important Mexico is. And I think that we're living that today. It is very, that's so fascinating because you would assume, you know, even for the past, Mexico always felt it was aligned with America.

And you see this new access, even in that answer happening. And so maybe we should talk about this election. So this Claudia Scheinbaum, who just won the election, the first woman to become president of the United States of Mexico, I should say, is a she's a secular Jew. She's a radical activist, is activist my understanding you can always correct me um if i'm wrong she comes from a family of communist activists she went to berkeley herself she's a protege of obrador my feeling was obrador was sort of like an old style catholic communist maybe if there's a such a thing um sort of still was rooted in Mexican Catholic family values

and sort of was able to balance his communist tendencies with that sort of sensibility. Now we have someone without those sensibilities, but with all the communism behind it, although she has proven to be a bit practical, just as Obrador has. My understanding also, Joseph, is that for all his faults, Obrador has been very pro-Mexican and pro-Mexican worker. And so the standard of living for the working class in Mexico has risen. And he was rewarded with huge approval

numbers. And his protege, Claudia Scheinbaum, who just won, benefited from that. Maybe you want to take it from there. Correct me where I'm wrong. I know you're the expert, not me. But let's move from that point. No, no, you're right. I mean, you know, AMLO, you know, he's a populist. He had a lot of popular messages. They resonated with the people. A lot of people in Mexico, like voting in Mexico is not quite the same as voting in the United States. People think that we go to the ballot box and they vote. And so, I mean, you have cartels pretty much at every ballot box inside mexico so like if you're not voting in the way they want you to vote there's heavy intimidation they give out gift baskets if you're going to vote for the morena party they'll give you soap and food and all this stuff and so

the voting experience in mexico is a little bit different so i don't think uh you know it's quite the same as we have here in america but to that point, I mean, the opposition is pretty much nil. I mean, the Obesico for a long time was governed by one party, which was the PRI, the PRI. And then in 2000, they broke the mold and they became another party, the PAN. That was the party of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon. And these two parties were basically like the Republicans and Democrats of Mexico for the longest time. Morena broke that back in 2018 when AMLO won the presidency. That's AMLO's party, Morena.

Morena's AMLO's party, exactly, a new party. You remember, AMLO was part of the PRD. He was part of the PRI initially, and then he became part of the PRD, which is the Social Left Party, and then he created his own party, Morena. And the victory on last sunday is really a victory for morena because uh yeah scheinbaum won the presidency by 30 points but they also won supermajority inside the congress they also won almost all the governorships they won city councilmen i mean they pretty much won mexico is now back to the one party state that party is no

longer the pre of the 20th century it's more Morena of the 21st century. What does that mean for the United States? So I think this puts our election front and center because it's going to be a drastic difference who's on the other side of the aisle. If it's going to be President Donald Trump that's already shown that even though we have differences, we can rein in using our leverage as United States and our trade and immigration security leverage that we have in Mexico, or is it going to be President Joe Biden that's going to appease Mexico till the cows come home and not just that the border situation is going to get worse, but every situation is going to get worse because the new Mexican government, empowered by this mass control of their country, is going to run the table on us.

As a matter of fact, somebody that was in Mexico recently told me, he said, Joseph, we're not going to accept the remain in Mexico policy. I know if Biden tries to propose it, they're not going to accept it. And he said, if you guys try to impose it on us, we're going to activate the Mexican networks in the Southwest, meaning they're going to activate the Mexican dual nationals I was talking about that are in Arizona, that are in New Mexico, that are in Southern California to start radicalizing those populations against America, against the United States. So I think there's going to be a drastic difference depending on who wins in the U.S. election. But in that,

