The President's Daily Brief - PDB Afternoon Bulletin | December 28th, 2023: North Korea's War Games & US Seeks Border Help From Mexico

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin:     A look at the latest developments regarding the alarming behavior of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who appears intent on inflaming tensions with the U.S. and South Korea. We’ll discuss Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting with Mexico’s president on the U.S. border crisis, which comes as the Biden administration faces intensifying criticism from both parties for his handling of the migrant surge. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin.     Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. First, we'll unpack the latest developments regarding the alarming behavior of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who appears intent on inflaming tensions

with the U.S. and South Korea. Also, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with Mexico's president to discuss the situation on the U.S. border as the Biden administration faces intensifying criticism from both parties for his handling of the migrant surge. But first, our afternoon spotlight. We begin today with an update on the deteriorating situation on the Korean Peninsula, where North Korea's renewed belligerence is provoking international alarm and fears of an impending conflict.

In his latest move to further inflamed tensions with South Korea and the U.S., North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un ordered on Wednesday his military, munitions industry, and nuclear weapons in civil defense sectors to accelerate war preparations to counter what he described as the unprecedented military provocations from the West. The directive came just days after the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency warned that North Korea appears to have turned on a new reactor at their nuclear facility in Yongbian, which will give the regime a fresh source of plutonium for their nuclear weapons program. Kim issued the directive while speaking at an end-of-year meeting of the country's ruling party on

Wednesday, where he also touted North Korea's strategic partnerships with what he called, quote, anti-imperialist independent countries, such as Russia. Now, as we've discussed on the BDB, Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin have a deepening relationship. relationship based on essentially mutual need, that is, Putin needs munitions, and Kim needs basic resources and weapons technology. At a year-end briefing in Russia last week, military officials there announced they had established active and comprehensive defense cooperation with the North Korean regime. The Putin regime has become increasingly reliant on Kim Jong-un for munitions and missiles for their war in Ukraine. In return, Russia has been provided

providing the North Korean military with support to advance their technological capabilities. This assistance helped North Korea successfully launched their first spy satellite into orbit aboard an ICBM in November of this year, much to the alarm of South Korea, Japan, and the Western world. In fact, this launch, which occurred on November 21st, kicked off the current escalation and tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Since that domino was knocked over, we've seen the collapse of a 2018, inter-Korean pact, renewed military activity along the DMZ, and two provocative ICBM launches by the Kim regime. North Korea's activity, much of which flagrantly violates U.N. Security Council resolutions, has put the international community on edge.

South Korea military leaders have been huddling with their U.S. counterparts, engaging in joint training exercises and drawing up response plans for potential provocations or attacks from the North. On Wednesday of this week, more than 1,000 South Korean military, police, and emergency personnel participated in an unprecedented defense drill, simulating a surprise attack by North Korea on Seoul, according to a report by Reuters. Ossihun, Seoul's mayor, said the Savage 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas factored into the decision to run the large-scale drill, particularly in the wake of North Korea's ICBM launches and intensifying

rhetoric. The sole mayor said, quote, there was a big lesson for us when Israel's world-class advanced defense system helplessly buckled under a surprise attack by Hamas, armed with conventional artillery and primitive means, end quote. All right, coming up after the break, we'll discuss Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's meeting with Mexico's president on the U.S. border crisis, which comes as the Biden administration faces intensifying criticism from both parties for his handling of the migrant surge. I'll be right back. Hey, honey, it's mom. Did you know if we switched to Verizon, we can get four phones for zero dollars, plus four lines for $25 a line? Call me back. Me again. That's just $100 a month

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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. Welcome back to the afternoon bulletin. I wanted to follow up on a story that we brought you earlier today about that high-level meeting between Mexican President Lopez Obrador, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken,

and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. As we reported this morning, the two Biden administration officials were in Mexico on Wednesday to discuss potential efforts to curb the flow of migrants crossing into the U.S. Senior Biden administration officials report that the closed-door meeting lasted just over two hours. Both American and Mexican officials describe the talks as positive, but details remain elusive. For example, the Mexican president in a social media post praised the, quote, important agreements reached with U.S. officials, but without giving any details on what those agreements might be. Similarly, Secretary Mayorkas posted on X that, quote, we had a very productive meeting, adding that the regional challenge of migration requires regional solutions, end quote.

So what did this productive meeting produce? And what were those regional solutions that they discussed? Well, he didn't say. Apparently the character limit on X prevents us from getting a full briefing. According to several senior administration officials, Mexico agreed on the need to crack down on smuggling. Well, that's, that's nice. So what did Mexico agree to do about it? Well, there's no word on that. Basically, it's like asking your teenager how their school day was. Yeah, yeah, it was good. Okay, well, thanks for that update. The discussions in Mexico City also reportedly

touched upon creating, quote, legal pathways for migrants. Well, not to be petty, but that's something which already exists. There was one notable omission from the talks, and that was the issue of fentanyl, course would be the dangerous opioid that, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45. According to the Mexican president, that topic was, quote, hardly discussed. This meeting occurs during a tense period for the Biden administration, as the mayors of New York, Chicago, Denver, and others have expressed their city's inability to accommodate more migrants. Texas Governor Greg Abbott's decision to send migrants to these cities has, of course, compounded the issue. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has

stressed the urgent need for federal intervention to sustain their migrant support efforts. Now, the mayors are walking a fine line here. As Democrats, they don't want to be overly critical of the Biden administration, and so they've been trying to say that Texas is to blame for the problem. But border security and immigration, those are federal issues, White House issues. Blaming Texas for failed border policies is like blaming your kid for bad parenting practices. The gravity of the migrant situation is highlighted by recent figures from the Border Patrol, which indicate the processing of nearly 50,000 migrants entering the U.S. illegally in just this past week. In November, over 191,000 migrants were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border,

and this month, during December, daily apprehensions have reached as high as 10,000. thousand. Now, while it's unlikely that any real substantive agreements were reached between U.S. and Mexican officials, a primary objective of the White House was accomplished, meaning the current administration needed to show that they're making some effort, whether effective or not, to address the problem ahead of the 2024 election. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Thursday, 28 December. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me, at PDB at thefirstTV.com. I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.