From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Why Haiti & Growing Instability in Latin America Hurts U.S. Security

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

The humanitarian crisis in Haiti continues to worsen as rampant gang violence overwhelms the country, with threats of a civil war looming heavily over innocent civilians. Though this news is just now making media headlines, this tragedy has been escalating in Haiti for years -- and could soon happen in other countries across the world. To break down this complex issue, national security expert and Center for a Secure Free Society Executive Director Joseph Humire is back to discuss what's currently happening on the ground in Haiti, how similar conflicts in the region could soon escalate to this point, and why it all directly threatens U.S. national security. They also discuss how China is capitalizing on this catastrophe and why their actions must not be ignored. Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Mejuri. From November 25th to December 2nd, get 25% off everything on orders over $150 in Mejuri's biggest sale ever. From bold hoops to minimalist stacks, Mejuri has something for everyone. Mejuri makes handcrafted fine jewelry for every day made with responsibly sourced materials.

So you can look and feel good about gifting and wearing them. Shop your wishlist 25% off at Mijeri.com today. Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's great to be back. There's a lot of stuff in the news. And one of the things that is happening in Latin America right now, in the Caribbean specifically, is in Haiti. We want to get the latest how it's impacting the region, the United States, the entire border situation, which is out of control. And we're bringing back a guest that I had on that we had on not too long ago.

He's also on Fox and Friends this weekend, Joseph Humeyer. He's an author, of course, but he's also a national security expert. He's the executive director of the Center for a Secure and Free Society. And quite frankly, I think probably the best expert I've ever talked to on Latin America, which is why I want to have him on today. So Joseph, welcome to the kitchen table. No, thank you for having me again. It's a pleasure to be on. Thank you. Yeah, you're kind of becoming a Fox star. People have been really enjoying it um your insights because you just have such um a deep knowledge of the area and um and its impact on america so why don't you just start by telling us

the latest what is the latest that's going on in haiti the latest is they're trying to figure out how they're going to manage uh this uh group group of Kenyan military that are supposed to come in to try to stabilize the area. That's going to be a monumental challenge. I actually think it's a mission for failure because a couple of things. Anyone that's been involved in irregular warfare or has been involved in doing some kind of outside intervention into a country. And for example, for the U.S. military perspective, we have our special forces that do a lot of this. They go into other countries, they train with local indigenous forces. But the key to making that work is what they call a G-force, an indigenous force, a ground force, a local partner

that's from the country that has the credibility to counter these organized crime gangs. In Haiti, we don't have that. It's not the military. It's not the police. It's no other militia. Who are you going to work with? You can't bring external support into a country that has nothing to support. And that's the problem with Haiti. And my guess is that the Kenyans are probably going to get mired up in just an internal civil conflict, looking to be more like a civil war. And they're just going to get caught up in the conflict. I hope the United States isn't dumb enough to actually follow in that same mistake. There's a lot of people that want to push us there.

The United States has been involved in a lot of interventions in Haiti, and none of them have ever worked out well. So the latest right now is they're trying to figure out how they're actually going to manage this mobilization of Kenyans. They're supposedly going to... Why were the Kenyans selected to do that? Can you explain that? I was kind of surprised when I heard Kenyans were coming to Haiti to deal with the military situation.

From my understanding, well, I think one kind of very just broad reason, which is nobody else wanted to. Canada was the country that was initially selected to help lead this kind of international coalition to help try to bring some peace and stability to Haiti. But they couldn't get any authorization. They had very little appetite to do so. The United States has a history of this, and we obviously also did not want to do so. And then there was some impetus to looking at Africa because of two reasons. One, because of language, French. They have French-speaking military officers that can obviously culturally and linguistically relate to the Haitians. And two, because they were promised basically that they were going to get international support to do this. And I think from the Kenyan side, you know, you get paid to do this, they're going to do it.

This is going to be a kind of a mission that they'll take upon themselves. So Joseph, it's interesting. It seems like it's a very challenging situation. So, you know, when you have this civil war that's happening, it doesn't sound like really any country is going to be able to snuff that out in a way that would be successful where you have, you know, a standing group of people you could help train and get them to stand up and take over. But if we don't get involved or someone doesn't get involved successfully and this civil conflict continues, we're going to see thousands of people flee the island and the place we're going to come is to America. They're going to come in through Florida. So if you're President Joe Biden or

you're an advisor to Biden, what should the U.S. be doing as we watch this chaos unfold in Haiti? OK, so that's a great question because you're right. Inevitably, whether we do something or we don't do something, the effects are probably going to be the same at some level. The scale might be different, but we're going to see mass migration from Haiti. We've already seen mass migration from Haiti over the years for various reasons. We're probably going to see the implosion of the state, what's little left of it, and the explosion of transnational organized crime. All kinds of other gangs are probably going to come into Haiti to profit off of that civil war. Now, what should the United States do? I think the first thing,

we just got to take a step back. We can't lose sight of the forest for the trees. Haiti is a conflict. It's a problem today. Tomorrow, it'll be Honduras. The next day, it'll be Panama. The following day, it'll be another Caribbean country. uh low intensity conflicts that are starting to erupt for political reasons for economic reasons for social reasons uh but they're starting to destabilize the entire caribbean and overlay that with china's presence that's where u.s strategic national interest becomes and i mentioned this on the fox and friends interview which is basically if you just go about four or five hundred miles north of haiti you're going to run into the Bahamas. China, and there's many people, some of you don't know this, but China has one of its largest outposts in the Western Hemisphere in the Bahamas, which is very close to Florida. And they're counting on some type of US fumble inside the Caribbean, whether it's Haiti, whether it's Honduras, whether it's