I mean, let me talk a little about Claudia Scheinbaum. I mean, I think, you know, again, if it's President Trump in office, I think we can find ways to deal with her. We can find ways to work with her. She has a pragmatic side to her, but she also has a radical ideological side to her. It depends how you manage that relationship. It depends which side you're going to get. Claudia Scheinbaum, back in the day, I i'm looking at i'll send this to your production team i'm looking at a stanford daily article for 1991 where they're talking about protests against nafta this is way back in the day uh against then president carlos saninez and there's a woman in the front of the picture with a big poster that says fair trade and democracy and that woman is

claudia scheinbaum and she was she was protesting against nafta she was protesting against nafta she was probably i might have joined you know what i wasn't at the time now what i know about nafta i might have joined claudia that's true i mean that's not not a great thing that didn't end up being great for america or no this is true this is true but i mean i use it from the context that she was always kind of an ideologue. This is at Berkeley, and she's protesting this. And then there's a tweet by Gustavo Petro, our favorite president of Colombia, the Marxist president of Colombia, where he said something that really is not a good endorsement for those of us that are worried about, you know, this kind of Marxist takeover of Latin America. Yeah, when she won the election, Gustavo Petro, the March's president of Colombia, says, Claudia, he refers to her by her first name, helped us tremendously during the times that the M-19, his former terrorist group, had to go into clandestine hiding in Mexico.

Remember, the M-19 people went to Mexico to hide out when they were being prosecuted. And she said since she was very young, she was a social justice warrior, a woman of the hard left, and one of the most important nations of the world. So if she has a relationship with Petro that goes back to the 1980s when M-19 was a terrorist group, that concerns me. But it all has to do with American leadership, because whether it's Petro, whether it's Scheinbaum, whether it's Xiomara Castro and Honduras or Boric and Chile or wherever, if we lead from the back, lead from the rear, these countries are going to run amok on the United States. They're going to push their interests. They're going to bring in their allies in Russia, China, Iran,

and they're going to push us out of our own neighborhood. But if we lead from the front and kind of impose what is American leadership inside the hemisphere, I think we can reign some of these presidents in, namely President Shai Baum. I think, Joseph, my concern is that the the wokey young people who are actually running a lot of stuff or the wokey, crazy radicals like Valerie Jarrett and all those other people in the Obama side that are running things, they they will. So I look at like Brazil, for example, was totally in our interest for Bolsonaro to win because he was an American ally and and and would have kept he was he was a China hawk.

He was concerned about China's influence. We I would I would suggest our CIA probably help the other side. So Bolsonaro didn't win. Now he can't even run for president anymore. And and they're appeasing the Chinese. So I feel like that some of these ideological things, whether it's gay rights, abortion rights, women's rights, climate change, these things sort of take precedence. And we seem to be nicer to those regimes that will agree with these things then we do those who might align with us against really serious threats from China and Iran, Hezbollah, whatever. Yeah, I mean, what you're seeing, Rachel, in regards to Brazil and some of these other

countries, you're seeing the Biden administration put ideology over national security. Yes, that's what I want to say. That's that's exactly right. Ideology over national security. Yes. And international interest, because if you regardless of someone's political persuasion, Yes, that's what I want to say. That's exactly right. Ideology over national U.S. adversaries in Russia, China, and Iran, opening up investment opportunities for U.S. companies and helping build their countries back into a level of prosperity so immigration isn't flooding out from their countries and into the United States through the southern

border. That's irrespective of ideology. That's not an ideological statement whatsoever. If, for whatever, like if, you know, Maverick Magic One and Gustavo Petro of Colombia decided to distance from Russia, China, and Iran, help close the Darien Gap, and started to bring in American companies and investment, we would like Gustavo Petro, regardless of whether he's a Marxist or whatever. But the fact is that their actions speak louder than their words, and they haven't been doing this.

Right now, Rachel, we're living a period in Latin America that I think, unfortunately, is sprinkling into the United States, which is this era of lawfare. You know, we saw what happened with President Trump and with the Department of Justice has basically politicized these charges against him. But this is happening all over Latin America. I mean, you have Bolsonaro, you mentioned. Now he's not able to run for office. I mean, they want to lock him up for this so-called coup d'etat that he never actually materialized. Or if not that, for taking a picture of a whale on a jet ski. I mean, this is literally the charges he has against himself. You have the president of Bolivia, President Janine Añez, who's in jail for terrorism and another supposed fake coup d'etat inside Bolivia.

You have in Colombia the beginnings of going after president uribe who they've never tried to stop charging with but now they invoked another charges on him for witness tampering on on allegations that they had on him on corruption so basically we have and then you also have in venezuela they didn't let um machado what um why is her name colina Corina. Maria Corina Machado. They accused her of what? Like insurrection or trying to destabilize the country. And she wasn't able to run. Yeah, they disbarred her from running.

