S2E19: Trade war, Immigration, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Cartels

Retired Colonel US Army, Sergio de la Pena joins us today to share his wealth of knowledge and experience regarding many of today's pressing issues. We tart with the fake "Trade War" with Canada, We move to illegal immigration, then to syrian, Ukraine - russia, and come back to the mexican cartels! Not a dull moment.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to igh going rogue. Today is Thursday, March the thirteenth,
and so much going on these days. This week, the
last few days, we see the cr up on the Hill,
Schumer saying that the Democrats are locked in step and
are not going to support this. They are going to

(00:45):
block and shut down the government. There's some buzz about
maybe Fetterman trying to lead a coalition of Democrats to
get to the votes needed, the sixty votes. We'll see
what happens. And on the other side, is getting tremendous

(01:06):
amount of attention. Look, the markets are gonna respond. Because
the markets respond, they're sensitive, they don't like a lot
of uncertainty. And and realistically, there's so many people in
the market. It's not just very qualified investors, it's anybody

(01:27):
and everyone, so that many people you know that don't
know enough. Can you know, shift the market, move the
market whatever. But there is no trade war. Maybe Canada
believes they are in a trade war, but they're relevant.
They're a joke. There are a socialist joke to tell

(01:49):
you the truth. You know, back in my professional career,
I had an office in Toronto and in Calgary, and
you know, when I ran the Americas for you know,
a Fortune ten company. The Canadians are very very weak people.

(02:10):
They're very socialists. They lean to the left. They love
the nanny and daddy state. They want, you know, mommy
and daddy to take care of them until they fucking die.
And you know that's just the reality. You look at,
you know, you look at Trudeau and people like that,
and and that's exactly a reflection of who they are.
You know, they're crying about this, you know, trade war

(02:30):
and trade war and trade war. Look, the United States
is an economy of thirty trillion dollars GDP. Those clowns
they are like two point four trillion. There is no
trade war. We would slap the shit out of them
with two hundred three hundred, five hundred percent tariffs and
decimate them and destroy them, so there is no trade war.

(02:53):
Don't fall into this stupid narrative trap that the media
is trying to push. And that other clown that says
he's going to earn up, you know, or cut off
the power. That would never happen. If that happens, we
would crush them, destroy them, And we have other ways
of getting fucking power to New York. Anyways, to discuss
that and many other things. We have, retired Lieutenant Colonel

(03:16):
US Army said he's also Under Secretary for Western Hemisphere
for the Department on the Fence under Trump's first administration.
Do we have a surgeon on there? He is? Hey, Sergio,
awesome brother, Thanks for thanks for joining us. We had
a little technical issue at the beginning, but I think

(03:38):
it's resolved. So welcome. And I don't know if you
heard my little monologue there, but you can pick it
up wherever you want, bro I did.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
I think what we need to look at is a broader,
bigger picture. The situation that the President is working toward
is re establishing an industrial base for the United States.
To that base is gone, we have to rely on
countries from all over the world to be able to
produce certain things, and the things that we can't produce here,

(04:09):
we can't produce a volume. And what I'm talking about,
particularly in my case I'm focused on defense, is you
need to have an industrial base that can produce planes, ships, tanks,
you name the vehicle that you need for war, and
you need to be able to produce that in house.

(04:29):
We've last that ability. Much of our industrial and production
base has moved offshore, and what the President is working
towards is to bring the industrial base back. You want
to be able to build ships, you want to be
able to build planes, and you want to be able
to build tanks and humored personnel carriers. And that's just

(04:50):
I'm just looking at the defense side of it, but
he's looking at the bigger picture, which includes a lot
of other industries that have left. Unfortunately. To be able
to do that is you've got to create disruptions, and
that's what the disruptions are what we're seeing. And the
tariffs may or may not be a mechanism to create leverage.

(05:11):
But I look at the broader picture, which is we
need to get our industrial base back on track because
modern war is going to be different, and you have
to start also looking at the platforms that you're going
to be creating, because ships are going to be more vulnerable.
If you have a big piece of metal floating on

(05:31):
the water and there's another sharp piece of metal that
can poke a hole in it and make it go
down to the bottom, the people that are on that
piece of metal are going to go down to the
bottom of the water. So those are the kind of
practical things that you have to take into consideration. You've
got to look at aircraft. You've got to see what
threats aircraft now face. You've got to look at the

(05:52):
war that's occurring currently in Ukraine and look at the
evolution and the revolution of UAV in warfare. Something as
simple as a little piece of metal flying in the
air that can keep you on trenches is going to
create problems for the modern battlefield. And if you have
systems that can poke holes in those said boats that

(06:14):
I mentioned before, if you're trying to get from point
A to point B, it's going to be more difficult.
One of the things that happened during World War Two,
and I take this from Victor Davis Hanson. It's not
an original thought. He said, the unique thing about the
United States is it could get to Europe, it could
get to Japan. Japan could not get to the United States,

(06:35):
and Germany could never get to the United States. So
before you pick a war with somebody, you want to
be able to have the ability to come over and
put your feet on the ground in that country. So
there's a lot of things that are in play now
that we have to start looking at from the defense
side of the House, and one of them is, how
was it that we were able to win the wards

(06:56):
because we had an industrial base that was par excellence
to not.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, and that's a great that's a great opening statement
or an house is Sergio, I appreciate that. You guys,
you guys, and Trump one did something you know during
COVID DPA right Defense Production Act. Do you think he
invokes that again because you're going you're touching an issue

(07:24):
that Look, I understand that issue very well.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I was.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
I was, you know, pretty involved in in in a
lot of the f t as, a lot of the
free trade agreements, and that was one of the that
was one of the criticisms about the FDA is Okay,
you know, we're we're gonna start getting cheap product, but
we're gonna lose you know, a lot of jobs. And
people are like, well, you know what's gonna happen is,
you know, we're gonna end up creating better jobs with

(07:51):
you know, for more skill set. But there was never
a there was never a repurposing of that workforce. Right,
So if they were labor workers working in a factory,
we never prepared them to get into it or aihig
or whatever. So a lot of people got this place.
And you know, I don't want to get into the

(08:11):
whole history of this, you know, on why you got
the Bernie bros. And all the Bernie supporters and all
those people, you know, and and the unions and all
those people went that hard to left. But something that
Trump did during DPA was he put MO right from NSC.
He put them over at the president of the Inter

(08:33):
American Development Bank, and they're starting to put some bounties
out to American companies through through the IDB to leave
China and come to Western hemisphere, right, because we have
some free trade agreements so you control manufacturing. When you
say that we need this manufacturing, and obviously we do,

(08:53):
we need steal aluminum, et cetera. Yep, is that necessarily
in the US or is that in the Western hemisphere
where we have FTAs. What exactly does that mean? Because
right now the behavior seems to be that we need
to bring everything in house, and once we have it
in house, we can start of looking outside.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Right. Well, you know, bringing it back in house comes
at a cost, and how quickly can you do that?
I would argue that what you need to do is
you need to have a fundamental capability to be able
to at least produce a good portion of what you're
going to need in case of conflict, and so preferably
you want to also be able to maintain good relations