Guyana and Venezuela, they're counting on our military to get overly exposed inside the Caribbean so they can delegitimize us and help to reposition themselves even stronger than what they already are. So I can guarantee you that those PLA and intelligence officers from China that are in that embassy, outsized embassy in Bahamas, are basically watching this very closely. So we have to take a step back and we have to look at strategics arena of the Caribbean and come up with a plan that's not going to just talk about Haiti, but the region writ large. And that's something that you don't think the Biden administration wants to do. I mean, one of the things that's been surprising as you just look at, and I do want to get back

specifically to Haiti, but for just this moment, since you brought that up and you're looking at just the region, our backyard, it's been a really weird situation. I mean, I didn't know that the embassy or the outpost, as you call it, for China in the Bahamas was as large as it was. I had no idea that they were even in the Bahamas. I wouldn't have predicted that. Panama, I get, you know, they have, you know, resources and the canal. I understand why they would want to be there. I was surprised about the Bahamas. And I guess I'm trying to understand what exactly is China's play there and in the Caribbean. And what can we be doing?

Because it seems to me like Joe Biden has been aligning himself because of ideology, not with the people, the leaders in Latin America who are trying to push back on the Chinese and get them out of the hemisphere, but he's actually aligning and powering and propping up the leaders who are making deals with the Chinese. None of what Joe Biden is doing makes sense to me. Can you kind of break that down a little bit? Well, it doesn't make sense, Rachel, if you're on the side of trying to basically protect United States national security, if you're trying to help work with allies in the region that are more democratic, more pro-freedom, more pro-business. If you come from that perspective, it doesn't make sense.

But if you come from the perspective of trying to equal the playing field between democracies and authoritarians, which is not something that the Biden administration says they do, but in practice is the actual effect of what they are doing, then you start to see the chips kind of lay out a little bit cleaner. To the point about what's China's strategy, and this kind of always boggles my mind that China has a strategy for Latin America, the United States doesn't, that already boggles my mind. That might be problem number one, right? They have a strategy in Latin America,

and we're just doing this all ad hoc. No, absolutely. That's step one right there. But to specifically speak about China's strategy. So China has had a strategy in Latin America to essentially hoodwink the countries in Latin America to believe that most of their interests are economic in nature, commercial partnerships. But if you look in the details of those commercial partnerships, whether it's ports, whether it's telecommunications, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's credits and loans, a lot of that is tied to their military. And this goes down to the contracts. Inside the contracts, they put provisions so that they can hold military drills, military exercises, military engagement because their big effort.

And this is kind of that Belt and Road Initiative that they're doing throughout the world is to essentially redesign the map in terms of international trade. New ports, new shipping lanes, new maritime security belts, choke points like the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal are going to be exposed to instability that China is going to profit from. And so in the Caribbean, they've already built the infrastructure. Like it's not, we're not going there like they're starting this now. They started this 20 years ago. So now they're at the point that they're trying to push the conflict. They're trying to push the conflict, have the Latin Americans blame the United States for exacerbating the conflict and come in to say that they're part of the solution. China has this trend throughout the world of playing arson and firefighter, right? They help you start the fire and then they come in and said, we'll help you put of the solution. China has this trend throughout the world of playing arson and firefighter, right? They help you start the fire, and then they come in and said, we'll help you put out the fire. And that's exactly what they're going to do with the Haitians. That's what they're

going to do with the Guyanese. And that's what we're going to do with a lot of these Caribbean countries that are going to be seeing a lot of instability in the near future. And you're not giving us top secret information. You're not giving us classified information. The Chinese, for the most part, have been pretty open about their Belt and Road strategy. They do want to remake the power structure in the world. And we should pay attention to that. Joe Biden, as Rachel just mentioned, and you have too, doesn't seem to care about this power shifting dynamic that's taking place, especially in our hemisphere. But I want to go back to Haiti. And this question comes from what I've seen at the southern border. We've got information about

the people who come in. There's some people who are seeking true asylum. There's people who want a better life. There's people who want to get jobs. The problem we have is that there's no real effort to truly vet people who come into our country. We're just quickly processing and moving people along and have no idea who they are, whether they're terrorists, they're gang members, they're drug dealers, they're human smugglers. We have no idea. That's my concern about Haiti. start leaving the island and make it to the U.S., there's going to be no vetting of criminal gangs coming from Haiti now into the U.S. And it further destabilizes not just Latin America, it destabilizes our country as well, our cities. Sean, you're absolutely right. I mean, so

fundamentally, whether it's the border, whether it's Florida with the maritime, fundamentally, when we talk about immigration security, it's a capacity question, right? And what we're seeing on the southern border, agnostic of how you believe about migration or, you know, whatever political side of the spectrum you are, the capacity issue is fundamental because we don't have the capacity. Even if you're pro-migration, it's not all at the same time. We don't have the capacity to attend to this level of migration. Just to use the southwest border as an example, and I spent a lot of time with CPB and some of the folks that are on the border giving briefings. And on any given day, our border security officials, which includes Border Patrol, CPB, ICE, and others, have the capacity to attend to encounters and apprehensions

upwards of 1,500 to 1,700 encounters per day, right? If we look at just the numbers from December or even if January went down a little bit, but if you look at the numbers of December, 300,000 in one month, you're talking about 10,000 per day. So that's upwards of six times our capacity. When you're taxed your capacity at that level, there's no screening. There's no screening. There's no vetting.