They have many of her key advisors and staffers that's using the word peace as a weapon to basically criminalize peace so that the criminals can get impunity and the political opposition become the criminals. And that's the situation we're facing in Latin America. But if you juxtapose that with what we're facing in the United States, we're not that far off. So when you have all these problems on the southern border and the immigration and everything's unfettered and everything's not controlled and there is no law and order, then you start to have this world where we start to emulate the worst parts of our neighbors. And I think that that's the story of the Western Hemisphere today. I mean, the Western Hemisphere, which was a story of in the early part of the 20th century of peace, prosperity. We didn't have these big wars. Even 9-11 happened, but that happened overseas in the Middle East.

They attacked us here. We fought them there. And now we're, you know, with everything we talked about, we're encompassing maybe the first interstate war in Latin America in the 21st century. Venezuela does invade Guyana. We're facing, you know, warships coming from other parts of the world, from authoritarian countries, starting to

sail throughout the Caribbean. And we're facing political persecution and targeted assassination at levels that I've never seen before in my life. I've been covering Latin America for 20 years and I've never seen it this bad. I mean, it's getting really bad. It's getting actually dangerous for me

to travel there a little bit. But I'm seeing that now. The reason I keep doing this is because I see that that's now bleeding into the United States as well. Yeah, it certainly is. I know you don't have too much time, but I have just a couple more questions. Do you have some time for me, Joseph? Yeah, I'm good.

I want to talk about the cartels and the Chinese. First of all, we have an 8,000, for those who don't know, we have an 8,000% increase of Chinese nationals who have crossed our border. We've never seen anything like this. Donald Trump was asked about it. I also asked Michael Pillsbury, who's a China expert. Both of them have been asked about whether they're trying to stand up an army, the Chinese potentially here. And Donald Trump told somebody else, not me, but yes, he thought that was a possibility. Michael Pillsbury said, absolutely, it's a possibility and that they didn't need a lot of people to destabilize a city or in any way just sort of activate cells if need be. What is what is going on with China in Mexico? Is China the real threat or is Iran? That's the thing. I mean, if we were like in 2005

to 2010, I would entertain the conversation about whether it's China or Iran or Russia, because there was some sense of a segmentation among the three. They were aligning, but they weren't aligned in an alliance. It's 2024. I mean, this is done. I mean, these guys work hand in glove together. They're aligned 100 i mean they're doing joint naval exercises like yes you're right that requires command control and communication at levels above you have which is normal allies that means you have to share the same systems the same platforms and the same mechanisms to be able to maneuver together in the blue ocean i mean these guys are completely synchronized that doesn't mean that they're going to be that way forever i eventually think think they'll fight each other, but they'll only fight each other when the United States ceases to exist. And that's not a situation that I'm going to accept, or I don't think any American would accept. But to your question about the cartels, I mean, so the cartels are proxies.

They're proxies of the Chinese, they're proxies of the Mexicans, they're proxies of the Venezuelans, they're proxies of the Russians, they're proxies of anybody that wants to bleed into this underworld of illicit economies. Mexican cartels are very powerful. They have a tremendous amount of control, not just in Mexico, in other countries throughout the hemisphere. They're very present in Central America. They're very present in Ecuador. They're present in Colombia, Venezuela. They go all the way down to Peru.

But really, in many ways, they're tools to be able to expand the criminal control of areas where the states aren't that present. And so leading China helps. So China basically has helped empower the cartels by revolutionizing their money laundering mechanisms, something that was once done by the Lebanese. The Lebanese basically were used to launder a lot of the money for the cartels. That's how Hezbollah got them all. But that actually ended up becoming too expensive for the cartels because they started to learn how to cut costs by moving from plant-based drugs to synthetic drugs and by moving from Lebanese couriers to Chinese couriers in terms of the money laundering apparatus. So the Mexican cartels have become more efficient. And in that, the Chinese have used that as an opportunity to engage Latin America through an illicit network that bleeds into the United States through all the territories that