(09:35):
with your partners so that you were able to tap
into the capability that they have. That's the importance of
coalitions now. But first before, and the most important thing
is you at least have to have a capability in
house to be able to defend yourself. If you don't
have that, you don't have any sovereignty. You don't And
when I talk about supply chains and the industrial base,

(10:00):
there's also the need to be able to produce such
things as antibiotics, vaccines, all of that sort of stuff.
Much of that is right now antibiotics, a lot of
that comes from China. So you have to look at
the products that you absolutely need in case you get
into a conflict where somebody can cut off your supply
lines and now you're stuck without it and you don't
have the capability to produce it. So I think what

(10:22):
the President is saying is that we need to be
able to stand on our own two feet, be able
to be self sustaining, and obviously that's going to be
a very complex thing to do because not only are
you looking at long term projections, because you can't bring
everything immediately back in and if you do, you create

(10:42):
disruptions in other places. Let me just give you a
simple example. Right now, we have twelve million people that
came in during the previous administration. Those are illegal aliens
that are here. How are you going to remove them,
and what's going to be the disruption that that causes.
To date, we've deported thirty three thouds thousand people if
you go by the best estimates by the end of

(11:04):
the next you know, by the end of the next
two but then the end of the first two months,
which is in a week, we will have deported let's
say optimistically forty thousand. Forty thousand over a year span
is two hundred and forty thousand, roughly, you know, a
quarter of a million. You still got twelve million. So
there means there needs to be some additional measures put

(11:27):
in place, and I believe those are being worked out
now as to how you can get people to return.
The other thing that you have to take into consideration
as you start pulling people back. How many of those
people are working in positions that are taking advantage of
our labor market because one of the reasons you wanted
to have illegal aliens so you could depress prices and
you could have profits still stay up, which means that

(11:49):
businesses continue to operate at a greater profit line because
you're not paying a minimum wage. So you've got all
these illegal aliens, you've got, you've got all this economic
growth based on that. What you can do to replace
those people? Do you want to bring them been back eagerly?
In an ideal situation, you also want to create legislation
to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform, and I

(12:11):
think that that's also in the process of becoming because
you can't continue to pull people out without affecting the
labor markets, and then at some point you want to
be able to do that legally. You also have to
take a look at what are the incentives to get
people to leave, because finding people in workplaces and dragging
them on a lot, that's a very cumbersome process, and

(12:33):
that's going to give you the numbers that you need.
You're going to have to motivate people to return. How
do you do that you tell them, hey, over the
next you know, there's I believe this is already being implemented.
You're going to have the CBP APP that now says, Okay,
I'm getting ready to leave, and you give proof of
that you've departed, and then you can up your numbers.

(12:53):
But you also need to be able to make a
determination of how many people do you then have in
a program that allows people to come in legally, for example,
farm labor. That's one of those areas where we've done
it in the past. You know, you have the Rocetto
movement that allows people to come in legally. You know,

(13:14):
when Eisenhower was having people leave, he was also working
a program and says, but you can stay here legally
if you have if you're part of the Lacto program.
So those mechanics, those dynamics are complex, They require a
lot of coordination, They require time for them to take root.
And the president has four years to get this done.

(13:37):
And you also have to look at really you have
two years because you've got the midterms coming up, and
if you don't win back both houses, it's going to
make things significantly more difficult to pass through Congress, which
means that things are going to slow down somewhat. So
when you throw all of this into the mix, it's
going to be a situation that is complex at a minimum.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
And you know, touching that number, we know that the
number somewhere around like six hundred and eighty or seven
hundred thousand criminal illegals, right, so you know, just using
that simple math is going to take us over two
years to try and just just to get rid of
you know, cartels MS thirteenth and in that our and
people like that. So and then on top of that, well,

(14:22):
you know we'll have eleven million plus other illegal people
that you know, it's a disaster, a complete disaster.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
And so one of the things that makes that even
more complex is that the responsibility for removing some of
those people fall within different departments. For example, if you're
talking about illegal criminal immigrants, you've got to bring in
the DOJ. You got to bring in h aside. If
they're outside, you've got to bring in all these disparate agencies.
And oh, by the way, you also have to involve

(14:52):
the state and local governments because the sheriffs are they're
the many fiefdoms that are throughout the United States. And
if you don't have cooperation from the sheriff's offices and
then even higher from the governors, you're going to have
a more difficult time in removing people because if they
decide that they want to stick to their sanctuary cities,
you've got to run that to the court. You got

(15:12):
to do everything else, and it's going to slow things down.
So you've got to have a comprehensive plan to be
able to look at all of it, and all of
those people need to be talking to each other across
these disparate agencies and departments, and so that's what makes
this even more complex. And so there's a lot of
work to be done, and there's a lot of people

(15:32):
that need to be looking at this thing from a
comprehensive point of view, and I believe a lot of
that is happening. It's just a matter. You know. You
also taken considerations an office for two months. Yeah, so
everybody thinks, well, look at everything horrible, everything's working right. Well,
you also have been in office for two months. You
don't even have a full compliment of people.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Even right because, like I was telling somebody yesterday, because
they're like, yeah, everyone's freaking out that you know, the
mark is going to hell and the prices aren't coming down.
And I said, you do realize that he swore in
January twentieth. It hasn't been two months. It's been a
month in change, It's been weeks. You know, I said,

(16:15):
you got to give this guy. You know, like every
president gets his honeymoon period of one hundred days, you know,
he's at fifty something days. You know, I think a
lot of things are going to work out. He's come
in roaring, guns blazing, and things are going to happen.
And you know, look going back to this trade situation,
because I refuse to call it a trade war because

(16:36):
like I, like I expressed in my monologue, it's not
a war. Like if the United States were to take
on you know, Cuba or Barbados, that would not be
a war, right, It would probably be considered a war
by one of these islands, but for us, it would
be probably a military exercise because it would be so overwhelming.
So I don't I don't want to. I don't want to.

(16:57):
I don't want to. I don't want to fall into
the narrative Joe of saying that we're in a trade
war with Canada, because we're not. We're just so astronomically overpowering.
The issue is and I just want to get into
this and then I'm gonna let you go, you know,
is the is What people don't understand is what the
president is looking for is reciprocity. So if they're charging

(17:18):
us one hundred percent for wine or spirit or bourbon
or just for an example, and we don't charge them,
you know anything, or charge them seven percent or ten,
you know, there's there's a trade imbalance. Right, So he's
just saying, let's bring parody and let's bring reciprocity. If
you're gonna charge me fifteen percent, I'm gonna charge you fifteen.
If you're gonna charge me one hundred, then I'm gonna
raise mine to one hundred. And I think that's fair.