You're basically just trying to get people in and process as fast as possible, probably sloppy in some ways. And not only that, but you're breaking the morale of those security officers. They're running overnight shifts. They're running extra shifts. They're getting low paid and they're quitting. And retention is because that's something that's talked about a lot by retention. Incident Border Patrol and CPB is becoming a real problem. People aren't withstanding that and then final point on on what you said about

haiti you know haiti they're not new to migration i mean they've had a bunch of crises over the years 2004 they had a major crisis uh they've had natural disasters an earthquake in 2010 um a lot of the haitians already left the country they're actually in south america a lot of the ones that we see on the border they actually actually have national identities from Brazil or Chile because they left a long time ago. What Haiti is now occupied by, and this is where we have to be concerned, is mostly criminal actors. And it's not nice to say because there are good people that live on that island and our heart breaks for them. But there's a lot of criminality that's coming out of Haiti, especially in the last year. criminality that's coming out of Haiti, especially in the last year. And we could say the same thing about Venezuela and some of these other countries, where lately, the recent migration trend, I think

in the last year, two years, have been mostly people that have much more shady backgrounds than the ones that came five, six, seven, nine years ago. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you talked about the vetting and how it's taxing the Border Patrol. When I was down there, Joseph, I had a woman of a border patrol, retired border patrol woman, officer tell me that the border patrol is not always the vetting person and that they were subcontracting and that she saw recent high school graduates doing the vetting. And she was like, these kids don't know what's going on. How do they know who's good? I mean, you're taking a story. I mean, it was the most unbelievable thing. And you don't hear these stories unless you're down there. But all of us are assuming that we

have Border Patrol vetting and trying their best under the worst circumstances. But it's so bad that I think NGOs are doing this now. And they're not telling us openly, letting us know that that's happening, which then goes back to the situation in Haiti, which is so scary. I wondered if you could bring in the Dominican Republic side of this, because no one knows more about how difficult it is to deal with the criminality in Haiti than the Dominican Republic. And at the same time, I think a lot of our listeners might not know that the DR is probably one of our best allies in the entire region, not just the Caribbean, but in Latin America. And we're kind of treating them not very well for years now with how they've dealt with the Haitians.

So maybe you could break that down a little bit for us. That's a great point, Rachel, because people don't know that. Well, just for those that probably haven't looked on the map lately, like basically it's called, it used to be called Hispaniola, right? It was one Island and is divided into two,

the Haitian side on the West and the Dominican side on the East. And there's, you know, some history that I won't go into that there, but there's always been like tends to happen tensions between these two countries, cultural tensions political tensions uh that have happened but uh over time and this is like one of the most famous overhead

images that you could see when you do that overhead satellite image and you look at the country one side is pretty much filled with green and forest and everything the other side doesn't even have a tree uh and you could easily tell which side is haiti which side is dominican republic because dominican republic for all its problems and challenges it has, has had economic development, has had economic prosperity, and they've decided to not go the route of Haiti, even though they share a lot of the same culture and a lot of same history of that country. So to a specific modern day, what's going on with Dominican Republic. So President Abedin, you're right, he's 100% an ally. And he's been very hard on Haitian migration.

And he's got a lot of criticism both from the White House and from other folks that are more on, let's say, the progressive side of the international community. Like Canada. Canada, even some Caribbean islands, Venezuela. You know, they always have something to say. And what he what he said is he doesn't care because he's looking at after the Dominicans first. And so he built the wall in 2018 between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And for those that think that walls don't work, right? In the case of, and it wasn't just a wall. It was also a wall and some ditches in some places

because there were some places where it was actually made more sense to broaden the border. And that act by President Abedin in 2018, I believe, dropped the Haitian migration by about, I think, 30 to 35 percent in one year. Right. So that was actually a successful measure. And actually, but the balloon effect took place and the Haitians started island hopping and going straight to some other islands. I think it was the it was in the Bahamas. I think it was Barbados. They started going to Barbados and then moving to Panama and then moving up the other route.

That's how we got mad at them for that. Right, Joseph? Yeah, we got mad. We called them racist. We thought that they were being cruel, unusual. And yeah, there wasn't a lot of support from the U.S. or the international community. But but the Dominican president said, look, I'm not here to serve the international community. I'm here to serve the people that voted me in the office, the constituents that I represent. And he did the right thing. Now he's facing a whole new ball of wax, you know, with the civil war that's impending the opposite constituents that I represent. And he did the right thing. Now he's facing a whole new ball of wax, because with the civil war that's impending in Haiti, that's going to create a whole new thing.

He hasn't been very quiet. I haven't heard a lot so far. But I mean, I'll be careful how I say this, but I have talked to advisors of his. And what I've heard is what you're going to see on the border of Haiti in Dominican Republic is going to look closer to what Bukele has done in Salvador than what we've seen in terms of other borders and like Colombia, Venezuela and other places where

they've been more accommodating because he said they know absolutely that they are a target. They're a target of these gangs, they're a target of these criminal networks, and if they don't act fast, they make it run over themselves. I would say that putting your country first is always a good policy, whether you put America first or Dominican Republic first, wherever you're at, put your country first, the people that vote for you first. And it's probably going to go over fairly well. You're going to be fairly popular with a large swath of the population. But I want to move to this because when I think of when I think of Haiti, Joseph, I can't help but think of the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation. And when we had the massive earthquake and the Clintons were raising money through the Clinton Foundation all over the country.

The world, really. Yeah, and they were going to come in and be the great saviors of Haiti and help rebuild and do all of this wonderful stuff through their foundation. The reports that I've read is very little money from the Clinton Foundation actually went into Haiti and helped them rebuild. Not very little money from the Clinton Foundation actually went into Haiti and helped them rebuild. Not much good came from the Clinton Foundation, even though they

raised hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, to go do allegedly good work. What can you tell us about the Clintons and their role in Haiti? Wow. Okay. So that's kind of the whole episode itself. I'd say, so the 90s, right? Let's go back to the 90s and this is where clinton's failed intervention in haiti and and that was around the same time in 94 of clinton's failed innovation in somalia as well right and that one led to deadly consequences yeah that worked out great too right yeah yeah infamously known as black hawk down uh we can have a black down scenario in haiti if the United States tries to become

too overzealous and thinking that we can nation build again inside that country. So Clinton's kind of had a misguided thinking a lot about these, like the origin of the nation building concept really comes from the Clinton administration. They started to think that they could look at all these small countries and impose kind of U.S. cultural imperialism in a way that the Biden administration is still doing to today. They're doing it less with the military, more with the State Department. But they're still trying to impose these values on other countries that are the values of America. And they're not much less the values of the countries that we're working with.