the Mexican cartels have here in the country. They're present in the entire West Coast, they're heavily present in Chicago, they're increasingly present in Florida and New York, and they have a good control of Texas as well. So the Chinese are able to work with and through the Mexican cartel so that they can be able to do their operations with plausible deniability. And let me mention one point. So about, you mentioned the 8,000% increase in Chinese nationalists. So I went to the Darien Gap a few times and I have interviewed some of these folks. And so I'm increasingly concerned, not just about the criminals and terrorists that are coming across our border, that's concerning

as well. But I'm concerned about professional military intelligence and logistic operators, which I ran into one of them in Panama from China, that are trained to basically create networks, to create mechanisms, and to create avenues of approach so that they can light the United States up from within. so in the future president to say president trump wins the election if we're going to try to stop the conflict in ukraine to bring you know israel to support israel against the war against the terrorists and hamas and hezbollah to uh then try to avoid conflict over taiwan they will light us up from inside. What do you mean by that? Explain that. So we have it in our U.S. arsenal as well. Our special operators are trained to basically work

with and through indigenous populations of foreign countries to be able to use those indigenous forces to destabilize those countries against U.S. adversaries. You're talking about color revolutions, right? Color revolutions. I'm also talking about U.S. special forces. I'm talking about the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. I'm talking about the Contras from back in the 1980s. We've done this over time. But our enemies have that capability, too. And we're not the only ones that do color revolutions. Our enemies have their own color revolutions. And that's why I think that immigration is very much a tool of theirs.

It's a warfare weapon of theirs because it's a maximum pressure campaign of the week. And so what I'm worried about is these operatives, these Chinese PLA special forces, these Iranian Quds Force special forces, these GRU, FS, SVR, Russian special forces that come into the United States under the guise of a refugee, a Sylee, or whatever false identity they have. And they start to position themselves in key parts of the United States near military installations and start to create networks that are going to be able to poison your food and water supply, turn off your electrical grid, establish a retail theft that's going to be able to shut down shipping, commercial shipping.

So they do all these tactics that they're trained on how to do to keep the United States occupied of our internal disorder and not even able to project power abroad. They're trained on this. The guy I talked to in Panama, he told me, he didn't tell me everything, but, you know, I was able to spend about two days with him. He told me that, no, like you guys are in trouble. Like, we're going to do this to you. Like, don't even think about Taiwan, you know or japan or the philippine sea uh and so i'm worried about that and and and it's not just the chinese it's the russians it's the iranians it's the venezuelans i mean we're seeing the chain that i was wake up so in my sense by the way is the

venezuelan gang it's it's the fastest growing criminal gang in the Western Hemisphere. And that's what you're referring to. And we let a lot of those people out. I mean, the Maduro, Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, let a lot of those guys out of his prisons, emptied his prisons. And they have been coming up into our country. Correct. Yeah. He literally closed the prison that where they came from in Tocoron, in Maracanã, Venezuela. And then he's like, oh, we don't have them anymore. That doesn't exist. And he sent them all overseas. Correct? Yeah, he literally closed the prison where they came from in Tocaron, in Maracanã, Venezuela. And then he said, like, oh, we don't have them anymore. That doesn't exist.

And he sent them all overseas. And actually, just to give you an example on what kind of destabilization they could do, I mean, one of the things we're seeing with these Venezuelan kind of trend de aragua types in the United States is they're now giving manuals on how to do squatting operations, how to take property and just basically squat into that property and to in some ways try to expropriate the landowners. These are tactics they used in Brazil, they used in Peru, they used in Venezuela, these landless movements that they call, and there's a big one in Brazil. And so the Venezuelans are literally bringing manuals to the Americans on how to do this,

right? So that's, you take the groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, whoever's protesting those protests in Columbia University, you take the groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, whoever's protesting those protests in Columbia University. You take those groups which are literally rookies at this kind of stuff and you provide this kind of intelligence support. You professionalize them and you take them to levels that we're not familiar with here. And it seems like, OK, squatting hurts one landownerowner but the whole the whole i mean our foundation or the rule of law i mean people understand in latin america where this stuff has been happening and professionalized as you said for so many years people wanted to come to the united states because there was rule of law there were property rights things they couldn't depend on in latin

america and if you want to just if you want to destabilize the entire hemisphere, you got to bring those things to America and destabilize the USA with these kinds of tactics. And suddenly, you know, we're just a different hemisphere. We're just a weaker country. We're a weaker hemisphere. We'll have more of this conversation after this. So if Donald Trump wins, Joseph, just really quick, tell us what happens if he wins? How important is it that he wins for our national security and for the security of the Western Hemisphere? So this election, I mean, this is kind of sounds some types of hyperbole sometimes when you say it, but I mean, it really is the case. I mean, this election is the most important election in the entire Western Hemisphere. Every country in this election is the most important election in the entire Western Hemisphere.

