In the United States, these claims have been picked up by some digital media outlets and commentators from the Trumpian MAGA movement, such as Steve Bannon and Alex Jones, both known for spreading misinformation, to denounce Mexico’s supposed transformation into a “narco-terrorist state.” In a context where the United States has declared war precisely on “narco-terrorism” in Latin America and has already sunk more than 20 alleged drug-running boats in the waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific, resulting in at least 80 extrajudicial killings in the process, the implication is clear: they are calling for Mexico to be the next target.
President Donald Trump spelled it out for reporters at the White House on Monday. “Would I launch attacks in Mexico to stop drugs? That’s fine by me. Anything we have to do to stop drugs… Look, I saw what Mexico City was like over the weekend, they’ve got big problems over there. If we had to do it, we would do what we’ve done on the maritime routes.” While the Mexican president flatly rejected the idea of a direct US military incursion into Mexican territory, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also ruled out any unilateral US action, interventionist rhetoric is growing louder among the president’s electoral base.
Some anonymous and smaller social media accounts have amplified messages on the matter, but most of the coverage of the Mexican protests within the MAGA ecosystem has been on the programs of Bannon and Jones. Bannon’s War Room is among the top 10 most-listened-to political podcasts—although its content is more akin to a television news program—while Jones’s InfoWars website receives over five million monthly visits, according to the analyst firm Semrush. Both have been repeatedly denounced for spreading fake news, to the point that Jones has been convicted and his official accounts have been removed from numerous social media platforms. However, this doesn’t seem to have impacted their audiences, and their platforms directly influence public opinion within far-right sectors in the United States.
At this point, each narrative lays the groundwork for a US military intervention, albeit with different arguments. Jones, on the one hand, has asserted that the protests against Sheinbaum have spread throughout Mexico and that millions of Mexicans have united in what he calls a popular “revolution,” when the official attendance figure for Saturday’s demonstration was 17,000 people. According to his account, a US military incursion would be necessary to ensure a transitional government allied with Trump.
In Bannon’s program, however, the contextualization is more comprehensive, emphasizing two things in particular: the generational component of the protests, initially attributed to Generation Z, though they have since expanded beyond that group; and the catalyst for dissatisfaction with Sheinbaum that was the assassination of the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, in Michoacán. In this case, the US intervention has been presented as a direct demand from the Mexican population, who are asking Trump to act to remove Sheinbaum’s government, supposedly under the direct control of the same “narco-terrorism” that victimizes Americans with the flow of drugs, particularly fentanyl.
Both versions are far from reality. Sheinbaum is one of the most popular leaders globally, with approval ratings close to 80%, and there is currently no existential risk to her government; although Manzo’s death, the insecurity in several states due to cartel activity, and the corruption scandals within her party are having a negative impact on public opinion. For his part, Trump says he is “not happy with Mexico,” even though security cooperation between the two countries has strengthened throughout this year, and Sheinbaum’s administration has championed the fight against organized crime as a government priority.
Indeed, extending a hand to further strengthen this collaboration has been the message from the Mexican president in response to questions about a possible US intervention. Sheinbaum was emphatic in her rejection, given that US approval would be legally required for any military incursion into her country. The US Congress would also have to approve any attack or special operations in Mexico; President Trump has asserted that it would be easy to secure the support of legislators from both parties. In fact, several Republican congressmen have been proposing direct attacks on the cartels for years, and some have reiterated this stance, notably Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, who leads a legislative committee on combating the cartels.
Given the comments from Sheinbaum and Rubio, a direct US intervention in Mexican territory still seems a distant possibility. But the domestic political context in the US could be fueling a scenario in which attacking Mexico is presented as a relatively easy way for Trump to score points with his base.
As the saga surrounding the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s papers nears its climax—with only the president’s signature needed for their public release—and the various schisms within the Republican base continue to intensify, a direct attack on the cartels in Mexico is a measure with broad support within the party and among its voters that could both divert public attention and satisfy a significant portion of Trump supporters. While there are no recent polls on the matter, in 2023—when Joe Biden was president and the fentanyl epidemic was at its peak—a Reuters poll found that 64% of Republicans favored sending troops to Mexico to fight the cartels. The party’s near-unanimous support for the recent drug-trafficking raids suggests that the number could now be even higher.
Although Trump has not accused Sheinbaum of being connected to or belonging to drug trafficking groups, as he has done with the presidents of Venezuela and Colombia, Nicolás Maduro and Gustavo Petro, respectively, he has asserted that he would be proud to directly target the cartels. “I’ve been talking with Mexico; they know my position. We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. We’ve stopped the maritime routes, but we know all the routes, we know all the addresses of all the drug traffickers,” he declared on Monday, despite the lack of evidence that the raids on drug-trafficking boats have had any impact on the supply of drugs in the United States.
Source: elpais