(17:40):
And sitting there, you know, calling the president out and
saying that he's you know, into protectionists and all that.
You look at last year we had last year with Biden.
I don't know if you know this number, but the
trade deficit was almost a trillion dollars. It was nine
hundred plus billion dollars in trade deficit, you know, not
with Canada, with the world, right, So these are huge,

(18:01):
huge numbers. This means that there is almost a trillion
dollars that are leaving the United States that are not
coming back, and that's not good.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Right Well, I think more important than the deficit is
a debt. And as I pointed out before, when you're
thirty six trillion dollars in debt, you've got to do
something to trim it down. And so some of these
changes that are occurring are setting the stage for us
to be able to pull back on our spending. And
if we don't pull back on our spending, think about this.

(18:32):
I was explaining to somebody yesterday that, you know, when
I was nine years old, I was I was a
cotton picker and I did five cotton picking seasons. And
when I was doing the cotton picking, it was done
because my mom and dad said, Dave, if you guys
want closer school, you're gonna have to earn them. So
we would go pick cotton. My mom would put clothes
on layaway and by the end of the cotton picking

(18:53):
season we'd have clothes. Now, back in those days, that
was our credit card. You got the stuff when you
finished paying for it. They would just set it aside
for you'd pick the specific thing, they'd put it into
a little box, and then when you paid the money,
you got the stuff out of the box. Today we
are spending at a one hundred and twenty three debt

(19:16):
to GDP ratio. That means we are writing hot checks
of the tune of twenty three thousand, I'm sorry, twenty
three percent, and so that's not sustainable. And that's you know,
we were cotton pickers and we had enough sense to
know that you don't spend what you don't have. But
yet we as the most powerful nation in the world,

(19:36):
have not learned that lesson, and we're not even in
a crisis. The last time that we spent at those
rates was during World War Two. So we need to
reland spending because we cannot continue to do what we've
been doing. All of these things pose significant challenges to
the president. So when you start thinking about all the
things that are on his plate, he's trying to end

(19:57):
two wars. He's wanting to reinstitute a solid industrial base
for the United States. He's looking at labor, he's looking
at immigrants. And by the way, those immigrants were brought
in here so that you could turn the tide of
how people affiliate with their parties. If you bring in

(20:22):
a bunch of people and you're putting them up in
hotels in New York and you see them coming up
with their Biden t shirts, I wonder if that sends
a message this is a good way to be able
to get a lot of voters, and that's done by design.
And so that's got to turn around, because we need
to be a country that's of the rule of law,

(20:45):
a country that spends in accordance with its means, and
especially when you are the world's reserve currency. As I
pointed out before, if you look at the service to
our national debt, it's equivalent to our defense spending. That's
not sustainable. We've got to stop that. We've got to
turn that around. And then you also can't have wars

(21:08):
burning out of control because if we get involved in
the war, it's very destructive and it's just a sunk
costs because it's about destroying things. People say, well, after
World War Two, we were the top dog. Yeah, because
everything else was destroyed. There was nobody else to compete with.
The only people that could produce anything after World War
two is the United States, and of course, our economy

(21:29):
is going to go up because everybody needs to buy
the stuff that we're producing. But what happens if you
have to happen to be on the losing end of things.
That's something they had to take into consideration. Just one
anecdote on the wars. You never want to get yourself
involved in unnecessary conflicts because we don't do well in
unnecessary conflicts. If you look at a little country, you know,

(21:49):
O Salvador, no solid or is the size of Massachusetts.
If you remember back in the early eighties when they
were involved in a civil war and then we were
all doing some training and things like that, all of
our attention was focused on Ol Salvador. A lot of
money was spent on our Salvador. And you don't need
to have that kind of a distraction. Wars are messy.

(22:13):
Wars never turned out the way you think they're gonna
turn out. Look at Afghanistan. We thought were gonna go
in there and we're going to chase down Asama bin Lad.
We're there for twenty years, yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
And we thought that we're going to turn that into like,
you know, New Connecticut or something, right.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well, exactly, So my point is don't get involved in
foreign entanglements. If you're gonna go after somebody, go after somebody,
go take care of it and get out right if somebody,
you know, because the alternative is you're gonna get yourself
bogged down and it's gonna be messy, and it's gonna
be costly. And look at how much it's Look at

(22:49):
what it's done to the United States. Look at the
money that we spent on the rank in Afghanistan. So
we don't want to get involved in wars. Avoid wars,
but you also want to let people know if you
mess with me that it's not a good idea.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
And you have to know.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
I believe in the pillars of national power. You've got
the diplomatic, the you got information, you got the military,
you have the economic and there's some others that you
can throw in there, but those are the key ones.
You don't pull out the m until you're ready to
smash something, because militaries are about breaking things and killing
people do that very effectively. Or the flip side of

(23:26):
that coint is when nobody else can get something done
in a humanitarian sense, where the guys that come in
to do that, so use us sparingly, use us only
when you absolutely need to. And we are here to
make sure that this nation stays the greatest country in
the world and one that is practicing the rule of
law and is somebody that you can set as an example.

(23:49):
And I think we are. And the only thing is
that in making these adjustments, because we've been thrown out
of kilter because of profligate spending and not being able
to sustain ourselves in case of an emergency, we're not
in a good place. So that's the adjustment that President
Trump is making.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Wow, that was fascinating. You've touched so many things that
I want to go back to. First of all, I
want to say this. I want to say thank you
for your service. You made me very fucking proud a
minute ago when you said, you know, the military were
really good at breaking things and killing people, you know,
and that is the truth. And that's what makes America

(24:31):
with the greatest fucking country in the history of the world,
because nobody can fuck with our military. So thank you
very much. We have to go to commercial break, but
when we come back, Sergio, you said something that was
very key, very important, and you touched it subtly, but
me and you have talked about this offline in the past.
I think it deserves a deep dive because everybody talks

(24:51):
about it, and those of us that mention it get
thrown into the conspiracy theories. So we're going to be
right back. If you destroy this person's country and they
still want to fight, like, we could have left them again,
I say, we could have left the rack. We could
have destroyed the level that place, turned it into a

(25:14):
parking lot, into a big pile of rubble, and left.
You know, yeah, you know, we didn't, and they continue
to fight us. Right, they never gave up. But if
we would have left, we would have left them, you know,
in ruins and be done and called victory. We could
have said, you know what we want, we beat the
ship out of them, you know, Silao, let's go party, right,

(25:34):
and you know that they're left to go lick their
wounds and figure shit out on their own. I mean,
we technically would have won, but we didn't. We stayed right,
which was a huge mistake I think because.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Left the way that we did. And this is what president.
Not get yourself involved in wars where you're not going
to go defeat the enemy. Do not get yourself in
foreign entanglements that just have you bleeding money and American
lives for what reason? If you do not have a
strategy on what it is that you're fighting for, you're

(26:14):
in the wrong fight. If you'll recall President Biden said,
after you know, when the when the war started, he says, oh,
we'll see how it goes in a month. And then
the strategy from that point on was as long as
it takes. That's not a strategy. This is the ridiculousness
of how the situation in Ukraine developed them. So then

