Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Friday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” that former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is an attempt to protect himself from legal consequences of his “criminal actions.”
Raskin said, “Jim Jordan and James Comer, and the MAGA forces running the House of Representatives, would much prefer to arraign the entire law enforcement agencies of America, at the FBI, and others on charges that they are part of a vast conspiracy to get Donald Trump, then to accept the possibility that Donald Trump actually swiped hundreds of confidential and top secret government documents, and then hid them in his residence at Mar-a-Lago, even when there is photographic documentary evidence of his having done so.”
He continued, “We do have one set of laws in America that apply to everybody. And history tells us that you cannot allow people who are trying to overthrow our system of government to get away with it. They have to face consequences. And there has to be accountability for people who are doing it, otherwise we are giving them more space and time and energy to come back again.”
Raskin added, “At this point, the Republican Party is operating like a shield, like an umbrella for people who come underneath it to try to hide their past offenses. At this point, Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is principally about masking and protecting himself against the consequences of criminal actions he took in 2020 as part of that campaign, and before that. So, he really wants to reduce the Republican Party to a big protection racket for Trump Inc.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Mexican President Lopez Obrador: Don’t Vote Republican AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
ILDEFONSO ORTIZ and BRANDON DARBY
10 Mar 2023 23
2:04
Mexico’s president said he would call for all Hispanics to not vote for Republicans, because they are members of a “corrupt, inhumane, and hypocritical” party. The harsh words come as U.S. politicians call for a stronger response to Mexican cartels, particularly after the recent fatal kidnappings of four Americans.
“If they don’t change their attitude and think they are going to use Mexico for their purposes with propaganda, elections, and politicking, we are going to call for [people] to not vote for that party, for being interventionist, inhumane, hypocrite and corrupt,” said Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO).
Lopez Obrador also blamed the U.S. for the fentanyl crisis , claiming Mexico does not produce or consume the deadly drug.
The Mexican president claimed the Republican Party stood silent after U.S. health authorities approved the use of opioids “supposedly for pain relief.”
Lopez Obrador also criticized the gun lobby for funding Republican candidates amid cartel violence. “Eighty percent of the high-powered weapons used by the delinquency in Mexico are sold in the U.S. and they don’t even have a registry of that,” he said. “Even more, some of the legislators of the Republican Party are financed by the companies that produce the weapons.”
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook . He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com .
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook . He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com .
Mexican president to US: Fentanyl is your problem
MARK STEVENSON
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president said Thursday that his country does not produce or consume fentanyl, despite enormous evidence to the contrary.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared to depict the synthetic opioid epidemic largely as a U.S. problem, and said the United States should use family values to fight drug addiction.
His statement came during a visit to Mexico by Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House homeland security adviser, to discuss the fentanyl crisis. It also comes amid calls by some U.S. Republicans to use the U.S. military to attack drug labs in Mexico.
The Mexican government has acknowledged in the past that fentanyl is produced at labs in Mexico using precursor chemicals imported from China. Fentanyl has been blamed for about 70,000 opioid deaths per year in the United States.
“Here, we do not produce fentanyl, and we do not have consumption of fentanyl,” López Obrador said. “Why don't they (the United States) take care of their problem of social decay?"
He went on to recite a list of reasons why Americans might be turning to fentanyl, including single-parent families, parents who kick grown children out of their houses and people who put elderly relatives in old-age homes “and visit them once a year.”
His statement contrasted sharply with a Thursday tweet from U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar saying a meeting between Sherwood-Randall and Mexico's attorney general was meant “to enhance security cooperation and fight against the scourge of fentanyl to better protect our two nations.”
There is little debate among U.S. and even Mexican officials that almost all the fentanyl consumed in the United States is produced and processed in Mexico.
In February, the Mexican army announced it seized more than a half million fentanyl pills in what it called the largest synthetic drug lab found to date. The army said the outdoor lab was discovered in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state.
In the same city in 2021, the army raided a lab that it said probably made about 70 million of the blue fentanyl pills every month for the Sinaloa cartel.
“The president is lying,” said Mexican security analyst David Saucedo. “The Mexican cartels, above all the CJNG ( Jalisco New Generation Cartel) and the Sinaloa Cartel have learned to manufacture it.”
“They themselves buy the precursor chemicals, set up laboratories to produce fentanyl and distribute it to cities in the United States and sell it,” Saucedo said. “Little by little they have begun to build a monopoly on fentanyl, because the Mexican cartels are present along the whole chain of production and sales.”
