The President's Daily Brief - July 18th, 2022. Governor Abbott's "Operation Lone Star" is Lowering Illegal Immigration Rates. US Intel Warns Against Using Chinese Drones?

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

It’s July 18th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ First up, some good news on America’s southern border. Fewer illegal migrants tried to cross into the country last month. And the reason? A Texas politician is playing hardball with the Mexican Government and their businesses. I’ll explain. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, Ukraine’s got a spy problem. Hundreds of espionage cases. And all of that could put Joe Biden’s $50B worth of weapons and aid at serious risk. That’s coming up. Finally, the US Secret Service — which guards the president — is buying Chinese drones that the Pentagon says are a threat to national security. What’s worse: other agencies are doing exactly the same. All that, plus a request for you. I want to do a special show on Friday, but I need you to help me do it. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's July 18th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First up, some good news on America's southern border. Fewer illegal migrants tried to cross into the country last month, and the reason is a Texas politician who is playing hardball with the Mexican government and their businesses. I'll explain. As always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, Ukraine's got a spy problem, hundreds of espionage cases, and all of that could put Joe Biden's 50 billion worth of weapons and aid into serious risk. That's coming up. Finally, the U.S. Secret Service, which guards the president, is buying Chinese drones that the Pentagon says are a threat to national security.

And what's worse, other agencies are doing exactly the same. All of that, plus a request for you. I want to do a special show on Friday, but I need you to help me do it. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistance assistants to switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. First up this morning on the PDB, some good news and some bad from America's southern border. So let's start with some good news. The U.S. Border Patrol reported late Friday that there was a 14% decrease last month

in the number of times that they stopped migrants from trying to enter the U.S. illegally. Now, in May, it was an astounding 224,000 people in just one month. But last month in June, that dipped to 100%. 192,000. Well, still a very big number, sadly, but still a drop. So that's the good news. Here's the bad. We have already eclipsed last year's record of illegal migrant encounters, and we still got three months to go. Last year's record was 1.7 million migrant apprehensions, and we just passed that by about 10,000. One final thing to note, while overall numbers were down last month, we actually had a 4% increase in the number of unaccompanied minors compared to May.

We are averaging 752 kids showing up each day on our southern border all alone. No parents, no guardian, which is, no matter your politics, incredibly sad. So the question is why the dip in the overall numbers last month? There are a couple different reasons or possible explanations. The first is that numbers normally fall in the hot summer months. but immigration experts are saying that they're not totally convinced that that's true here. Meanwhile, others are arguing that maybe it's because of Title 42 issues. Now, as you might recall, that is a Trump-era rule that basically allowed the government

to toss people out immediately because of the COVID pandemic. Now, Biden had promised to drop it, and that led migrants to rush to the border, all in hopes that he would drop it eventually. Well, a judge stopped that cold in its tracks, so perhaps some migrants left in frustration, right? Well, maybe. But a far more, frankly, convincing argument, certainly according to Mexican analysts,

is Operation Lone Star. Now, that is an effort by Texas Governor Greg Abbott for his state to basically take greater control over the border since, as he argues, the federal government is either unwilling or unable to do so. Now, part of Operation Lone Star is increasing inspections of trucks, and people, both at the border and then at checkpoints that are just inside the border. Now, when he did that back in April, it snarled traffic, it slowed down trucks, and it prevented

some goods from getting into the U.S. on a timely basis. For example, we saw the spoilage of some produce. Now, while that's bad for American consumers, it did get the attention of Mexican businesses and state governments. They agreed to increase efforts there, to crack down on their side of the border, to stop these illegal migrant flows. Now, I should be fair here and explain what cracking down actually looks like, because we have reports that some Mexican officials have stopped trucks, pulled people out the illegal migrants, and then left them in random places to find their way. We also have

