The President's Daily Brief - May 23rd, 2022. US/Mexico Relations Continue to Decline. Russia Denies Her Role in Wheat Shortage.

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

It’s May 23rd. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. I’m your host and former CIA Officer Bryan Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First up, Mexico is clamping down, but not on the bad guys. Mexico’s president is instead targeting America and a 30 year old program to stop the cartels. I’ll explain what’s happening. And as always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, do you remember the brief that I gave you on palm oil? It was directly related to inflation in this country. I have an update for you and it is good news. Your second radar story, late last week Russia confirmed that it will not allow Ukrainian wheat to pass through the Black Sea. We’re going to talk about that decision, and your ideas on what we should do about 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 May 23rd. 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. The brief you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the president each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, Mexico is clamping down, but not on. the bad guys. Mexico's president is instead targeting America and a 30-year-old program to stop the cartels. I'll explain what's happening. And as always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories.

Put these two on your radar. First, do you remember the brief that I gave you on palm oil? It was directly related to inflation in this country. I have an update for you, and it's good news. Your second radar story late last week, Russia confirmed that it will not allow Ukrainian wheat to pass through the Black Sea. We're going to talk about that decision and your ideas on what we should do about it. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Your first piece of intel, the Mexican government this morning has revoked the use of a very important American plane, and the cartels couldn't be happier. So let me explain. The Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA, has long used a very special plane to target cartels. For 30 years, it's been used by DEA and other special agents to hunt down to, and

our enemies throughout Mexico and Central America. The plane was used in a few different ways. Sometimes a piece of intel would come in and some very good guys from America and the Mexican government would quickly fly out and capture, say, a cartel member. Sometimes those raids took months or years of planning, but that plane was a key element in operational success. In fact, it helped bring down one of the more famous cartel leaders in recent memory. It was a man who went by the nickname El Chapo. Other times, the plane was used to just go where no man could go. That's because you see, the cartels control wide swaths of the Mexican countryside.

So you can't really drive from one place to another. Well, I mean, you can, but you're going to end up on a gunfight. Well, anyway, a number of months ago, Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, as he is also known, he started demanding that he'd be given two weeks notice before that DEA plane could be used. And it was a really suspicious requirement. Now, one could argue that two weeks' notice would give the cartels a lot of time to know exactly what was coming.

Now, that's not a conspiracy theory, because as I have briefed you on, the Mexican government is famously corrupt and infused with cartel supporters. And that includes their former minister of defense. At any rate, after this new two-week requirement for the plane, President Aml then said that the plane had to restrict itself to certain Mexican airspace. In other words, some parts of Mexico were suddenly off limits, which again is really odd because before there weren't many limitations. And based on my conversations and research, there wasn't any reasonable justification for President Amlo's decision. He just decided that the DEA wasn't supposed to fly over certain areas anymore.

And now, this. After 30 years, the plane can't even be in the country of Mexico. So the DEA has moved the plane to Texas. but that means that some parts of Mexico are actually now off limits. That's because the plane has certain limitations on its physical range, even if Mexico agreed to let it fly into its airspace. Now, the DEA can, of course, get a new plane, but that's going to take some time and go figure bureaucratic wrangling.

So with the plane now gone from Mexico, we have a new low point in our relationship with our southern friends. We are now at the end of a 30-year-long effort to use this plane as an important tactical weapon against the cartels. And by the way, do you remember the brief that I gave you on President Amlo when he said that cartels were, quote, also human beings and that his government cared for these cartel members? Well, one day after that speech, he announced that the DEA plane would be ejected from the country.

Very interesting timing, wouldn't you say? And that takes us to the most important part of this brief. Why should you care? and what do you think we should do about it? By now, I think it's pretty obvious to most reasonable Americans why we should care about what's happening in Mexico. In short, and as I briefed you on before, their gangs become our gangs,

their drugs become our drugs, their helpless citizens become our illegal migrants. To say this differently, no longer do we have a functional government in Mexico that will partner with us on solving our shared problems. And for what it's worth, I don't think that we have a functional government in Washington, D.C., who was willing to seal out the border until we have that kind of partner in Mexico. And while that last bit is my personal assessment, I think that the data support my argument here.

We have record fentanyl deaths, over 100,000 dead Americans, dead because of drugs coming for Mexico. And we have record numbers of illegal migrants over a million, in fact, since Joe Biden became president. And now, now we have the ending of this 30-year relationship. And I've heard not one word from the Biden administration complaining about this, or more importantly, doing something about it. No playing hardball with President Amlo. We're just sort of rolling over, admitting defeat. So, ladies and gentlemen, what do we do?

There are certainly options. For instance, if we accept that the Mexican government just isn't going to cooperate with us, then we have to start doing things ourselves. We could use an assortment of our special operators from the DEA, the CIA, our military special forces, all of whom could do targeted strikes against cartel members or their drug labs, their safe houses. I mean, for Pete's sake, cartels even operate their own cell phone towers. And sometimes they put their own private commo gear on private industry towers, and they call them narco antennas.

Now, how many of these antennas exist is of some, debate, but a general understanding is that about 20 to 30% of Mexico cell towers are also cartel towers. But whatever that mix, we could absolutely blow up some of that cartel infrastructure on a very narrow, a very targeted basis, also done to reduce civilian casualties and damage. Now, some of these solutions may actually sound sort of familiar because they were actually laughed at by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. He wrote a book recently, and said that former President Donald Trump had the audacity to suggest that we fire some missiles into Mexico

to blow up the cartels and some infrastructure, all because Mexico wouldn't help us do it. Secretary Esper in response said that he told Trump that, well, that would violate international law. It would be a terrible thing for our neighbors to the south. Well, then Trump, as you may have heard, suggested that we could do it covertly. And Esper shot back, well, everybody would know that we did it, which is such a curious response

because on one hand, this former Pentagon leader, Mr. Esper, he expresses this profound concern that the world might know that we're blowing up drug labs or killing cartel members. But on the other hand, this same man currently supports America sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine.

