'Our Country is Being Poisoned': Trump Unveils His Plan to Wage War Against Drug Cartels
Drug cartels pumping death across America are in former President Donald Trump’s cross-hairs.
“The drug cartels are waging war on America — and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump said in a video released Thursday.
Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, posted his aggressive message on his Truth Social account and the Trump War Room account on Twitter.
Trump’s comments came after a year in which 110,236 Americans died from drug overdoses, with fentanyl being blamed for a large share of those deaths, according to NPR.
Mexican drug cartels have been cited as one of the main suppliers of fentanyl to the American drug market.
A report in The Washington Post last month listed fentanyl as the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18-49. The report said that from 2019 to 2021, fatal overdoses rose by 94 percent to the extent that roughly 196 Americans die from the drug every day.
“Our country is being poisoned from within,” Trump said in his video. … “Joe Biden has sided against the United States and with the cartels. They are making more money than they’ve ever made before, times 10.
“Biden’s open border policies are a deadly betrayal of our nation. When I am president, it will be the policy of the United States to take down the cartels, just as we took down ISIS and the ISIS caliphate.”
Trump said he would “show no mercy on the cartels.”
“I will deploy all necessary military assets, including the U.S. Navy, to impose the full naval embargo on the cartels,” he said.
“We will guarantee that the waters of the Western Hemisphere are not used to traffic illicit drugs to our country. Furthermore, I will order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.
“I will designate the major cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. We will sever their access to global financial systems.”
Trump said he would like to work in partnership with other nations, but if they balk, “We will expose every bribe, every kickback, every payoff and every bit of corruption that is allowing the cartels to preserve their brutal reign.”
Trump threw a hefty dose of blame at President Joe Biden.
“The drug cartels and their allies in the Biden administration have the blood of countless millions on their hands,” Trump said.
“Millions and millions of families and people are being destroyed. When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again.”
Trump said Biden administration policies have meant that “we’re laughed at all over the world, and we’re not going to let that happen much longer. We have to take over, we have to be tough, we have to be smart, we have to be fair. But if we don’t do something immediately, our country is gone.”
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