But there is a caveat to the Clinton story. And I want to highlight this because this is something that we learned recently. And I want to highlight this because this is something that we learned recently. One of the senior directors during the period of the Haitian intervention inside the White House was a gentleman named Manuel Roca. He was an ambassador later. He was a senior director of Western Hemisphere. I think it was Sandy Berger was the NSA. If he wasn't, he was around there. You might remember that name because he got caught doing some shady stuff later. But as of last year, we found out that this whole time, this State Department career official, Mano Roca, was a spy of the Cubans. He got arrested last year for being a Cuban spy, not flipped as a foreign service officer, but he was a Cuban spy the whole time. The Cubans inserted him into our State Department.

Cuban spy the whole time. The Cubans inserted him into our State Department. He rose to the rank of ambassador and NSC director, and he was overseeing Latin America for the Clinton administration during this period of time. So it makes us think, were these mistakes or were they actually driven by alternative agendas by people that have infiltrated our government? That is a problem. We have that problem. We know about Rob Malley and some of the stuff that he's done with Iran. We're starting to hear and see more of these cases. And I think we seriously have a counterintelligence problem inside our government. We'll have more of this conversation after this. This episode is brought to you by Missouri. From November 25th to December 2nd, get 25% off everything on orders over $150 in Missouri's biggest sale ever.

From bold hoops to minimalist stacks, Missouri has something for everyone. Missouri makes handcrafted fine jewelry for every day made with responsibly sourced materials. So you can look and feel good about gifting and wearing them. Shop your wishlist 25% off at Missouri.com today. Wow. Yeah. You know, when you talk to Haitians on the ground here in the United States, I know Donald Trump did, you know, during his campaign cycles, he would go down to Little Haiti and in Miami. And I know I personally have been in cabs with Haitian drivers. And, you know, the hate for the Clintons is palpable. They really hate them. And you have to imagine, I mean, if you got, you know, almost a billion dollars in money to help the poorest, one of the poorest countries in the world, and you took it, you didn't give that money out,

you took it and you stole it and you repurposed it for your own your own you know uh purposes your own yeah i mean that is like i can't think of anything more evil and what i understand joseph and what i'm trying to understand is some people obviously people want to look forward what do we do looking forward but you do have to look back and some people say had the money that the clintons took that was supposed to be for rebuilding this country, had there been more transparency, had it been put in the hands of people who were actually going to rebuild and do the good work in Haiti, that these institutions, this infrastructure could have been built and that the chaos that we're seeing now has been sort of built on the rubble of what the Clintons did. Do you agree with that assessment? Partially. You know, I agree with there.

You know, there's always a lot of siphoning off of these funds. This is kind of like the problem with foreign aid in general, right? There's no accountability with foreign aid because who guards the guards, right? The people that are actually in charge of monitoring this stuff oftentimes use it for their own benefits. And it just becomes kind of like a revolving door. So I agree with that. But I would also say I'm also skeptical to think that you can change a country from the outside internally. Like any country with the best intentions and the best people can actually change it unless the country wants to change themselves.

The country has to have the will. Like Colombia is a great example, because if we go back 20 years ago, well, maybe more, 25 years ago now, people thought that Venezuela was going to be an oasis because they believed in the propaganda of Hugo Chavez. And they thought that Colombia was going to be the failed state because the FARC was on the verge of taking it over. But because of the political will of a gentleman named Alvaro Uribe, President Alvaro Uribe, he was able to change that country but if you did not have a president or even not just him but the people the businessmen who paid a voluntary two percent tax to to help their security institutions if you don't have that will from within nothing the united states or any country can do we're going to change the

composition of and the trajectory of your country so the question in Haiti is, who has the will inside the country? They assassinated a president in 2021 to this day that nobody really knows what happened in that incident. It seems that by this time, maybe they had it in 94, and that could be a caveat to what I'm saying. Maybe there was that political will inside the country,

but by this time after 2004, after 2014, and now after 2021, I believe that political will probably does not exist in Haiti. And I think the United States needs to step back and look at the bigger picture. But didn't they kill him? They killed him in the presidential palace, like he was in his own bed, I mean, which speaks volumes about the security apparatus of the country that you're not even safe, you know, when you're allegedly supposed to be guarded by some of your best people and some of your most trustworthy people. So, Joseph, as we look at this, and I want to come back to immigration,

I think a lot of people who are coming into the country right now, they don't have honest claims for asylum. They really don't. They don't have honest claims for asylum. They really don't. They come in for a lot of different reasons than that that would meet our laws and definitions for asylum. I have to imagine with what's happening in Haiti, there is a lot of people who do have legitimate claims for asylum. And one of the problems when you stretch our laws and pack our country, 15 million new people in three years. Most Americans would be like, yeah, we want to help, you know,

those who want to get out of the island and seek safety in our country. We're more than willing to do that. But when you've packed our country with all of these illegals and there's no vetting process along with it, I think a lot of Americans who would normally say yes to Haiti are really resistant because of what Joe Biden has done for the last three years. And so the question becomes, again, you know, what happens? Are we stuck with a lot of, you know, death and destruction on the island if you can't get off? And it has to work itself out, which is a really cruel thing to say. But is that kind of the

reality that we now face? Yeah. So there's some really good points that you're raising, Sean, because what President Biden has done, whether misguided policies or just failed policies, is he's created perverse incentives on immigration. Now what happens that you're seeing is you're seeing criminal actors understanding how to manipulate immigration laws to capitalize it for a booming industry, which is called human smuggling. Like that's actually what's incentivizing is creating a whole industry up and around the border, which includes lawyers and NGOs and activists and academics that are basically making money off of this crisis. And so they have no incentive to want things to actually get fixed because it's an industry.