additional reports that Mexican officials are, sad to say, beating up some migrants, and then in other cases charging these migrants, quote-unquote, fees or bribes in order to get through. So, no money, no passage. Not exactly the kind of policy solution that we would want. Now, all in all, I'll defer to you on whether that's okay or it's worth it, but there's an important lesson here that Governor Abbott has figured out. We have leverage over the Mexican government and their businesses. It's access to our economy. We just have to decide if we want to use that leverage. And that is exactly what I would offer to you this morning if I were briefing you in the White House. What we have seen in both the Biden and Trump administrations is that Mexican authorities,

well, they may talk a big game, refusing to work with us or talking about exclusively migrant rights, not U.S. laws and borders and such. But when we squeeze their economic interests, they listen. Let me give you an example from the Trump era. Back in 2019, then President Trump threatened to start a trade war with Mexico. He promised that he would charge a 5% tariff to start and an increasingly that number up to 25% a number of months later. Now, that's all because Mexico was refusing to crack down on illegal migration, especially on those migrants coming from Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador. Well, it worked for a while anyway. The Mexican government began to tighten up their own southern border with Guatemala at the border town of Tapachula. But unfortunately, that's no

longer the case. Biden officials, by all reasonable assessment, have been much willing to squeeze Mexican officials with threats like trade wars. And not surprisingly, we have seen record immigration levels. But with Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott is reminding us that when you play hardball with the Mexicans, when you threaten their businesses and you snarl their trade, the Mexicans will listen. And that shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who's ever had to go through tough negotiations. Polite words, even an appeal to facts and reason and logic, well, that will only take you so far if your adversary doesn't fear you. We used to have presidents, by the way, who understood this. One of the most famous, I think, was Teddy Roosevelt, and he led this country

in the early 1900s. He used to describe his foreign policy with an old proverb, and it was this, speak softly and carry a big stick you will go far the idea is that you should use diplomacy yes and try to be reasonable but also be willing to use every weapon in your arsenal to smack your opponent in the head if they're not playing nice that tends to teach people that you're serious and then negotiations move a little bit differently i will tell you and without going into details that I saw this repeatedly during my time at the CIA. Some administrations that I worked for made lots of diplomatic efforts and offered up big talk and warnings,

but they never actually followed through with any action, any painful consequences for our adversaries. It was all speaking softly and throwing away your big stick. And boy, I'll tell you, I saw it over and over again when we dealt with China. At any rate, Governor Abbott's efforts as imperman, perfect as they may be, are reminding us of what border leadership looks like. And I suspect that Teddy Roosevelt would approve.

Coming up, a closer look at what's on my radar. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice.

Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. As always, I'm watching a few other stories this morning on the PDB. Put these two on your radar. First, Ukraine's got a spy problem, and it could put Joe Biden's $50 billion investment of weapons and aid at serious risk. So here are those details. Yesterday, Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky,

fired two Barry senior officials, one of whom was the chief of what's called their domestic security agency or SBU. Now, you can think about SBU like our FBI with a little dash of CIA sprinkled in. Well, the head of that agency was fired because, at least according to Zelensky, there are 651 cases of espionage or treason that are being prosecuted and charged right now. Some of those are inside the SBU. Plus, there are also cases against employees of, what we might call the Attorney General's office. In other words, the very people who are responsible

for prosecuting the traitors are traitors themselves. Now, Zelensky was angry about all of that, apparently, so he fired the head of that agency, the attorney general as well. Now, what is really interesting here is that neither of those two senior officials were working for the Russians or were somehow lying down on the job. It appears that Zelensky was just angry at the appearance of these 651 cases embarrassed at some level, and he had to fire somebody. But regardless, these firings are, without a doubt, the biggest shakeup of Ukraine's government since the start of the war. I should mention one last thing. There are at least 60 Ukrainians that have basically defected to Russia and are working in the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine to help Moscow govern there

and win the war. All right, stepping back, the reason that I bring you this, update is pretty straightforward. The more Russian spies there are inside of Zelensky's government, the harder it is for him to win or even keep up in the war of attrition against Russia. And that jeopardizes every penny that Joe Biden has sent them so far and every bit of weaponry. And as a taxpayer, that should make you very concerned. So let's take an example. Once we send Ukraine those Stinger missiles, you may recall those are the ones that can bring down civilian airliners. Well, imagine one of these new spies identifying the locations of those missiles and then turning those all over to the Russians.

