I am waiting for Marco Rubio to jump in and defuse this latest mess — or to simply pooh pooh it as Trump being Trump, like so many things. As a matter of fact, I am now waiting to see Rubio basically act as the de facto president from now on out. That is, realistically speaking, the situation in which we find ourselves. Trump is batshit. This is not new information. But what is new information is what happened in Anchorage today, when we saw that both Steve Witkoff and Marco Rubio were being included in Trump’s negotiations with Putin, for the obvious reason that Trump cannot be trusted to do that — or much of anything, anymore — alone.
Now this is not a new scenario. But it is a scenario, alas, that takes us back to a very dark passage in our recent history, arguably the worst eight years since Trump himself has been on the scene, and the antecedents that led to it. Yes, I speak of the Bush Lite administration. I’m thinking of Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, who had been an envoy (like Steve Witkoff) during the Reagan administration and reportedly laid the framework for what later become the Iran-Contra travesty. Point being, when you have a weak, figurehead president, like Dubya was and like Trump is, shadowy figures start coming out of the woodwork and they sow the seeds for future political shenanigans, guaranteed.
Witkoff, the real estate developer, is way out over his skis dealing with war criminal Putin. At least we can say in Marco Rubio’s favor that he was elected to the Senate. He is legitimately in politics. But as Trump’s Secretary of State (and interim head of national security) he’s basically running the show, because Trump can’t and that we know. So which is worse? An elected figure, who is an abject fool, or an unelected figure running the show from the shadows? I guess we’re going to find out.
Now, after this somewhat lengthy preamble, let’s get down to Donald’s most recent snafu, which has his patented seal of nuttiness on it: his attack plans against Mexico.
A new directive signed last week by President Donald Trump gives the Pentagon authorization to use military force against Latin American drug cartels designated as terrorist organizations, according to administration sources.
A U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed to Rolling Stone certain details regarding the Trump-signed directive, which was first reported by The New York Times. Other knowledgeable sources, working in or close to this iteration of the Trump White House, say that unless Mexico gives Trump what he wants, this administration is serious about attacking its neighbor to the south. And according to administration officials and others familiar with the Trump administration preparations, it’s not a bluff: This American president wants to violently breach Mexico’s sovereignty — if and when he feels like it. He, after all, effectively campaigned on doing so during his 2024 bid.
Just don’t call any of this a plan for an invasion, U.S. government officials implore.
Speaking about the new directive, a senior administration official says, “It’s not a negotiating tactic. It’s not Art of the Deal. The president has been clear that a strike … is coming unless we see some big, major changes.”
Indeed, this seems less like a negotiating tactic and more like a Mafia-style intimidation campaign, with the supposed goal of extorting the Mexican government into miraculously solving America’s fentanyl crisis. But that doesn’t make the threat to Mexico’s sovereignty any less real. […]
At a December event held at Harvard University to discuss the 2024 election, Rolling Stone asked several Trump lieutenants why the then-president-elect and other Republicans kept talking so much about invading Mexico. James Blair, now a White House deputy chief of staff, replied with a straight face that candidate Trump “never” proposed invading Mexico. (As recently as late January, the president told reporters that he absolutely was not taking the possibility of sending U.S. special ops into Mexico off the table. “Could happen,” he said, adding that “stranger things have happened.”)
The administration took a first step in January, when the State Department declared eight cartels — the Sinaloa cartel, CJNG, the Northeast cartel, the Michoacán family, the United Cartels, and the Gulf Cartel — to be foreign terrorist organizations. The Salvadoran MS-13 and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang were also on the list. This designation triggers U.S. sanctions, including asset freezes, restrictions on financial transactions, and prohibitions on U.S. citizens and organizations providing support. But Geoffrey Corn, director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University School of Law, says the terror designations don’t authorize the use of force.
Political theater? Yes. Anything going on that justifies the use of Trump’s war powers? Hell no. And Trump knows it. Trump has characterized migration as an attack and now he’s extending that to the existence of drug cartels. And of course he justifies even his crazy doings with Canada on the pretext that drugs are crossing the northern border, which is patently absurd. But there is a reason Trump is doing this and you already know what it is.
If, or when, Trump decides to blow something up in Mexico, he will be presented with an already prepared menu of options, sources say, which would include possible targets like high-profile cartel hubs or leadership hideouts, or drug-making facilities, as identified by American intelligence gathering. Stefano Ritondale, a former Army intelligence officer who uses the handle All Source News on X, says if the Trump administration does act, the target will likely be big and symbolic.
“Why piss off the Mexican government for a chemist or arms dealer or money launderer?” says Ritondale, who also works as chief intelligence officer for Artorias, a private intelligence and data analysis company.
In such a scenario, the president, according to those who’ve spoken to him about this, would want a target deemed important enough to drug-lord operations that he could go on TV to make a national address and tout the historic nature of the military operation, as he did with the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
He wants to do good television. He wants to peacock and preen and strut before the cameras and proclaim himself the baddest and the bigliest. Same bullshit, different day. The problem is this: how much lasting damage is he going to do with our good neighbor to the south? That’s the real issue. Can Trump go to such lengths that future presidents can’t undo what he hath wrought?
Who wants to bet that Mexico has been working out contingency plans against ANY perceived US military attack on its soil, even against the cartels?
If the Drumpf folks think Mexico’s not been doing enough to “stop” the drug problems (and, let’s face it, the cartels didn’t *start* the drug problem–they only did what any good capitalist would do and make money off the situation; most folks using fentanyl got hooked after using PRESCRIPTION medications), then just imagine what things would/will be like if the Mexican government gives a form of sanction to the cartels to double or triple (or more) their activities. Most of the cartel activity happens because the LOCAL police officials take money from the cartels to “look the other way” and the Federal government in Mexico City tends to allow the same degree of LOCAL control that the US government grants its own states and cities (well, Drumpf’s recent many illegal National Guard actions notwithstanding). Drumpf, of course, wouldn’t consider any real actions to stop the problem of drug addiction (especially those which require the spending of government money which Drumpf apparently sees as the source of his own personal funding and money supply) and, for many years, the US has sent money to countries like Bolivia and Colombia to get their citizens to start growing other types of crops instead of coca plants and opium poppies and other plants that can be turned into illegal (or seriously regulated) drugs. There is also the problem that many of the easiest drugs on the market don’t really need “natural” sources but they also don’t need Mexican cartels to supply those drugs either.