Every country in Latin America is looking at this election to determine their future. I mean, I mentioned I was in Colombia. The Colombian opposition to Gustavo Petro is like they're getting ready for the 2020-2026 election. They all have presidential candidates. But they're like, if the United States doesn't win, I mean, does it even matter? I mean, even if we win, they're probably going to impose us rather quickly. So this election is incredibly important for the stability of our entire hemisphere. And I think that President Trump

is going to have a huge challenge, even if he is to win. If he is to win, we're going to have to renew the Monroe Doctrine. But it's not the Monroe Doctrine of the 19th century, which is against European monarchies. Those monarchies don't exist anymore. This is a Monroe Doctrine of the 19th century, which is against European monarchies. Those monarchies don't exist anymore. This is a Monroe Doctrine against the most totalitarian countries that the world has ever seen, which is Russia, China, and Iran. They have no business and no place on this side of the world. They don't benefit any Latin American country. There's no such thing as an economic growth story with Chinese investment. It doesn't exist in Africa or Latin America. And there's no such thing as Russia training people on how to fight terrorism and corruption.

That never existed inside the world. So President Trump's going to have to reclaim American dominance throughout the world, but he's going to have to start in the area in which we live, which is the Western Hemisphere. I think he's going to find many partners to do that, beginning with President of Argentina, Javier Millay, and even partners in unlikely places where you might think that, you know, that's not the president of a country, but it's the governor of an important region or the mayor of an important city. We're going to have to go to the subnational level and rebuild, not just our image, but rebuild the sovereignty and the prosperity of these countries.

And I think that if we do so, we'll probably end up avoiding a world war. If we fail to do so, we're probably going to get sucked into a world war. And you never know how those world wars are going to end. No, it's hard to believe that the Latin Americans, I think they're like culturally, as you said, you know, wherever the Chinese have gone, they've raped and pillaged the resources there. It's never been about Africa. Africa is worse off because of China's involvement in Africa. And maybe some people can say the same about America in certain places, maybe even in certain places in Latin America. But for the most part, we share values. We have an interest in their prosperity and freedom across the region. We're not perfect. I know for myself, I've, you know, had my own realignment in my,

you know, my own, you know, blinders lifted on so many of our imperfections across the world. But still, you know, compared to China, compared to Iran, compared to Russia, you're in better hands with the United States. And I've been surprised that more Latin Americans, so many Latin Americans have fallen for China, Joseph. Yeah, no, and I just want to pick up on that one point that you said, because I think that's at the core of the core of our fighting. I don't want to give you a full kind of class on it. But, you know, asymmetric war is defined by three wars. There's the physical war, which I think we're engaged in right now, the physical war over territory, over sovereignty. There's the mental war over attrition, like who

has the will and who's willing to go there. I think President Trump has showed he has the will to fight wars. He's fighting his own war in terms of the persecution against them. But the most important part of a war is the moral battle for legitimacy. And this is going to come at the heart of the United States. What you mentioned, the United States has made mistakes, some very recently.

And we have to acknowledge that. We have to admit that. We're not a perfect nation. We've done a lot of things to our own people. We've done things to other people. But at the end of the day, the fundamental question for every American is, do you believe Americans are good? Do you believe we are good people? And I believe we

are good people. I believe I've been all over the world. I've been, you know, I served in the military. I've traveled. I still travel quite a bit. And I believe there's good people all over the world. But Americans are fundamentally not an evil society. They're actually a naive society in many respects because they don't see all the conflicts around the world. But that question is going to be drawn upon every American to say, are you really a good person? And are you projecting good things on other people in other parts of the world? Because every country is going through that right now. And I think unless we win that moral battle for legitimacy, everything else is going to be lost. And I believe that President Trump represents the best of what's in America. I think he doesn't have to do this. He doesn't have to be a president