People equate it sometimes like to the military industrial complex. But at least that's something that you kind of understand how it works in the world because it's a necessary part of U.S. deployment in armed forces. This is not needed. Like no one really needs to be working on massive amounts of influx of immigration. And the second point I think that you made is really important is, and it is something that I think sometimes it's hard for Americans to say, but I think every American knows this, which is any program is there's always going to be individuals that want to learn how to essentially exploit the program. Right. And that happens with asylum. And I want to pivot this a little bit related to Haiti with the parole program. to Haiti with the parole program, right? This was the idea of President Biden to extend the parole program to Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, four countries that are under either chaos or some type of autocratic dictatorship, to find a way to bring the migrants through a system that would

disincentivize them to come to the southern border. That was the idea that was explained by the White House. But the problem was you took a program that was used for exceptional cases of medical personnel or cooperating with law enforcement. There was probably no more than 100 people that would come through that program, and you opened it up to everybody. They put caps on it, 30,000 Venezuelans, 20,000 Nicaraguans. And I know for a fact that by doing that perverse incentive, you have now allowed the criminal markets and the criminal networks to start to use that program

to get around it. The way the program is supposed to work is supposed to be like a relative or somebody, a sponsor is supposed to relate to you. I know that they're paying fake sponsors. They're paying fake sponsors to say, hey, I'm related to this person without any documents, without any back history and low capability because of the capacity crisis. They're people fake sponsors to say, hey, I'm related to this person without any documents, without any back history and low capability because of the capacity crisis. There are people that are getting through. I mean, we know about the Haitian that got through that rape, that young woman recently. And that's the problem. We don't want that to be the norm. But if you're going to start normalizing perverse incentives for illegal immigration or abusive immigration, you're going to get more of it. That's just a moral hazard. Well, what we're getting more of, Joseph, is just instability in our backyard.

When I talked to you last time, you talked about how you're so shocked that we're so occupied with what's going on financially and in terms of our State Department, you know, their focus, our military in Ukraine and even in Israel. And yet this is our backyard. And if this is not healthy, if this is not stable, we aren't stable. We aren't healthy. And so I guess I just want to take it for those who didn't listen to the podcast that you and I did before, and I encourage people to listen to it again, give us an idea of the the depth, the scope of the Chinese infiltration in the Western Hemisphere and how all of this instability at our border, in Central America, in Brazil, and in the Caribbean, how this is all playing into the Chinese hands and what we as Americans should be looking out for. And I say that with the backdrop that we know of an 800% increase of Chinese males coming across

our southern border, which is shocking in and of itself. So let me begin by just saying, I think what people may not understand, but what they instinctually, I think, are seeing and probably feeling to some level is the fight is coming to us. Right. You know, I was in the Marine Corps. I know many other friends that serve. We're used to deploying to hot zones and being able to engage in conflicts with explicit purpose. So the fight stays over there so that it never comes to this part of the world where it has been relatively safe. We have these great oceans that have been able to separate us even during World War One and World War Two. But our enemies, and I think China's at the top of the list, but you could add Russia, you could add Iran, you could add Venezuela, particularly Russia, Iran, and China. They have, over time, learned how to diminish that geographic disadvantage.

They have learned how to position themselves in the Western Hemisphere in ways that can actually cause us a lot of problems. Now, they don't have the conventional capability with aircraft carriers and big diplomatic missions to be able to come into the Western Hemisphere. They did it in an asymmetric fashion. They did it through trade. They did it through commercial exchange, cultural centers. They did it through criminal networks. And they basically are able to implant themselves in the Western Hemisphere for the moment that the conflict erupts. This is their deterrent. This is their maximum pressure. This is the way they're going to be able to essentially move and checkmate against the United States. Rachel, in the last time we talked, I used this kind of analogy.

I think it's always worth repeating, which is, you know, it's kind of very to be in simple terms. You know, if you buy a very nice house in a very poor neighborhood or better said, if you buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood that then the neighborhood turns poor, eventually your house is going to get threatened. And that's, I think, the what we've been lost on U.S. foreign policy. You know, we've developed plans, we've developed strategies, we've developed big programs for every part of the world except the one we live. We've neglected Latin America for 20 years, and that's coming home to roots. Haiti is a part of that. Venezuela is a part of that. The border crisis is a symptom of it. And China's capitalized that along the way. Look, China has done all these commercial things in Latin America. Most of it

hasn't actually played out. A lot of its agreements that they don't actually get the money because their commodity super cycle where they were actually getting the bonanza in the 2010s, that's done. Price of oil, price of commodities is not what they once were. And they don't have the money and they have a lot of internal problems in their country. But what they do have is they have the infrastructure. They were able to buy up more than 40 ports throughout Latin America to build up infrastructure. They have over 40 ports, either expansion of ports or actually install the port inside Latin America. They have over 11 satellite ground stations. The largest space enabling infrastructure in the world that China has is in South America. They have Huawei. They have telecommunications agreements with 16 out of the 33 countries in Latin America, increasingly moving past the United States in places like

Mexico on telecoms. When you add telecoms, space, ports, this isn't trade and commerce. This is a military conquest. This is their ability to position themselves so that when a conflict in Taiwan or whatever conflict spurs up, they'll be able to say, look, we got you guys. We got you guys in checkmate. Don't even think about responding. And China's whole strategy on warfare, and I'm just going to take a step back on that, you know, it's kind of the Sun Tzu strategy, is to get us to quit without fighting, is to get us to submit, to realize that we're so overwhelmed, whether it's fentanyl, whether it's the border, whether it's Huawei, whether it's Latin America getting run over, that we're just going to appease. We're just going to run into a deal, we're just going to say, whatever China wants, as long as there's peace, let's just make it happen.