Now, imagine what the Russians might do with those and then blame it on Ukraine or us, shooting down a commercial airliner with our weaponry. Speaking of spies, one final assessment to offer here, the longer that this war goes on, the more tempted that Ukrainian military and government officials will be to work for the Russians. all because they feel that, well, the war will eventually be lost and Moscow will win. So in their minds, it's like a game of musical chairs. Nobody wants to be without a chair when the music stops. And that means that Ukrainian officials will be looking for cash and a relationship to help them get out.

And none of that is good for you as a taxpayer, because every billion that we have spent so far will just end up going up in smoke. I'll keep you posted. Finally this morning, the U.S. U.S. Secret Service, they are, of course, the people who guard the president. Well, they're buying Chinese drones that the Pentagon has said are a threat to national security. Now, here are the details of this head-shaking story. Late last week, two officials from the Biden administration, one from the Department of Justice and the other from the Department of Homeland Security

told Congress that, yes, they buy drones from a Chinese company called DJI. Now, DJI is very much well known to our government is tied very closely to the Chinese government, and that the data that those drones send and receive while operating are almost certainly being sent back to servers in Beijing. And once there, well, the communists will use all that data against us down the road. And yet late last week, the DOJ said, yeah, the FBI, in fact, is buying and using DJI drones. Now, they wouldn't say for what or how many, although, we do know that last year, July, in fact, of 2021, they bought 19 drones for quote-unquote law enforcement purposes. Now, the FBI for their part is saying, hey, we buy these drones because

they are the only commercially available product that can give us all the bells and whistles that we need at an acceptable cost. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security said, yes, that they too are buying China's drones and using them for counterterrorism and threat prevention efforts. But, like the FBI and the Department of Justice, they wouldn't say for what, except for, quote, unquote, limited circumstances, end quote, whatever that means. Part of the reason for all those cagey responses, most especially from DHS, might be that the Secret Service, which guards the president and falls under DHS, actually, well, we know that they purchased eight D.J.I drones last July 2, just like the FBI. Now, for what it's worth, we have a couple of congressmen who believe that this situation is unacceptable. Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Representative Michael McCall of Texas, they tried to stop this. They support what's called the American Security Dron Act, which would have banned the government from purchasing Chinese drones.

Well, D.J.I hired two lobbying groups in Washington, D.C., Squire Patton Boggs and the Vogel Group. and both of those outfits are full of former senators and representatives, Republicans and Democrats alike, plus their former staff members. And those folks killed that bill. So if that makes you upset, and frankly, I think that it probably should, you might want to reach out to your representative and senator about the American Security Dron Act. You know how this works. You go to Senate.gov or House.gov.

You look up your two senators and your representative, and then you light up their phones and emails. Tell them what you think of that bill, how important it is to you, and then maybe something on the Chinese government too. Let me know what they say. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. One more thing before I let you go. This Friday, I want to do a special show where you all can ask anything you'd like

about any place in the world or any issue. Or you can even ask whatever you'd like about me, working at the CIA, or maybe even my family's ranch. Send me whatever you'd like to know, and I'll answer those questions on Friday. And if you've never emailed, do it. We're going to have some fun. So the email address is PDB at thefirsttv.com.

That's P as in Presidents, D as in daily, and B as in brief at thefirsttv.com. And you could actually even use the auto-reply email that you'll get to sign up for the future newsletter. So just follow the link in that email and sign up. And with that, my friends, we close out the show, reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world.

It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth. And the truth shall make you free. Good day. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive, of a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly big board buck slot machine by aristocrat gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million

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