Within Donald Trump’s government-in-waiting, there is a fresh debate over whether and how thoroughly the president-elect should follow through on his campaign promise to attack or even invade Mexico, as part of the “war” he’s pledged to wage against powerful drug cartels.
“How much should we invade Mexico?” says a senior Trump transition member. “That is the question.”
It is a question that would have seemed batty for the GOP elite to consider before, even during Trump’s first term. But in the four years since, many within the mainstream Republican centers of power have come around to support Trump’s idea to bomb or attack Mexico.
Trump’s Cabinet picks, including his choices for secretary of defense and secretary of state, have publicly supported the idea of potentially unleashing the U.S. military in Mexico. So has the man Trump has tapped to be his national security adviser. So has the man Trump selected as his “border czar” to lead his immigration crackdowns. So have various Trump allies in Congress and in the media.
Trump, who has routinely (and falsely) promoted himself as the candidate who would stop “endless wars,” now wants to lead a new conflict just south of our nation’s border. But at this moment, it is, in the words of one Trump adviser, “unclear how far he’ll go on this one.” This source adds: “If things don’t change, the president still believes it’s necessary to take some kind of military action against these killers.”
Another source close to Trump describes to Rolling Stone what they call a “soft invasion” of Mexico, in which American special forces — not a large theater deployment — would be sent covertly to assassinate cartel leaders. Indeed, this is a preliminary plan that Trump himself warmed to in private conversations this year.
For this story, Rolling Stone spoke with six Republicans who have each talked to the twice-impeached former and now future president about this topic; some of these sources have briefed Trump on these policy ideas in recent weeks. These proposals — of varying degrees of violent severity — include drone strikes or airstrikes on cartel infrastructure or drug labs, sending in military trainers and “advisers” to Mexico, deploying kill teams on Mexican soil, waging cyber warfare against drug lords and their networks, and having American special forces conduct a series of raids and abductions of notorious cartel figures.
In some of these private conversations, including during this presidential transition period, Trump has told confidants and some GOP lawmakers that he plans to tell the Mexican government they need to stem the flow of fentanyl to America — somehow, in a span of several months — or else he’ll send in the U.S. military.
As Rolling Stone has reported, since at least last year, Trump has solicited specific “battle plans” and different military options for “attacking Mexico.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), whom Trump chose to serve as secretary of state, has endorsed the idea of sending U.S. troops to Mexico to combat drug cartels, under the conditions that “there is cooperation from the Mexican government,” and that such operations are done “in coordination with the armed forces and the Mexican police force.”