But the nature of warfare is for you to bend to the political will of the other, and they're getting us to bend to their will under President Biden. The only way you win a war with all the other strategies that you can talk about, the only way the first step to winning a war is to have the will to win. And America is losing that will. We need to get it back. And I know there's plenty of people in the country that are willing, that want to win. America's used to winning. We've won in other wars. And I think we will, but we have to be wanting to get to the fight. You know, Joseph, I think there's some people who might listen to this. They're shocked by what you say. There's some who may think you're just you're fanning a flame that doesn't really exist.

You're saying things that aren't really true. And I'm just I'll tell you that as I served in Congress for nine years, You're saying things that aren't really true. And I'll tell you that as I served in Congress for nine years, there was a time when we had really smart people in our government. We hired the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest. And with that, we all slept really well at night knowing we didn't have to think about it because our government was really effective with the best and brightest minds there. And we had faith that those who were serving in our government had our best interests in mind. They love their country and were doing what they could

to protect us. If you still believe that, you are 100 percent wrong. We have some of the dumbest people in our government and people who don't love the country that will make decisions that undermine our freedom, our sovereignty, our hemisphere. And that's what's so troubling. And I think we're still running on the fumes of the 80s and 90s and maybe the 2000s, but we've seen a major shift in who goes to serve and the ideology of those who are serving. And to think that we sleep safe at night, I don't know how long that's going to last because our country has radically changed and shifted in the way it engages the world and the way it thinks about the people that live in this country. You know, Sean, I think one of the things that was a big eye opener, I mean, Joseph, you're friends with my sister, who is also a Latin America expert. And one of the things that was most shocking to me and has helped

me understand, you know, I kind of go, I don't understand what they're doing in Latin America. But one thing that she did make clear to me, and when I talked to you, we discussed it too. And that is that, you know, as Sean talks about, you know, they don't, it's not that they don't care about America. It's that they care so much more about the climate agenda, about abortion and about LGBTQ. So when they're looking at Latin America, we don't, and I mean the Biden administration and the state department and the military through the orders of the Biden administration, they're not looking at it like you, Joseph, and you're looking at it very strategically with a military eye, with what your understanding is, not just of Latin America, but what you know as a as a former Marine and how things operate.

And your perspective is the kind of perspective that keeps people safe. But if you care more about LGBTQ and abortion and climate change and not even the economics. Right. Because one of the things that my sister was saying was we don't we have businessmen down there. We're like our State Department won't help us. Like the Chinese are eating their lunch down there because our State Department should be helping to create commerce ties, which create diplomatic ties and cultural ties between the country. They're not doing that they're instead antagonizing catholic christian conservative countries and saying if you want

to do business with us you better do this on women's rights this on lgbtq this on the climate we'll talk about abortion do this on i'm not gonna say women's rights it's abortion climate right transgender i know but they say other things for women we have to dei women's stuff is what i meant by that um but can you explain what they're doing maybe better than i can because it's it makes no sense if you care about american security yeah so i think this is i'll give you my take because i and i i have friends that focus on this more than me about dei and the woke kind of ideology that's pervades throughout not just the government but i think you know through especially the younger generation and i my my perspective i don't see this as a hundred percent divorced from

the broader great power competition that we're talking about because if you're china right uh you know let me kind of put this in a perspective. If you want to grow, if you want to take over the international order. Right. But, you know, you're limited because you don't have a great economy, because you don't have a great military. You're no longer going to be able to surpass by just being to build up. You're going to have to tear down and you have to tear down the rest. And a great strategy to tear down the rest is polarization, is to break up social unity, to break up populations. And so the DEI, the whole woke framework, which I think is more recent, honestly, I haven't seen that, you know, in the last 10 years is where I've seen it. I haven't seen it over like 20 years. When you start to see that is you start to see elements of subversion,

infiltration, disinformation by China to be able to insert that, to indoctrinate it into the universities, indoctrinate it, even younger at some cases. Russia is really good at this. The Soviets were doing this back in the day. They were using this information to help penetrate the African-American communities. And I'm talking about in the 1980s. So we just did a story on Fox and Friends that there's a private like a tutoring app

that is being used all over public schools. And it turns out it was a Chinese company. It was actually, you know, had some sort of front that looked like it was American, but it was actually Chinese owned. And it was only uncovered by a parents' rights group. Our State Department didn't uncover it. And so now, you know, we just did that story on Fox and Friends last weekend. That's a great example. So like that's called softening the target. Right. You're softening the target. And so, you know, people look at it as divorce from anything that's going on in terms of global conflict. But this is actually a preparatory maneuver to be able to then surpass another world power, which in this case is the United States.

So like climate change, for instance, climate change, you know, we can, I'm not a scientist. You can debate, you know, the merits of climate change, but what we do know is why does China so proponent of advocating for climate change when in their country, they do nothing on climate change. Well, because it equals the playing field in terms of energy. It equals the playing terms in terms of like electric vehicles, allow them to be have an advantage in the manufacturing industry. Right. It allows them to propel themselves into places.

