House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Endorses Military Action to Combat Mexican Drug Cartels, Calls for Designation as Terrorist Organizations

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has endorsed the idea of using the U.S. military to combat Mexican drug cartels, during an exclusive video interview with Breitbart News.

Speaker McCarthy believes the cartels should be designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.

“I think you have to designate them,” he said. “We do not have operational control of our border.”

He praised Texas Governor Greg Abbott for his efforts to secure the border and suggested that embedding military personnel could help utilize Pentagon technology in the fight against the cartels.

“For anyone in America that’s been down there — I want to give credit to Gov. Abbott. It shouldn’t be his job to secure the border. But he has to put effort into it. You look what has gone on. These cartels are making billions of dollars human trafficking, right? But they’re using weapons. They’re shooting. We’ve watched in broad daylight what they would do with not respect for life or for Americans,” the House speaker said.

McCarthy did not specifically endorse a proposal from Republican Reps. Michael Waltz (FL) and Dan Crenshaw (TX) authorizing the use of military force against the cartels, though their plan aligns with his sentiments.

Waltz explained that the Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF) would allow the use of military resources, such as space and cyber assets, to target and disrupt cartel operations.

“It essentially authorizes military resources,” Waltz said in the interview. “So, space assets for targeting. Your Border Patrol — our law enforcement and border entities don’t have their own space assets. The military does. Offensive cyber — as opposed to just defending our networks here at home, but actually getting inside somebody else’s networks and start disrupting their money, their logistics, their ability to communicate. That all sits inside the Defense Department. So, this would authorize the use — this would authorize the use of military force, but I think it’s more accurate to call it resources.”

Breitbart also noted that former President Donald Trump has stated that he would treat the cartels like ISIS if he were to be elected president again.

“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, and just as — unlike the situation we’re in today, we had a very, very strong border, the strongest border, in fact, in the history of our country, and drugs were at a low of 45 years,” Trump said in a January policy video.

“There’s been nothing like what we did, just two years ago.”

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