And he thinks that we should supply tactical and operational intelligence to shoot down Russian planes, to kill or Russian generals, to sink Russian ships. And the world knows about that. And Mark Esper is fine with it. But he says, don't upset our Mexican friends.

It's very curious. At any rate, I'm going to defer to you this morning on what we do with this mess. Because, candidly, there are no solutions without risk. My advice to you, if you were the president, is that, frankly, we have to do this. We have to do something on our own. The Mexican government is no longer an effective

partner. This DEA plane is but one example. So tell me, what do you think? Should we blow up some cartel bad guys and risk angering President Amlo of Mexico? Maybe even cause some civilian damage? Or do you follow the advice of Mark Esper and just watch? Just let it happen. That's your call this Monday morning. 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.

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Put these two on your radar. First, I have an update on the export ban on palm oil. Now, three weeks ago, I briefed you on this seemingly random subject and why it's so important to you and America's economy. So let's quickly recap. Right. So palm oil is a key ingredient to pretty much everything, it seems, like Oreos. In fact, half of all packaged food products use this palm oil.

Go through your pantry this morning. See how much food you eat that has palm oil in it. It's also a key ingredient in soap. shampoos and detergents. It's what gives those products the suds and bubbles that you see. And then lastly, it's in cosmetics. About 70% of all U.S. cosmetic products use some palm oil-based ingredients. And most of that palm oil comes from one place, Indonesia, about 60% of the world's supply. Well, in late April, as I briefed you on, the government of Indonesia slapped an export ban on that palm oil. The reason was that their supplies were running low.

and they were worried that they would run out as they tried to feed their own people. 270 million people, to be exact, they use it to cook with. Now, since my brief to you, palm oil farmers in Indonesia have been absolutely up in arms. Small producers were losing their livelihoods because some mills weren't processing the fruits that contain all that oil. Bigger producers, well, they were mad too because they weren't getting the higher market prices that they once enjoyed. So the farmers have been pushing and pushing and pushing and, pushing their government. And it worked. Effective as of this morning, the Indonesian government has lifted the ban. Companies around the world have reacted with, well, a lot of hope.

They've spent the past number of weeks or so changing recipes and trying to find substitutes as a workaround. And that was pushing up prices for a whole bunch of products. Well, now those companies, from shampoos to cosmetics, they can go back to the old ways and their old recipes. So if your Oreos are starting to taste a little better in the next few weeks, well, now you know why. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply.

And finally this morning, Russia has rejected requests that they end their blockade of the Black Sea. also that Ukraine can export its wheat to world markets and prevent a global starvation. There was a fancy meeting at the UN late last week, and Moscow's ambassador faced a bunch of tough questions and frankly a lot of pleading to do something about the rising wheat prices. But the Russian official denied that his country's blockade had anything to do with it. Blasphemous is the word that he used to describe the allegations that Russia was causing any problems in the Black Sea. Instead, and for what it's worth, he blamed. wheat problems on, here we go. COVID-19, supply chains, weather, trade wars, speculation by

Western investors, and the ghost of Elvis. Just kidding on the last one. But the point is, the Russians have denied any and all fault in the global wheat crisis whatsoever, which, by the way, is really curious because last month, a former Russian president posted on social media that food is Moscow's, quote, silent but menacing weapon, end quote. He then went on to say that we will not deliver our agricultural products to our adversaries. He then ended his social media post with a winking emoji. How lovely. And that takes us back to last Friday's brief on the anti-ship missiles that the U.S. and our European partners are likely to send to Ukraine. As I share with you, there are two missile options, the NSM and the harpoon.

Either could be given to Ukraine to blow up the Russian Navy, and then, of course, with those Russian ships out of the way, Ukraine wheat could get to market, and we could prevent the starvation of potentially millions of people from around the world. But those missiles could also cause a major escalation between the West and Russia. In other words, it could be the tipping point that causes Russia and Europe and the United States to declare war on each other. Now, I challenged you on Friday to use the weekend to think about what you would do if you were in the White House and had to make this call.

You had to balance three competing goals. First, to avoid World War III. Second, to give Ukraine only the weapons it really needs. And third, to get those ports open and get that wheat to market. And so now it's time for your solutions. I want you to email me with what you've got. I want your plans on how you would manage this. crisis, what you would decide and why you decided it. I'm going to read all of your responses,

and then for those that are particularly compelling, I'm going to share those with all of you, which, by the way, that is over 20,000 listeners as of this morning. Pretty cool. So here's my email address. PDB at thefirsttv.com. Again, that's P as in presidents, D as in daily, and B, as in brief, at the first. TV.com. Okay, one more time. PDB at thefirsttvvv.com. Now, confession. I'm kind of excited about this, because one of my favorite parts of working at the CIA was sitting down at the table with America's smartest and analysts. And we talked about the world's most absolute difficult problems. And we came up with some of the most incredible, incredible solutions. Some of those operations, by the way,

were exactly like things that you would see in the movie. Just incredible. I was so lucky to be a part of it. So tell me what you got. No idea too crazy, except for like floating laser cats in the Black Sea. You know, just no laser cats, please. And that, ladies and gentlemen,

concludes your morning brief. And as always, 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.

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