So it goes back to what I was saying. China's done growing. They're not going any further, but they're focused 100 percent on bringing the West down, bringing the rest of the world down so they can look stronger than what they really are. And let me kind of just say this last point to what Sean was saying. No, I agree. I mean, I've lost my faith, really, in that the government's going to be able to fix things pretty much a long time ago. But I think the power of America really comes from our ingenuity that's outside of government. And I tell people from Latin America that come to the United States all the time, I say, don't just go to Washington, D.C. You know, go to Texas, go to Dallas, go to Florida, go to, you know, up in the north,

go to the northeast, go to other places, because you're going to see true America when you get outside of the beltway and you'll see how the real power innovation. I think what's happened over the last years, especially in the military, that's where, you know, my background comes to, you know, having a recruitment and retention problem because you're not attracting winners. You're not attracting people that want to win because they say, look, why am I going to go into this service to get treated bad and to have any ideas on how to win? And then you're not just going to get isolated, marginalized and realize the only way to get promoted is I'm going to have to essentially suck up to my political bosses. That's not the way it used to be. I mean, in the services, it was merit based. That's one of the

greatest things about the military. So be able to take that merit based approach out of it is not. But I do have some level of optimism and I didn't really sound very optimistic in the interview, but I do have some level of optimism because I believe that America finds a way. And it's going to require a change in leadership, but it's going to require people that I think are the more talented side of the country that may be not in service or not in places. They're going to have to step up. And that doesn't mean they have to go to government, but they're going to have to realize and wake up that we're not safe. We're not going to be able to sit on this kind of like, kind of, you know, we've had a very, very, you know, good life over many years. And there's a lot of problems, but

relative to the world, but that is going to change drastically. And I think immigration is just a part of that. We'll be right back with more after this. Some things require a lot of work to grow like plants, hair, babies, or your savings. But when you run a business, you already have enough on your plate. Scotiabank's right size savings for business account can help you grow your savings with ease. For a limited time, open a new account and earn up to 4.65% interest for the first six months. Before you know it, your savings will grow without you even noticing. Ooh, which reminds me, I need a haircut. Conditions apply. Ends December 15th. Rate is annual, calculated daily, and will vary based on account balance. Visit scotiabank.com slash

right-size savings for full details. I vacillate, Joseph. Sometimes I'm hopeful, and sometimes I have despair about where the country's at. And when he does, he goes and buys gold, and he started a garden. Those are all smart things. Those are all smart things. Got crypto. I have to tell him to stop buying crypto. I've been trying to, like, I can't. Go ahead, Joseph.

You know what they say in the old military? They say, like, I hope you're buying bullets as well. Because if you're not, you're buying gold and crypto for somebody else. That's actually a good point. He has plenty of bullets. I had to get some of my guns out of New Jersey because they're illegal to have here. So, no, I've got plenty of guns and lots of bullets. There you go.

But you're right. That's right. We've got to protect what we have. But I think a lot of people, and we've done podcasts on this, a lot of people are thinking and feeling that things aren't right. We've been at $34 trillion in debt. This is unsustainable in the long run. Having a woke military is unsustainable. I do hope we still are raising kids that have that entrepreneurial spirit, that creativity that has propelled this country forward with one innovation after the next. I hope that's still the case.

And we get people actually who understand the real threat of China, the real threat of communism. And it's hard to do that when some of the most famous and popular politicians are promoting ideas that are at least socialist, but they're at worst communist. And they're really successful and they're glamorized. And you're talking about AOC? I'm talking about AOC. AOC and her socialist tour. And so it does make it challenging, especially when you have a media that celebrates

really toxic ideas that are going to undermine the country. But some days I'm hopeful like you are. And I hope you're right. You still have that great American spirit left. You know what gives me hope, Joseph, is, you know, that maybe we might get new leadership and that a voice like yours would be so valuable to, say, a president, a future, you know, President Trump, who can try and rebuild what was lost. And we can't just blame, I love talking because we can't just blame it on Joe Biden or even Obama.

There's been 20 years of neglect. But I think those toxic ideas that Sean is talking about and have just absolutely created much more havoc in Latin America. in Latin America. And so in any case, I really hope that someone like you becomes an advisor. We need, we need people with your deep, deep knowledge of Latin America and security issues in the years to come, because I think you're absolutely right. It's our neighborhood. If it's not doing well, we're not doing well. And I do think your, your point was so well taken. It's, it's like the wolf is in the hen house. The hen house is the Western Hemisphere. And we are here. And the Chinese are here and the Iranians are here. And we need to do something about it. I can't thank you enough for joining us. Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.

And I just say that I've dedicated the last 15 years of my life to look at Latin America in particular. I mean, my military experience was mostly in the Middle East, but it was interesting to me how I started to see parallels between how the Middle East was happening and that was devolving into conflicts and wars. And I saw that same network coming into Latin America. You mentioned Iran, and that was a big part of that. And I think I did this because I knew that at some point this is going to happen and we're going to need people that are going to be prepared to understand the threat, but more importantly, learn how to address it, how to solve it. And I kind of equate this to like the people that maybe studied the Middle East prior to 9-11.

