Todd Benzman
Appearances
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
We're repositioning CIA assets in Mexico to dramatically ramp up counter-narcotics operations counter-cartel operations, meaning infiltration, possibly kinetic action down there, but certainly a whole lot of intelligence providing to the Mexicans. We also have the Green Berets down there now, just moved in to start training Mexican naval infantry forces in what they call non-conventional combat.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
So why wouldn't the Mexican cartels lash out at us? We're the ones causing all this trouble. So now we have a way, we have the means to strike back at them if necessary. And I don't think that they would hesitate. If we lost a couple of border patrol agents, I mean, you think Trump's going to not go in?
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Well, it really emphasizes the full range of powers and disciplinary power that we would put against like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Anybody that does business with them, we can charge them with material support for terrorism. A bank, a bank executive. Crips and Bloods on the streets of Chicago or Oakland or something, potentially.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
You could really mess up and foul up their operations, their drug moving operations if you throw some terrorism charges at at people there and here, you can also freeze their assets, block their access to banking systems and financial institutions all over the world. The cartels are everywhere. They're in 40, 50 different countries operating.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
And so, this really allows the United States to go in and the Treasury Department and really muck things up for them and isolate them from the groups and other people and institutions that they use to do business around the world. So, we'll see to what extent they were able to do those things, but they have the arrows in the quiver for that at least.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
No, it's not. We have fairly recent. A case study of this with the presidency of Felipe Calderon of Mexico, who went to war, called it, said, we declare war on the cartels militarily. And for six years, they did full combat operations all over Mexico. and barely put a dent in the drug trafficking.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
And we were, the U.S., they had us helping them with intelligence just kind of like now, like they're preparing to do now. So, I kind of see a little bit of a replay. They're going to have to do something different. I think the designation is different. The will of the president, of the U.S. president to really isolate them is something that's different.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
as well and we could actually suppress fentanyl and so I mean this is really a lot of a lot of this is about fentanyl and honestly if I were the cartels I would be like you know what if their big issue is fentanyl we'll just stop doing fentanyl and you know we'll keep on with heroin and all the other good stuff but just not fentanyl and let them claim a win but who knows how this is going to turn out it is a wicked homeland security problem
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Those cartels are brilliant at warfing and surviving like cockroaches and rats in a nuclear winter. We saw that with Calderon from 2006 to 2012. And by the way, I covered that war for four years on the ground in Mexico. So I know what I'm talking about with that.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
everybody remembers that. And I'll also just add that I don't think the American electorate is going to tolerate American soldiers coming home in body bags from Mexico.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Well, I just remember George W. Bush, you know, making a decision in Iraq when the chips were down. You might remember in about 2005, 2006, we were taking a lot of casualties and George W. Bush came under tremendous pressure to pull the troops out and just wave the white flag and go home. And instead, he put 30,000 more in. So, I do believe that all organizations can be wiped out militarily.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Sure. This all started when the deportation by air began. You may remember that we sent a couple of military flights, I think they were C-17s, to Colombia. And that president turned the planes around and kind of got into a kerfuffle with Trump over that. Trump said, oh, it's going to be 50% tariffs, it looks like, on you if you don't take them.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Maybe that may be the solution that, you know, you got to put those 30,000 more in instead of waving the flag and retreating like Calderon did. You know, Hamas over in Israel is kind of similar. They were very good at morphing and surviving. down in the tunnels and all the rest of this. And all they have to do to win is survive. That's it. They win the war.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
If they come out as a governing force of Gaza, and the Israelis didn't wipe them out. So you have to be either fully committed to take the losses,
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
or not and maybe I mean I'm not optimistic honestly I think maybe the best outcome is you know we'll stop the fireworks if you just quit fentanyl go ahead and send us your heroin and meth just not the fentanyl so it's maybe good for business for cartel business with Trump in office to just shut that one drug off and let the Trump administration call a victory.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
We'll be able to tell somewhat if it's working if the prices go up for everything. So... I mean, but, you know, all during the Calderon War 2006 on, you know, we didn't really see much fluctuation in the cost, meaning the supply was still pretty steady all the way along. A lot of people died, but the money still and drugs kept rolling both ways. I mean, it's really a... a wicked problem to do.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
And again, let me just repeat, you know, as gratifying as a lot of Americans would feel if we sent the Navy SEALs in to just waste everybody, You know, I wait till the body bags start coming back. People are going to be like, wait, what? You know, we're having all these funerals, military funerals in Mexico. So it's going to happen to Mexicans and the Mexicans, their heart's not really in it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
But the main complaint by the Colombians was that, you know, you've got them cuffed and shackled like, you know, they're animals or something and, you know, that's humiliating and we just can't have that and then You know, just a couple of days ago, Chief Border Patrol Agent Mike Banks put a couple of videos out showing Indian deportees being flown back to New Delhi, chained and cuffed.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
And I mean, the whole country of India just lit up on fire over this thing, and they're still mad about it. going on and on and on about how dare they cuff and chain people. And all of liberal America has now picked up on it. And everybody's like, this is cruel and terrible that you're doing this. And so I thought that we needed to just address this and remind Americans that