While it is true that fentanyl consumption appears to remain low in Mexico and largely confined to northern border areas, that may be because the Mexican government is so bad at detecting it. A 2019 study in the border city of Tijuana showed that 93% of samples of methamphetamines and heroin there contained some fentanyl.
Saucedo said fentanyl exports to the U.S. are so lucrative for Mexican cartels that they previously had not seen a need to develop a domestic market for the drug.
“It is true that fentanyl consumption in Mexico is marginal, but some mid-level cartels have begun selling it in border cities and in big cities like Leon, Mexico City and Monterrey,” Saucedo said.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham held a news conference, saying he wanted “to unleash the fury and might of the U.S. against these cartels."
“The second step that we will be engaging in is give the military the authority to go after these organizations wherever they exist,” Graham said. "Not to invade Mexico. Not to shoot Mexican airplanes down. But to destroy drug labs that are poisoning Americans.”
López Obrador said Mexico would not accept such threats, calling them “an insult to Mexico and a lack of respect for our independence and sovereignty.”
López threatened to start a campaign in the United States asking Mexicans and Hispanics who live there not to vote for Republicans.
“We are going to issue a call not to vote for that party, because they are inhuman and interventionist,” López Obrador said.
Security analyst Alejandro Hope said López Obrador appeared trapped between his own “hugs, not bullets” strategy of not confronting cartels — which plays well among his supporters — and increasing U.S. pressure, especially from Republicans. Portraying himself as the defender of Mexico's sovereignty has been an easy out for López Obrador in the past.
Hope said the Mexican president may not realize how much the issue of declaring Mexican cartels terrorist organizations could become a conservative rallying cry in 2024, just as former President Donald Trump's call for a border wall was in 2016.
“It's the wall, version 2024,” said Hope. “He (López Obrador) believes everybody is as willing to make deals as Trump, but many of these (Republicans) are much more ideological.”
“The problem is that it puts the Biden administration in a terrible position, it puts it between the Republicans' intransigence and López Obrador's intransigence,” Hope said.
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico's top diplomat, wrote in his Twitter account Thursday that proposals like Graham's would be “catastrophic for bilateral anti-drug cooperation.”
“They (Republicans) know that the fentanyl epidemic did not originate in Mexico, but in the United States,” Ebrard wrote. “They know that more work is being done against fentanyl now than ever.”
Mexicans, both in government and outside it, are clearly afraid of fentanyl use increasing in Mexico. A civic group has launched a campaign of painting walls with the slogan “Mxsinfentanilo” — “Mexico without fentanyl” — and López Obrador has launched a series of anti-drug TV ads.
But once again, López Obrador's government appears to view fentanyl as a U.S. problem.
In the ads launched in November, the Mexican government used videos of homeless people and open-air drug users in Philadelphia’s embattled Kensington neighborhood to try to scare young people away from drugs.
Who Really Benefits From Illegal Immigration? | Victor Davis Hanson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRb2xFplKM
Report: ‘Dangerous’ NYC Migrant Shelters Filled with Gang Members David Dee Delgado/Getty Images 1:53
New York City’s migrant shelters are plagued with “volatile” and “dangerous” conditions, prompting a search by city officials to hire private security guards for the facilities, a report details.
Since the spring of last year, more than 84,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York City with about 50,000 remaining in shelters across the city, now outnumbering native New Yorkers.
Gregory Floyd with Teamsters Local 237 told the New York Post that the migrant shelters are too dangerous for the unarmed peace officers he represents. Some, Floyd said, are gang members.
“There are migrants who are gang members in these facilities,” Floyd told the Post .
“It’s volatile. It’s dangerous,” he continued. “We don’t know if all these migrants are properly vetted. My members are unarmed.”
As Breitbart News reported , more than six-in-ten border crossers and illegal aliens who have arrived in New York City since the spring of last year are living off local taxpayers in subsidized housing and shelters — including luxury hotels like the Roosevelt Hotel.
The sheer volume of border crossers and illegal aliens staying in shelters has increased the system’s population by more than 110 percent since Adams took office. To afford subsidizing new arrivals, Adams has said New Yorkers will see public services like meals for senior citizens and library hours cut.
Every day, illegal immigration is costing New Yorkers nearly $8 million, and by the middle of next year, Mayor Eric Adams predicts it will have cost more than $4.2 billion.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
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