(26:37):
all of a sudden you had to add hoc everything
you had to you had to fly, you know, had
to do see to the past navigation, and then you
got enough for the Europeans to realize, oh my goodness,
this this is in our backyard, this is this is
at our frontiers. We're going to have to deal with this.
Because if you look at the history of Europe over there,
let's just go back a thousand years. You can go
beyond that, but just the last thousand years, it's easy

(26:58):
to keep track of. When is there a century and
the last millennium where Europe has been at peace? I
can only think of a couple of respites, and one
was after Napoleon was defeated in eighteen fifteen. That went
all away to eighteen fifty three. If I'm not mistaken,

(27:18):
I think it's fifty three when the Crimea War started.
So that was that was a brief break in the hostilities.
And so Europe has this habit of getting itself into wars.
So when you start seeing these things with Russia invading
another country, the other countries have to respond. And what

(27:42):
you saw with what happened in Ukraine is the Europeans
being awakened to their own history. Because even though we
you know, the Europeans are all about peace and love,
they also remember their own history unless you're totally blind
to and I don't believe that's the case. I think
that you know those people in the middle military and
those people, and know the importance of making sure that

(28:03):
Europe is a peace because things can get froggy and
out of hand very quickly. I mean, let me just
give you one historical anecdote. Think about what happened in Russia.
Russia goes to Japan and is defeated and the Russo
Japanese War at the turn of the century, they get clovered.
So the rest of Europe are like, oh my goodness,

(28:24):
they just got clobbered by an Asian Asian nation. How
could that be? And the next thing you know, things
get out of hand, the quabos start, and next thing
you know, you start World War One, and in nineteen
seventeen you have the Russian Revolution. The Russians lose over
a million square miles of territory to Germany. When the

(28:44):
Communists say, hey, we're not going to play in this game.
We're just going to go home. Okay, So you want
all this land, we'll take it. And then you think, okay, well,
Russia's you know, falling apart, it's being weak, and look
at what just happened to Russia. And then you go
back to the beginning of World War Two, Russia and
Germany signed a peace pack and then Hitler says, eh,

(29:09):
I think I'm just going to go and attack I'm
going to go and attack Russia forgetting what happened to Napoleon,
the most powerful emperor in Europe, you know, just the
century before, and he gets Robert. So what does the
US do. We had this phenomenal industrial base we give
we give the Russians food. We give the Russians, ammunition,

(29:30):
we give them equipment, we give them training, we give
them all the stuff. And their job was to kill
Germans and to keep the Germans pinned down and then
make sure that we had other parts of the world
that we had to send some of our limited resources too.
But we were able to pull together the coalitions to
be able to defeat not just Japan, but Germany as well.

(29:53):
Now all of that stuff is important to keep in
mind because what happened after World War Two. Russia then
became the well, they was already the Soviet Union. The
Soviet Union, because we had armed it, had two hundred
divisions of soldiers that are menacing Europe. And the only

(30:13):
reason they didn't take over Europe is because we had
the nuclear We had a nuclear care of the body.
They didn't. And so nine they had to walk carefully
about trying to take over Europe because that wasn't going
to work. But look at the levels of influence they
were able to achieve. They regained all that land that
they lost back in War one, and they created a

(30:37):
buffer zone with the Warsaw Pac nations. And now the
Soviet Union is a world power. So things can change
very quickly. By the way, that was twenty years from
the time that they got to do with Crobard and
in nineteen seventeen to okay, nineteen thirty nine, So what
do the math twenty two years. So that's what I'm

(31:01):
talking about is in world events, things can change very quickly,
and in Europe things have an impact throughout the world
because if you look at the EU as an economic power,
it's on up there with the US close. It's not
the US because there are all these disparent countries, but

(31:22):
they're at peace with each other. So we have to
look at all of that, and then Russia obviously is
out there now. The other thing, the dynamic that has
to play out is you have to remember that you've
got Russia, You've got China, and then you've got you've
got the European Union and then the United States. So
all of these blocks are trying to figure out who
can I be buddies with. We don't necessarily, we do

(31:43):
not want Russia to be buddies with China because China
is going to leach off of everything that Russia has
because they have a lot of stuff, they have a
lot of minerals, they have a lot of resources. They
have a lot of raw materials, and the Chinese need
all that stuff and they need that yes, yeah, so
you look at what Nixon did in the nineteen seventies

(32:06):
when he separated China from Russia from the Soviet Union.
Things work very favorably for the United States. So these
dynamics are always at plan. These are the things that
we have to take into consideration and how world leaders
are able to work all of these different phenomenally big
picture of things is what makes a country successful.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, I agree with you, and and it brings us
to today. Right. We heard Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
you know, he was in the Middle East. They came
up with a ceasefire. Where do you see that going?
Do you see Russia agreeing to those terms?

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Do you see? You know, I'm optimistic that there will
be some type of a ceasefire and some type of
an arrangement, hopefully a lasting arrangement. If you look at Austria,
Austria is an example of a lasting arrangement where it

(33:09):
did not ally itself with the Warsaw Pact, it did
not ally itself with NATO, and it's a very productive
country today. If you could achieve that with the Russians,
that with Ukraine that would be a very positive.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Is that possible? Is that possible? Because I know we
have you know, there's different factions within Ukraine. It's almost
like it's not Ukraine, right, it's you have the Polish
and the Russians and the Ukrainians and it's kind of
like a melting pot there that that kind of wants
to be ripped apart, right, I mean, can can it
be Austria? Is that example realistic? Over time? And I

(33:48):
don't mean to challenge you. I want I want you
to deep dive, to deep dive into it, right to
educate us.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
I believe it could be. Okay, a lot of there's
got to be give and take. Both Russia and Ukraine
are taking massive human losses. And if you look at
the demographics of Russia, they're a country that's shrinking. Their
Their reproductive rate is one point one if I'm not mistaken.

(34:16):
They've got problems with alcohol addiction, they've got problems with
a big population in the Caucuses. That's that's Islamic and nature.
And if you look at Grosny and Chechnya, that that
neck of the woods is growing significantly, and they are
not always aligned with with the with the Russians. Remember,

(34:37):
one of the things you have to understand about the
Russians is a patchwork of all of these different people.
So you think we're we're ethnically diverse. The Russians are
just phenomenally.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
Do you think they're Muslim? Do you think they have
a Muslim problem and cannot be their downfall?