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Why we do that, that there's a very good reason for that. It was just a few years ago. You may recall the Del Rio migrant camp crisis. Del Rio, Texas, 15,000 Haitians under the bridge there just ahead of the midterm campaign season. It had to go. You couldn't have Democrats running in the midterms with that thing raging under the
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
So, they decided to do good old fashioned Trumpian tactics and bring the Haitians back to Port-au-Prince on aircraft. So, they didn't restrain them and those Haitians rioted at 30,000 feet. Tore the planes up, completely destroyed the planes on the interior while the pilots were at the control behind a very thin locked door, you know, those pilot cabins. They landed and wouldn't get off.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
They had to be dragged off. Then they boarded another flight and tried to hijack it. And this went on several more flights back in Texas as they were on the runway. They got the message on their cell phones and just rioted on the flights. Then they mutinied on the buses that were on the way to the Laughlin Airfield.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
seized the drivers and threw them off, took the bus, took control of the buses, three, four, five of them escaped. I mean, they didn't restrain them is the problem. And they learned under the Biden administration, you got to restrain people who do not, desperately do not want to be on these flights. And there's only two or three ICE officers and a couple of pilots hiding in the cabin.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
And that's why we do it. You do it for that reason. even if they're not criminal aliens.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Nobody even knew. The only reason I remembered it is because I wrote a book called Overrun and I have a whole chapter dedicated to that camp crisis and I put it all together and I actually found one of the pilots on the first flight who showed me his cell phone photos of what happened in the interior of his cabin while he was hiding at the controls.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
And the Washington Examiner did a couple of stories about the mutinies on the buses, etc. So, you know, I was able to kind of put this whole thing together. That's why they do this. It's for officer safety.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
There's a little bit of a hint of hypocrisy in all of this. Of course, nobody even really remarked much on the fact that the Biden administration of all administrations was doing air deportations. Haitians. They didn't really talk about that. Nobody, because it was the Democrats doing it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Well, you have to remember that the Scheinbaum administration and the AMLO administration before her for six years had an official policy. I'm not making this up. This is their term called Hugs Not Bullets Toward the Cartels. The beauty of that term, of that phrase, is that it's so self-explanatory. They just did not want to confront the cartels militarily.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
So now here comes Trump and he's like, we're going to wipe them out. And he's using terminology like that, hyperbolic kind of Trumpian terminology. We're going to wipe them out. We're going to destroy them completely. It's all out war. So, you know, how are you going to do that? Well, you're not going to use U.S.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
troops, you're going to use Mexican troops to do that and the way you get them to do to change from hugs not bullets to bullets not hugs is to put a 25% trade tariff on all Mexican exports, which would send the Mexican economy very quickly into recession and really hurt a lot of her patrons, Claudia Scheinbaum, the business elite of Mexico. So, she had to do something to comply.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
First, stop all the illegal immigration and next, her mission, her agreement is that they are going to kinetically attack... the cartels and they're going to stop the fentanyl and they're going to dismantle the cartels." That's the official readout in the State Department and White House documents about what Mexico is supposed to do. They totally don't want to do that.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
You know, they've got to show a few scalps here pretty soon just to keep those trade tariffs off.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
Let's just say their heart is not in it. But, you know, Trump's out there saying, well, that's a nice economy you got there, Mexico. It would be a shame if anything bad happened to it. And so they're going to play ball to a certain extent. I do expect there to be some kind of fireworks in Mexico. They did deploy the 10,000 troops.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
They've got them in starting to fan out in between the cartels and their money on our side, drug trafficking. And you have to remember that the cartels were making billions and billions of dollars for the last four years on human smuggling, bringing people in. That's dried up completely now. That's gone. That spigot's off. That fire hose is clamped shut.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
So, they've got only one thing and that's the drug trafficking, the fentanyl trafficking to keep going. And so, they're going to fight. I expect they'll fight.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
So that is a big point of discussion and debate about whether that could happen or will happen. The way the administration talks about it is that they seem to be aching for a fight, really spoiling for a direct fight. But I don't think they're going to do it. I think they're going to try to avoid it. That is a very tricky... a challenge to bilateral relations between the two countries.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
There's a lot at stake on our side with doing that too. But I do think that there is an elevated risk, though, that if the cartels feel cornered enough that they would attack people, personnel, targets on our side of the border in frustration or anger or lashing out or whatever because they are very cornered right now.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
We are setting the table to corner them and hurt them every possible way we can short of direct kinetic activity. Now, We are moving into place. You'll see like in the Washington Post and New York Times right now, stories about like, oh, well, with so few people crossing the border illegally, you know, why do we have all these troops down there? They're just not thinking about this the right way.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
The reason why we have, I think, troops down there, including moving the 10th Mountain Division into Fort Huachuca, Arizona, light infantry, famed light infantry force, not far from the Mexican border. is because they present a credible retaliatory threat should the cartels start to get interested in that sort of thing in the coming months.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 22, 2025: Is A Shooting War Coming In Mexico? & Peace Talks Over Ukraine Begin
We also have moved in what's called littoral combat ships from the U.S. Navy into the Gulf of America now. I got to get used to that. I mean, it's the interior department made an official change, name change, so whatever. Who am I to disagree? And also, we're putting spy planes, a lot of spy flights. We're clearly setting the table for something.