again. He probably would have his life much better if he did this. I believe that there's only one reason why he does this, because he loves his country. It's the same reason why I do what I do. I'm sure it's the same reason, Rachel, you do what you do. And I think that many Americans are going to rise up to that challenge because there are good people that they're going to say we're not going to let the bad people win. And that's going to that's going to be contagious. That's going to like I believe Harvey Millay is a good person. I believe he's rising up a new generation. So is Kelly in in El Salvador. There are some good players down there. You know, it's so interesting. Just we've lost so much moral credibility with what we've done, what this country or what the Biden administration has done to Donald Trump, but also what is being done to our own dissidents, whether it's January 6th, the pro-lifers.

There's a lot of people who have been hurt because of the politics and the power grabbing by the Biden administration. I think we've lost a lot of credibility. But when I interviewed the president last weekend at his golf course here in Bedminster, and what struck me, and Sean and I talked about it, we did sort of a post analysis, if you will, on some of the clips that came out of that interview. And what struck me the most after having interviewed him and us being a political couple, you know, Sean having served for 10 years, is if what had happened to Donald Trump, if even a fraction of that had been done to Sean, both Sean and I have to admit, we'd be really bitter. We would be done with America.

We would be, I would have given up on America. And what's remarkable to me through that interview, and this was like, you know, a couple days after the verdict in New York about, you know, with Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and just all the shenanigans that were pulled. I mean, he's still bullish on America. I mean, and as you said, he doesn't have to do this. And I think that that's apparent, especially to those who live in Latin America. I think they see that, especially those who believe in our values, believe in our Western Christian values. And I agree with you. I think this is the most important election of

our lifetime. I think Donald Trump is the most remarkable figure in modern history for what he's endured. And I think if there's any hope to rebuild this country, to rebuild that moral credibility that we once had over the world, across the world, it's going to be with Donald Trump. By the way, I don't know if you did see it. I asked him if he would declassify 9-11 files, if he would declassify the JFK files, even the Epstein files, and he said yes. And I think that there was an opportunity. Yeah, he did. He said yes. He said yes. And that part of the interview has made a lot of news. And I think we talked a little bit about some of the bad things that have happened with the CIA, some of it in Latin America as well. And I think that Donald Trump is the only person running right now and in our lifetimes who would even entertain that and possibly give us a chance to rebuild that more credibility.

And so I just I can't thank you enough. I say this about a few guests of ours. Victor Davis Hanson is one of them. And you are too, Joseph. I really think you're a national treasure. I think the work that you've been doing over the years to understand Latin America and how it impacts and affects us as Americans.

And it's sad to see that, you know, your work has never been more important because I don't think Latin America has ever been in worse shape than it is now. And America has never been in worse shape as well. And so I just really thank you for the work you're doing. I want you to stay safe out there. I know you mentioned a little bit that you've become more concerned about your security. I hope you do stay safe. And I want to give you just the last word because I'm just so impressed with you and your work. Well, no, first of all, thank you, Rachel.

Very kind of you to say that. You know, I've been looking at the region. It's funny because I have, you know, obviously I know a lot about Venezuela and I traveled there before, but people used to always ask me, like, why do you care so much about Venezuela or any of these countries, right?

Why do you care so much about Colombia? I have a medal from Colombia. And they always thought like I'm married to somebody that's like from those countries, like, Oh, you must have a Venezuelan wife, a Colombian girlfriend and I say, no, I don't. I said, I said the reason I care is because I care about my country. And I know that this is going to matter. This is going to be important. If they're going to take out the United States,

it's going to be from Latin America. I mean, that just makes geographical sense. And so that's kind of why I've always done that. I did it for the love of my country, not for the love of their country. But in the process of doing it, you meet people that love their country just as much. And those are people that have been heroes to me as well. And while you're saying that, I have this bracelet that I wear for my time in the military. And it has two sayings on it.

And I think this is kind of what keeps me going on these things. The first saying is, these are two military things, like kind of military sayings. The first one is the last easy day was yesterday, because I think things just get tougher as you go along. And I have this sense that we're about to get into the fight. We're not there yet, but we're about to get into it. And once you get into it, things get a lot more difficult.