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yes? Could it be the delfaul? The Rusians have this
way of putting things down in a very harsh ways,
but the repercussions are always harsh in return. If you
look at the terrorist actions that have been taken that
have taken place in Russia over the last twenty years,
there's been the major ones have a an Islamic route,

(35:12):
you know, the Chechens. They cause damage to the Russians,
but was it enough to over to the Russians.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
No.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
The Russians have an ability to absorb pain like there's
no no, no tomorrow. And if you look at their geography,
they're concerned because if Ukraine falls, if Ukraine was to
get a foothold on Crimea, you're never going to have
peace there because that would that would forge the Russians
into not having a warm water port as big as
Russia is. The warmwater ports are the Black Sea, and

(35:43):
challenging all of that is you have to go out
through the Bosphors Straits, which are in Turkey, and by treaty,
Turkey has a vote on how many warships go in
and out of the Black Sea, so they're bottled into
the Black Sea. This is the importance of their presence
in Syria because they had a Mediterranean port, and now

(36:05):
that Syria has fallen to a different set of owners
of people that are in charge of Syria, that challenges
the Russians yet again, and so they have a lot
of dynamics that they have to play with. By the way,
if you look at the nature of war and how
many conflicts Russia has had with Turkey, for example, I

(36:27):
think it's somewhere in the vicinity about fifteen. I believe
the Turkey's won two or three. The rest of them
the Russians have won. You may have won the wars,
but Turkey still controls the instance, the entrance to the
Black Sea. Now, before it was Turkey, it was the
ottom An environment. It's the same group of people and
they don't really they're not all that kind to each

(36:49):
other when they get into conflicts. So there's all sorts
of dynamics in that region that you have to take
into consideration. This is why I'm always cautious about wanting
to crank up any new conflicts, because there's so many
factors that can play into things that you can be
surprised in very ugly ways. Look at you know, the

(37:10):
Germans thought they could handle War One. They said, well,
you know, we'll support the Austro Hungarian Empire, and then
they got them into a war. The austral Hungarian Empire
fell apart. Germany eventually loses, but they were never defeated
the season. Really, if you look at what happened in Germany, now,
they were defeated to a point, but when you look

(37:32):
at the treaty be size, it wasn't. It wasn't a
good treaty. They were still remembered that you never put
your foot onto Russians onto German soil, and they remembered that,
and when they started getting hit up with reparations, they
just said, okay, well we can't pay, and eventually they
said we'll just start re arming. And then World War
Two started. So I mean, just look at historical examples

(37:55):
and how messy things can get. That's why you want
to avoid them. That's why President Trump is always talking
about ending conflicts, because conflicts can get messy, and then
you're left with meaning, what's messy? And this is why
he has been forceful to the point of of being unacceptable.

(38:18):
And it's contact to the Europeans. But if you don't
slam heads together and get people to the table, you're
never going to get to any type of a significant
ceasefire on a short time span. So you've got to
stop the fighting, you've got to stop the killing, and
then you've got to get people to the tables. And
I think he's capable of doing that.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, I agree with you. And you know, let me
add a couple more things too. Is you know they're expensive, right,
they're super super expensive. I know you brought that up
very early, getting into conflicts or wars as much as
or as much as somebody could say. You know, that's cool.
You know, we get to bomb the crap out of
this and use our artillery, use our tanks, use our shifts,
use our missiles, But of the casualties, a loss of

(39:01):
life and the cost is just so astronomical, Sir Joe,
we brought up under this history lesson here Syria. There's
some things happening Syria now that are that are that
are that are horrendous? You know, the Secretary of State
has come out, you know, the administration has spoken about

(39:23):
it is something going to happen there as a response
or is it let's let's hurry up and wait and
observe kind of situation, because it's kind of it's it's horrible, right,
I mean, thousands of people are getting slaughtered executed. I
mean you've probably seen the videos of people being lined
up and and these these you know, these alcada you know,

(39:48):
people walking up and blowing their head off, you know,
shooting them right in the squad in the head, you know,
and blowing their brains out. And these are the people
that are that are that are I guess allies to
the new administration right to mind and support it too.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
So I'm gonna I'm going to reiterate my position on
all of this, and that is I speak for myself,
not for the administration, and I don't want to get
ahead of what we what the administration will or won't do.
They have their own timelines, they're looking at their own
threat streams, they're looking at US Centrist and they're keeping
tabs on all of that. And so that's going to

(40:23):
be the President and the Secretary to the Secretary of
State as to what position we're going to take, because
they're the ones that drive the train. Obviously, the situation
in Syria is getting significantly more critical, especially the way
that they've been going after their opponents, which are their
former opponents, which was the Allo Whites, and now some
there's there's the same thing happening to Christians. So how

(40:47):
we deal with that. We do have some leverage points.
They want to get worldwide recognition as a nation state,
and so you could maybe get involved in some kind
of negotiations. You know, there's always things that you can
do to leverage the President of Syria to clamp down

(41:09):
on those people that are causing all of this grief.
But again, I don't want to get ahead of the administration.
I think it's important that we keep an eye on
Syria because that means instability in the Middle East, which
has always been a place of instability last century.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Is it better off without a sod or was it
more stable with a sod I mean, good dude, the
ten million dollar question, SERGIOE. Right, I mean it's it's
like like we're we better off without Kadaphi or with Kadafi. Right,
it's with us od or without a sign. Man, what

(41:47):
a complicated region.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
I don't think that region has ever been at peace ever,
ever in its history. I'm not even gonna try and
answer that question. That's why I think, God, we have
you on the show that that is very capable of
at least giving us a very educated.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Answer back, Well, thank you, so.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Asad or without as you know, it seems like without
a side, it's it's it's I don't know what to
tell you.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Man, Well you can. You can go into the exercise
of what if. Like at the bottom line is he's
not there anymore. Yeah, and he left for a reason.
I mean remember the the Middle East, the Arab spring, Yeah, hope,
sprang eternal. Everything was moving in the right direction. People
were saying, hey, yeah, we want our freedoms back, and

(42:41):
then you have people like Asada said, not so fast.
I mean in Iraq, Iraq, you had Sadom Hussein, who
also came from the same not sure if defeats the
right word, people what they've destroyed. So now does the
international community have a say in this? I mean there's
international structures out there they should be saying things as well.

(43:03):
And there's always economic pressure that you can apply. Remember
I talked about those pillars of national power. You got
the diplomatic you got the information, you got the military,
you got the economic use the military last, because that's
the last resort. And I would argue that the United
States has to do an evaluation of what are the

(43:23):
US interests in that region? And so that's the question
that people like Secretary Judio.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Look at through the nation and they have so many
and they've got a lot of current problems right now.
Right that that I hate to say this that you know,
what's going on in Syria is not at the top
of the list, right it's just not you.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Know, well, look you again, I go back to what
resources do you have. We're spinning twenty three percent of
our budget on credit or you know, we're writing hot checks,
so to cover the hot checks, so you put on
a credit card. The credit cards are going to charge
you interest. So now we're into you know, we're paying

(44:11):
way too much on interest. Remember back in the day
when everybody was able to buy a house with no
interest loans or just pay on the interest. Think about
the house of cards that creates when that person is
no longer able to cover the interest payments on a
house that he's never going to own or he or
she is never going to own. So you have to

(44:34):
look at how do I optimize on what resources I
have available? What is it that I'm trying to do
to make sure that this nation state stays safe and prosperous.
And that's the that's that's the challenge that the president
is facing, and we've mentioned them. He's got a lot
on his plate, and you know, you've got to racing