Right. They probably weren't the most popular people in town. They probably didn't get on interviews. But then 9-11 happens and it's like, OK, who knows anything about Al-Qaeda? Like, let's get them to start talking. And I think Latin America has been that. We've neglected it. We thought of it. Great point. And a lot of it's the experts themselves sold Latin America as a zone of peace

and all the time. And Hugo Chavez said this, right? And he took it from Lenin, which is he said, you know, politics is just another form of war, you know? And so they actually weaponized the whole political apparatus in Latin America. Of course, you can go back to Castro, but really in the 21st century, it was Hugo Chavez. And now

you see Nicolas Maduro, you see Daniel Ortega, you see Evo Morales, you see all this litany. Lula. Lula da Silva, Cristina Kershner, you have convicted felons now becoming presidents in Latin America. And you're seeing the return of assassinations and political violence in the region, something that we thought we got away from in the 1970s and 80s. And so Latin America is going to get bad before it gets better. But I think from the U.S. perspective is we need to engage. We just can't let this happen. We have to get engaged. We have to get in the fight. And I can tell you right now, I've never met a Latin American that's told me,

no matter what they've done politically, they never told me, I really love working with the Chinese. It doesn't exist, right? That's the same feeling in Africa, by the way. The Africans don't like dealing with the Chinese. No, I mean, they do it because they think it's the shortest way to be able to maintain their political power. But we can show that there's another way. No doubt. Joseph, thanks for being with us. I appreciate you sharing all of your knowledge. And again, I look forward to the day you're giving good advice to hopefully a future president who sees the world the way we do. Again, thanks so much for joining us at the kitchen table. Thanks, Joseph. Absolutely. Thank you. Well, that was a fascinating conversation with Joseph. Again, I'm so concerned about so many things.

I know. I can't take it anymore. And again, unless we're doing a podcast, I'm not thinking about the Western Hemisphere. I pay taxes to pay someone to think about the Western Hemisphere and keep us safe and do smart things. And we listened to Joseph and I'm like, that's not happening. I thought you made such a good point. Again, instead of having smart policies that partner with people that are allies and are friends and warn off the Chinese, warn them off from the Chinese. Again, we have people who care exclusively about abortion, climate, LGBTQ. And so they're like, Lula, you're in with that and and bolsonaro you're you're you're a conservative catholic you're out we had our cia in there helping to destabilize

that election that's that um is that that is um so scary and again it's one of the reasons why i talk about eradicating the deep state. The New York Times came out recently with an article talking about the deep state's awesome and how wonderful these people are. And there are good people who serve in government, no doubt. But when you have a leftist ideology that's infiltrated our government and then work to thwart a president who's been duly elected, that's a problem. And you can't keep these people for life. You've got to be able to get rid of them in a new administration. They can't be protected by unions. They've got to go.

You also brought up a good point when you talked about, like, we're running on the fumes of a past America that was merit-based. And the good stuff we're seeing are the fumes of that. And now we don't have the best people in place. I just read a really great article on Revolver about, you know, just how we're starting to see like this whole, you know, people, people have all these like crazy theories about, you know, the Boeing situation, but it could just be, you know, things are falling apart in our country because, and you've kind of talked about that with the, your concern was with the banking system that you were like, we're not hiring the best minds to run our banks.

And when the banks and the financial infrastructure isn't going well, things really fall apart. But literally, planes are falling apart. You want the smartest people designing planes and building planes. And then flying planes and then in air traffic control. That's what you want. You do not care what color or sexual orientation they are. And the same with every other industry. And I think what we're starting to see this, this uneasy feeling isn't just the security stuff that Joseph was talking about, although that's a big part of it and how unfocused we are. Like we're off in Ukraine and we've got the Chinese,

you know, planning all kinds of stuff down just below us here, invading the Western hemisphere and nobody's paying. And by the way, with Iran, with Iran, and we're making deals with Iran, empowering them. We're hurting our own energy situation. So then the Iranians who were broke before now are rich because of the energy deals we've made or not deals we've made. And then all of this stuff is happening at the same time. There's just crumbling. Just think about it like the infrastructure of America,

all of it, the intellectual infrastructure to the actual physical infrastructure, things are starting to crumble. And we feel it. We feel it. And that's why it's so important to have people like Joseph coming in, telling you, you're not crazy. In fact, there's more to worry about. And it makes the stakes for the next election higher. And by the way, it's guys like Joseph. There's a lot of good people like him who are really smart that can advise presidents or senators who haven't spent a lifetime thinking about and focusing on these issues. They can come in and give really good advice on how we can improve our policy. Just one other thing. I always come back to, again, I can become very pessimistic.

Yes, pessimistic. And I come back to, again, I can become very- Pessimistic. Yes, pessimistic. And I come back to things that I can control. Things that I've lived in. I'm crazy. I fully admit that. Again, buy gold and silver and crypto. I'm now growing my tomato plants. I don't know how to grow any of them.

That'll save us. Tomatoes will save us. It could save you. I don't know how to- But that was not my point. I was- Oh, okay. That was save you. I've learned how to can't, but that, that, that was not my point. I was, that was my meeting. What can I control? I can know how to grow some stuff. Yes. And I can put some money in some different places. It's a good skill to learn, but I can control my family. And, and he was hopeful with this next generation of innovators.

And I'm less hopeful because I think our kids are fatter. Our kids just sit and play video games and watch TV. Not our own kids. Not ours, but I think the American children. This is what we do. I remember I went outside and played all the time. I didn't have, I grew up without a TV and you had to make your own entertainment. You had to, you know, use your mind and be creative. And as parents, I think all of us, that's our job to make sure we're, again, I come back to this, but raise good kids. This is how we save this country, is having the next generation of innovators and patriots and thinkers who love the country, know our history, that understand civics of why certain things are important, why we do them. And again, I think there's levels of success and places we need to work. But as a family, we think about that and do that. And I think every family,

if you're a parent listening to this podcast or a grandparent, these things all come back to issues that we can control. And all the crazy stuff I mentioned are things that I can control. I can control my- No, I gave you a hard time about it, but I love that I'm married to someone who is thinking about that stuff. It's really important. And the stuff that Joseph is doing is really important. And I really, really hope that someone with his expertise will be used in another administration. He's completely ignored, but even though he's putting out great stuff, he's very ignored. But this is by Joe Biden, by Joe Biden, by the left. No doubt.

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