I think President Trump's getting like a preview of what's going to be happening to a lot of people inside the United States, especially if President Biden wins. And then the other side of the bracelet says, stay in the fight. Because if there's one thing that, and I've had this question to me by a lot of people in these militaries in Latin America, like, what if America loses? I said, listen, I was like, if we lose, it's the end of my problems, you know, because, you know, like, you know, the Brazilians have this saying is, you know, if there's no solution, there's no problem. And, you know, and when you're dead, there's no problem. So at the end of the day, the way I kind of see it is that, you know, in order to be able to become victorious and, you know, we talk about World War II and the greatest generation and the way you're going to be victorious is people are going to have to have the political will to match our adversary.

People are going to have to rise up and say, we are just as strong, if not stronger than you. And we believe as much in what we believe as you believe in you. And I think that President Trump has shown that. And that's why I support him, because he's shown that he believes in not just this country. He believes in the goodness of America. support him because he's shown that he believes in not just this country, he believes in the goodness of America, as strong as Xi Jinping says he believes in the Chinese revolution, or the Iranians believe in their revolution, or Putin believes in, I don't know what he believes in, but he believes in money at least. And so I think that that level of conviction is what we've

been lacking in the United States. We haven't had leaders in a long time that really believe, they may have said they believe, but when push comes to shove, a lot of them, they didn't have skin in the game. They would send military to wars that they don't even fight or they don't have their kids that fight. And I think the moms and dads of America have been bearing the blunt of those decisions. And I think now those mom and dads, some of them are U.S. congressmen. Some of them are leaders and governors and leaders of the country. Some of them serve in the military. And I always said that, and I actually said this recently when I was in class, I said, you want to see the best of America? Don't come to Washington D.C. That's right. I said, go to Florida, go to Texas, go to North Carolina,

go to Wisconsin. You bring up such a great point, Joseph, because you talk about Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping believes in his revolution. He believes in his ideology. You know, the the the Islamist in Iran believe in that, you know, that revolution as well. But Donald Trump believes in in American people. And you see that he believes that, as you said, the goodness of our people. And it's sad that our leaders have not been worthy of that. And we were we are born out of a revolution as well.

You know, America is not this country that just kind of just spontaneously came about. We rebelled against the British back in the day. And I think that I always say that to like, you know, when I've had conversations with some Chavistas and others, and I say you haven't seen our revolutionary spirit yet either yes so when you see the american revolutionary spirit there's one thing i know about americans is they don't know how to lose they don't like to lose they don't know how to lose we won't in the olympics in sports and movies and entertainment and capital markets when americans put their mind to it they

only know one thing and that's to win the problem is we just haven't realized that we're in this conflict we didn't think that the world was actually going to turn against us we thought we were doing well and i think pretty much in the last few years we've realized that we're not and so i think america is a confident you talk about those bracelets at my um i have a little tiny cabin on a beautiful lake up in northern wisconsin and on my wall, I have a picture, and it has an eagle and whatnot. And it says, America exceptional since 1776. And I still believe that, even with all of our flaws. I believe our system is better.

And I believe our system and our values align very well with most of the people in Latin America. As I said, I think we share a lot. We share a lot of history. And most importantly, I think we share Christian values with our Latin American neighbors. And I think when America is doing well, the whole neighborhood does well. And right now we've neglected the neighborhood as the leaders in this neighborhood, and we're seeing the consequences of it. And you're shining a light on the problems and giving me a lot of hope that Donald Trump can see this.

I'm going to tell you I'm going to send this podcast to people I know on his team because I want to make sure that they are aware as much as you are of what's at stake in our own hemisphere. And so I thank you, Joseph, for joining us today. And I wish you luck. And as things develop, I hope you'll text me and say, hey, I've got some new stuff you need to know in Latin America that relates to what's going on here in America. Because these podcasts have been very popular with our viewers. Our listeners understand what's at stake.

And the work that you're doing is helping to raise awareness of that. So I thank you for joining us. Thank you, Rachel. It's always a pleasure. And you'll definitely hear from me. I'll be texting you updates as we go along. You got it. We love having you on Fox & Friends too.

Thanks so much, Joseph. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. The world of business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox Business Rundown. Listen to the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.