(44:56):
stack priorities because at the end of the day, you know,
if you if you're on a household, you're going to say, Okay,
how much am I going to spend on food? Because
you got to you gotta survive. How much am I
going to spay spend on on shelter? You got to
have that over your head so you have a comfortable
place to live. And how am I going to get
from point at a point B. You gotta have transportation,
You got to be able to pay for it, and

(45:16):
then you start looking at all the other stuff. And
so I would argue that you've got to start looking
at our priorities first. How do you take care of
the American people? How do you keep them safe and prosperous,
And then you can do a better job of laying
out those priorities. And when you're looking at is it
my responsibility to fix everybody else's problems? There's there's always

(45:39):
going to be conflict in the world. I mean, all
you got to do is go into Mexico right now
and look at the city of Kulia Khan where they
I think we mentioned this before. They they Since September,
there's been nine hundred murders and one thousand disappeared in
the Seria in a city of a million. This is

(45:59):
south of our borders.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
And Sergio, you know what you you you're reading by mind? Brother,
That's why I love having you on the show. You
know exactly where I want to go, and you kind
of just take me there all on your own. I
wanted to touch something. So we know the amount of
people that have come in. We know that there are

(46:21):
about six hundred and eighty thousand criminal aliens or illegals.
You you have a list of known terrorists that have
come in. Out of that six hundred and eighty thousand,
there are bunch that are tied into not only gangs
like my thirteenth naw, but a bunch of them work

(46:42):
for cartels, right for you know, how do you go whatever?

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Right?

Speaker 1 (46:47):
And and when you know see not la, you start
looking at all that and you're just talking about who
your gun is, how likely And I'm and I'm gonna
and I'm gonna ask you this for a specific reason
because in very early twenty twenty one, I had a
guest on that said three things are gonna happen during

(47:09):
the tru during the Biden administration. They're gonna test them.
Russia is gonna test them and probably take Ukraine. And
it happened. He said, the Chinese are gonna also test
and try and make a move on Taiwan. That did
not happen, even though they put pressure and we're gonna
see you ran a lot more active and really trying

(47:30):
to create a war, and that didn't happen, thank god, right,
But there was a lot of tension, as you know.
He also said something he said, I suspect that we're
going to get hid in the homeland one more time.
And I said, what do you mean, like, you know,
just some random bomb and he goes, no, No, I
think it's going to be a significant hit, like a

(47:51):
nine to eleven or something something real. Because the the
criminal element, you know that that's here and coming in
and continue to come in. But also you know the
amount of people that have come in through the border
that are military fighting age. You know those are not
just random. You know farmers and people that are looking for,

(48:14):
you know, a job to go work in a.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Field, right, I would be well, I would be more specifical.
We start start talking about military age males, Well, who
you think is going to come and work in the fields?
I mean you get some jachito that's going to be
out there picking cotton that doesn't work very well. So
what I would say is beware of those that come
in with special skill sets or or are motivated by

(48:37):
whatever ideology to do bad things. You can send in
some really doulty, dumb people to be to be in
Mexicans speak alcon is the lookouts, they're hawks. Those guys
can give information to people that want to commit bad things.
And if you have some of those smart people commingled.

(48:58):
For example, if I'm going to go do something bad,
the first thing I want to do is look at
what it is that I want to do something bad too.
I want to know how people get in, help people
get out, how quickly people respond to any emergency that
the owner of that establishment is going to make. I
want to know what capabilities has to repel whatever it
is that I'm trying to do so that I can

(49:19):
get away with what I'm doing. And so you have
to have people that are watching that and they have
to report back to somebody, and then that somebody has
to have the ability to be able to go in
and take what it is that he wants from that
particular location. And so all of this stuff can work together.
And if you have all these people that are coming in,
we already know there's four hundred on the terrorists watch list.

(49:42):
Those are the ones that we've caught. How many people
got through that we didn't catch, And so those are
the people that are already here. And I would argue
that terror well, we already know that terrorists are here.
Now do they have an ability to act? They have
to They have to talk to each other and you
have to keep track of how they're talking to each
other and then what it is that they want to achieve.

(50:04):
I mean, we knew that something like nine eleven was
going to happen before it did. It's just that it
didn't get to the appropriate authorities. Do I think that
we could get hit on the inside, Absolutely, if at
a minimum we have to be prepared for that. But
there's mechanisms and the people and the resources to be
able to do something bad exist.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
And they do what they do exist. That is a fact, right,
So the people and and that are qualified to do
that kind of damage are here and do exist.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
That is a fact, right, correct? That is good? Yeah,
I mean that's just my assessment. I'm yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
No, that that's that's I think the general consent, right,
that's a general consent amongst right folks.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
That happened before it can happen again. And a dramatic
attack on the United States will have a significant impact
because all of a sudden, people are going to be
assessing how we respond. You're always looking when somebody gets attacked,
the first thing you do is you start looking, Okay,
how did they do? How did they respond to that
particular incident. If you'll recall when the Chechens went into

(51:09):
the movie theater and in Russia, how did the Russians respond?
You know, how they put people to remember they put
people to sleep through the ventilation system of that movie theater.
Or what they did is they pumped fentanyl into the theater.
And the problem is when the Russians where they are
waking people up because they fell asleep, they azed aerosolized

(51:32):
the fentanyl and people just passed out, and then they
came in with nark can needles, poking people to get
them back up and running. The problem is that they
didn't bring enough and some people died because they got
fentanyl poisoning.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
So how we know that?

Speaker 2 (51:47):
So we analyze that and we say, okay, what does
this say about their capabilities? People are always looking at
how you respond to things, and so when things happen,
you see, okay, how did that country respond to that
particular attack. And so there's always this constant analysis. But
the fact that there are individuals in this country that
could cause the US harm is a reality, and so

(52:10):
it's the job of our institutions to track those people
and find out where they are and make sure that
you prevent them. A lot of stuff is not known
to the public because there's so many things. There's so
many horrible things that are intercepted and not acted upon
because we have people whose job it is to keep

(52:32):
us safe, and so you only know when they fail.
And so this is why people say, you may be
successful at preventing something ninety nine percent of the time,
but it's that one percent that really puts you on
a pickle. And that's what happened during nine eleven. I
think there's been plenty of actions taken against us that

(52:53):
have been prevented because people are alert and awaken. You know,
you kept people from doing bad things. Yeah, and so
we don't always know about those.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
So let me ask you something. Let me ask you something.
And I agree with you, by the way, because I
think every day, or at least every week, there are
multiple attempts that are that are intercepted and prevented and
and stopped right by our intel agencies or law enforcement agencies,
or our military or what be it. My question is this,

(53:28):
you know Western Hemisphere very very well. You're under Secretary
of Defense for Western Hemisphere. You obviously understand Mexico and
the cartels and the rest of the region that there
seems to be a lot of sable rattling on our

(53:48):
side that you know, we'll go, we'll go take out
and destroy the cartels. Look, I think it's a great
thing that the President puts the cartees on the terrorist list.
I think that's super important. But you know, people thinking
that we're just going to go in and we can

(54:09):
decimate them, I don't know if it's that easy. And
you know, that's what I'm asking you. And then and
then this is a loaded question, brother, So I'm sorry,
but but what better person to throw it at than you?
Right is there are hundreds, if not thousands of operatives

(54:32):
of each of these cartels here in the United States
that would retaliate if that were to happen. When we
start seeing car bombs like we did in Got You
Maying and Lima in so many other places, and that
violence like we've seen in what is in other places
in the United States to play out on the streets in.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
The US, there's a lot of what if.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yah, that's what I said. I told you it was
gonna be a loaded ques usher man.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
So so you have to understand the environment, and so
what you have in Mexico is the cartels. They are
the wholesalers. In the United States, we have gangs. Those
are the retailers. In between, we have liaison officers, if
you will, for lack of a better term, that are
the interlockers between the Mexican cartels and the gangs in

(55:23):
the United States. So let's let's look at a gasoline distributorship.
You got, Let's let's just pick one. Let's say excellent. Okay,
and by the way, I hope all offended. Let's just
let's just say ACME gas Company.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
As a big supply of stuff, that supply of stuff
has to go to the different customers. So the big
supplier has a big it's a it's a sea tanker,
and then they put those into eighteen wheelers and they
take the eighteen wheelers to distribution points, and then those

(56:02):
distribution points provide those two the retailers. But then the
wholesalers turn it to the retailers, which are the gangs,
and you get different gangs. They're gangs all over the place.
So this is why it's such a diff difficult problem
to solve, is because you have these disparate gangs that
control turf in the United States and the other guys
that are distributing for particular neighborhoods, and that that means

(56:25):
that you're supplying you name the gang. Those guys are
connected to the cartels because those are the mass suppliers.
So if you go after the mass suppliers, what you
end up with is lesser suppliers. And so this is
the problem.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Sergio Russia just agreed to a cease fire. There you go, Yeah,
you're right, You're right, my friend, So go ahead, please,
I'm sorry, just breaking news. I had to throw that
in there because you had you had said that you're
very comfortable or comp and that it was going to happen.
So I had to give you kudos and credit on

(57:03):
the air man, So go ahead.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
As you put that out there. Now, I'm just kidding.
So when when you look at what happened with the cartel, yes,
cartel was one cartel that controlled the drug trafficking in
the United States. One cartel and that was and members

(57:27):
there's some others. Some of the underlings, some of the
lieutenants within that cartel were Chappuuzman and then Mayo Samba,
guys of the who of what later became the disparate organization.
So when we went after the DEA, went after the cartel,
they decided it's not good for business to be so big.

(57:49):
So what we do is we need to separate, or
we need to create regions, and then we'll put bosses
in those regions as were within the regions. And so
you know, I got their chunk of the real estate.
The the golf cartel got their chunk of the real estate.

(58:14):
The Haudas cartel is big. See, the Juana cartel is big.
So what happens is if you start chopping heads a
lot of times, what you do is you have the
lieutenants creating their own organizations. Now you've got a lot
of different groups and they're all fighting for the same thing.
So we've got to do a full court press. I'm

(58:36):
fearful that in Mexico about the only way that you're
ever going to put this thing to rest is if
you declare martial law and in certain regions say this,
we're going to go after these guys and they're going
to go to jail, and there's going to be tribunals
to try these people, and we're going to set up
judges where they're you got the judge in a completely
different state from where the defendant is, so that you know,

(58:59):
you can do things like the Italians did to take
care of the muff. I mean, there's norble things that
they're doing, and there's there's going to have to be
dramatic measures taken to be able to stop them. And
then when you start thinking about the collusion that occurs
between politicians and the cartels, it gets really messy. My
point is this, when you start thinking about the bigger

(59:20):
picture and you start doing certain actions, what kind of
instability are you going to generate? And if you create
too much instability in Mexico, what's going to happen to
the people within Mexico? You're going to have a very
busy CBP. And then getting people back into Mexico from
the United States is going to be increasingly more difficult
and there's going to be all sorts of legal fights,

(59:41):
and so it gets really messy. Enough.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
You you just said something that that nobody touches and
is so key. There's this there's this famous economists out
of Peru, Lenando de Soto, who talked about wrote a
book called De Loto Santo The Other Path.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
And he talked.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I don't know if you've read it, but he talks
about this exactly what you just said about the underground
or the informal economy, And you just talked about that,
because if you take out the cartels, you're going to
collapse in Mexican economy. That's that's just a fact, you know.
And you're gonna see we're going to see ten million
people at the border in ninety days, not a note

(01:00:27):
in four years.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
You know, if you if we don't know the repercussions
of destroying the existing cartels, so we need to be
thinking our way through that, and how are you going
to help solve that problem? I would argue that the
best way to contract the cartels is a collaborative effort
between the Mexican government and the US government coming to

(01:00:48):
an understanding. This is what we're both. We both have
common interest in getting these guys under control, because you've
got plenty of support in Mexico right now, because if
you look at the people that came out into this,
because three of the children, three of the people involved
in the violence was two little boys and their dad
who were murdered by cartel members after coming from a

(01:01:11):
party and they said, well, what were they doing out
at twelve o'clock, Well, excuse me, you have the right
to move around without having to worry about getting killed.
And they had about ten thousand protesters in the street,
protesting against the governor c That means that the people
themselves are shed up with a violence and so done

(01:01:33):
in a way that's collaborative. You can say, Okay, let's
see what we're both interested in. And this comes amidst
all of the trade issues that we're having to contend with,
because remember, Mexico is our number one trading partner, and
we think Canada has got issues. Canada is a number
two trading partner. There's a lot of companies that are

(01:01:53):
tied at the hip for all of that, and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
A lot of jobs, right, a lot of jobs of
the bend on it. I mean, we have US men
manufacturing in Mexico, we have US manufacturing in Canada. So
you know it's not it's not. It's not that plain
and simple. But I know you gotta run. I know
you gotta run. But I wanted to. I wanted to
bring bring up this and and and that's the only reason,
you know, is you know I want to. I want

(01:02:16):
to have you back, and I really want to deep
dive into this cartel stuff because I know from a
military perspective, you understand it differently than when I bring
in friends from the DA or Homeland Security or ICE
or whatever. I want to really have that conversation from
a military perspective. And the reason I brought this up
is because I just want to, you know, I want

(01:02:38):
to hear from somebody like yourself say, no, it's not
that easy. We're not gonna send uh, you know, Chuck
Norris in Delta Force in helicopters and it's not a movie, right,
and we're gonna blastom and blow boy and we're all
gonna walk away and it's over. And you know, the
Americans won I don't think it's that easy. It's gonna
be absolutely heinous. I mean, I've seen it throughout Latin America,

(01:03:00):
so of you. Once car bombs start blowing up in
streets and malls outside of shopping centers is not a
pretty sight. It's not I don't think something that the
American people would are used to or prepared to handle,
and and would take very well. Right. That that's that's
that's that's that's my concern, right, you know, with the

(01:03:20):
whole cowboy mentality of Oh, we're gonna go fucking crush them.
I don't think so, you know, and a bunch of
and a bunch of fat rednecks sitting on the back
of a truck with a case of beer saying, Oh,
we'll take them out, dude. You know, they have no idea,
They have no idea what the hell they're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
So just a couple of parting shots. One is you
asked me about would there be actions taken inside the
United States of the nature that you described with they're
doing terrorist activities and so forth, the cartails. I don't
think so, because the cartels are a business now, they're
they're attacks in the United States are different. They just
provide product, and the product is killing people, which is

(01:03:58):
it's it's much more lethal. We're losing one hundred thousand
people a year to drugs. They're flooding us with their drugs.
The Chinese are involved in part in a reverse opium
war focused against the United States because for every death
of those hundred thousands, there's families that are involved, and

(01:04:19):
so that's the way that they're Attackingess, it's you have
to look at this asymmetrically. This is not a war.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
This is what I was referring to. What I was
referring to in retaliation is if we go in militarily
and try and take them out, you don't think they're
going to respond. Here, they're going to have some of
their people. There are coppos whoever, you know, find the
mom here and there or at random acts of violence.

(01:04:46):
You don't think they will do that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
I I mean, if if there's a target of opportunity, maybe,
but I don't. I don't see it that way. I
see there. They're on a different battlefield, They're in a
different they're in a different environment. And the other thing
is you mentioned about the I don't know about rednecks.
I kind of, you know, find a rednick. I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
They called me the Hispanic redneck man. So it's all good,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
So there's people that like to sit there and pose
it and a pine. But at the end of the day,
war is a messy, messy business. Everybody remember what we
got when we went into Iraq the second time. We're
gonna do We're gonna do X, Y and Z, and
then we got stuck there for a long time. And

(01:05:32):
that was what you know, Initially you're gonna have some successes,
but once you're in there, what happens next, you know,
And even if the Russians don't put an end to
this conflict, if they think the Ukrainians are just going
to roll over and say, okay, that's pretty cool. If
you look at World War two, when the Germans invaded Ukraine,
they stuck to the cities because every time they went

(01:05:53):
to their cars they were worried that somebody had planted
a bomb. And so there was always this paranoia. Because
gorilla war sets in and then it gets read really ugly.
When you go from a conventional war that's been unresolved
to one that still has a will to fight. Gorillas
are going to be a thorn in your side forever
in a day. That's why it's so important to put

(01:06:14):
this thing to bed, put it to rest, because it
gets messy and ugly. And my point is, I warn
again when you get into wars, it's about breaking things
and killing people, and it's not a good thing because
it's also expensive, so you don't want to add that
cost to your national spending. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
That was that was fantastic, Sergio. Thank you again, you're
an encyclopedia, You're the professor. You're the professor. What can
I say? I feel like I'm in class, you know,
just listening to a professor, you know, you know, educate
us all on these matters. We have to get you back,
and I appreciate you touching, you know, very lightly on

(01:06:57):
the cartel situation. I really want to talk about this
because there's a lot of misconceptions. And like I said,
I talked to a lot of agency guys I like
to talk to, you know. I talked to DEA guys.
I talked to the ICE guys. I talked to CBP,
you know whoever, a whole bunch of folks that have
been in there and done that for decades. And I've
never actually had the cartel conversation with a military person.

(01:07:20):
And I suspect, and I'm suspecting that it's a very
different opinion or slightly different, but there's there's a different
opinion in there, and I'd love to hear it. So
I think we just got a little bit of it.
We'd love to have you back, and hopefully we can do.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
That very soon. It's a messy business.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Thank you, awesome, thank you. Sir, Joe, you're the best man.
Take care, Thanks Budge. All right, guys, that was retired
Army colonel Sea under Also he was the former Undersecretary
of Defense or Western Hemisphere under under Trump one and

(01:08:04):
just a good guy, really really solid guy. He's not,
you know, one of those crazy he's gon ho. He's
not you know you heard him. He's very, very sober.
He doesn't jump to a lot of conclusions. He's not
one of those bomb throwers and agitators. He says it
like it is. He's very matter of fact, and he
just has grasp on the issues on history. Is very refreshing.

(01:08:28):
That's why we like having him on the show. We
had him on you know, in the Passive Battleground multiple times,
and we're going to have him you know, on a
regular basis, hopefully on going rogue, so it'll be it'll
be fun next time we talked to him, because, like
I said, I just we just telegraphed it. We hear
from so many agencies, law enforcement agencies, D A, C. I, A,

(01:08:52):
you know, you name it, you know, with their interactions
with the cartels. Never really heard it from a military perspective.
I think we should interesting that he says that he
doesn't believe that there would be a retaliation if we
go after the cartels militarily and attack them in there,

(01:09:14):
you know, in Mexico or wherever and start blowing them
to hell, which is kind of different from what we've
heard from Agency or DA guys or ICE guys or whoever.
So you know, we'll see, we'll see, let's uh, let's
you know, we're gonna get him back. We're gonna deep
dive into that, and we're gonna hear why he thinks

(01:09:34):
that wouldn't happen or why he thinks it would. And
he did say that there are no terrorists here with
the resources to conduct a real, a real massive hit,
you know, a LAH nine to eleven. He also said, hey,
you know there's uh, there's there's attacks that are probably
prevented every single day, and we don't hear about it.

(01:09:55):
We're all gonna hear about it when we get hit.
So hopefully that doesn't happen, but we're gonna have him
back and guys tomorrow look back to regular schedule law
enforcement Friday. I think we're having Victor Avala join US
former supervisory special agent with ICE. There's some captures that
have happened, and a lot, a lot of bus with

(01:10:17):
Homan and I know the left is going nuts there
are I don't know why they're freaking out over capturing illegals.
We can talk about this Gaza character out of Columbia University.
You heard Marco Rubio sit there and say, hey, you know,
just because you're here in a visa doesn't mean we
can't kick you out. You know, nobody has the right

(01:10:38):
to be here unless you're a US citizen. Even if
you are, even if you have a green card, which
means that you're a legal permanent resident, does not mean
you have the right to be here, and the US
can pull that visa and kick you out. So just
so those that don't know and don't understand, you know,
they're like, he came in here on a student visa.

(01:10:58):
They're trying to silence it. No, the guy is supporting
a terrorist organization and we're throwing them out because look
at the shit he's doing and you know, in in
US schools and campuses. So we'll talk about that and
some other things, but you know, hopefully enjoyed the show,
make sure you watch us on Rumble on YouTube and

(01:11:18):
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(01:12:03):
long as you have somehow to connect to the internet,
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