The faceless protests against the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, which shook Mexico City last Saturday and were also called this Thursday, were claimed by various actors and groups with different interests, even north of the border. In the United States, they have been taken up by some digital media and commentators from the Trumpist MAGA world such as Steve Bannon or Alex Jones, both known for spreading hoaxes, to denounce the alleged metamorphosis of Mexico into “a narco-terrorist state”. In a context in which the United States has declared war precisely on “narcoterrorism” in Latin America and has already sunk more than 20 suspected drug ships in Caribbean and Pacific waters, adding at least 80 extrajudicial executions, the implication is clear: they demand that the next target be Mexico.
President Donald Trump explained this to reporters at the White House on Monday. “Would he launch attacks in Mexico to stop the drugs? That’s fine with me. Whatever we have to do to stop the drugs… Look, I saw what Mexico City was like over the weekend, they have big problems over there. If we had to do it, we would do what we did on the shipping lanes.” Even though the Mexican president has frontally rejected the idea of a direct military incursion by the United States into Mexican territory and even the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has ruled out any unilateral American action, the interventionist drums are resounding in the president’s electoral base.
Some anonymous, smaller social media accounts have replicated messages about it, but the majority of coverage of the Mexican protests in the MAGA ecosystem has occurred on Bannon and Jones’ shows. War Roomsince the beginning, it is among the 10 most listened to political podcasts, although its content is more similar to a TV news program, while the page InfoWarsby Jones, has more than five million monthly visits, according to analyst Semrush. Both have been repeatedly denounced for spreading false news, to the point that Jones has been firmly condemned and his official accounts have been removed from numerous social networks. While this does not appear to have had any impact on their audience, their platforms directly influence public opinion in sectors of the American far right.
In this case, each person’s narratives lay the groundwork for US military intervention, even if they do so with different arguments. Jones, on the one hand, assured that the protests against Sheinbaum have spread throughout Mexico and that millions of Mexicans have joined what he calls a popular “revolution”, when the official number of participants in Saturday’s demonstration was 17,000 people. The US military incursion, in his account, would be necessary to guarantee a transitional government allied with Trump.
In Bannon’s program, however, the contextualization is more complete and the emphasis was placed on two things in particular: the generational component of the protests, which were initially attributed to Generation Z, even if they expanded beyond that; and the trigger for dissatisfaction with Sheinbaum was the murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, in Michoacán. In this case, the US intervention was presented as a direct request from the Mexican population for Trump to act to decapitate the Sheinbaum government, supposedly under the direct control of the same “narcoterrorism” 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 his government; Despite Manzo’s death, the insecurity situation in several states due to cartel activity or corruption scandals in his party have a negative impact on public opinion. For his part, Trump says he is “not satisfied with Mexico”, despite the fact that security cooperation between the two countries has been strengthened during this year and Sheinbaum’s executive has defended the fight against organized crime as a priority of his government.
Shaking hands to continue strengthening this collaboration was the Mexican president’s message when faced with questions about a possible intervention by the United States. Sheinbaum was adamant in his refusal, as his approval would be legally required for any military incursion into his country. The US Congress would also have to approve an attack or special operations in Mexico; President Trump assured that it would be easy for him to gain support from lawmakers of both parties. Indeed, several Republican members of Congress have been proposing direct attacks on the cartels for years, and now some have done so again, most notably Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw, who leads a legislative commission to fight the cartels.
Given Sheinbaum’s and Rubio’s comments, direct U.S. intervention on Mexican soil still seems like a distant possibility. But the domestic political context in the United States could fuel a scenario in which attacking Mexico is presented as a relatively easy way for Trump to score points with his bases.
As the saga over the publication of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s documents nears its climax, with only the president’s signature needed to make them public, 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 its voters that can both divert public attention and satisfy a good portion of Trumpism. While there are no recent polls on the topic, in 2023 – when Joe Biden was president and the fentanyl epidemic was at its peak – a poll conducted by Reuters found that 64% of Republicans supported sending the military to Mexico to fight the cartels. The party’s near-total support for recent attacks on drug traffickers suggests the number may now be even higher.
Although Trump did not accuse Sheinbaum of being connected to or belonging to drug trafficking groups, as he did with the presidents of Venezuela and Colombia, Nicolás Maduro and Gustavo Petro respectively, he assured that he would be proud to attack the cartels directly. “I have spoken to Mexico, they know my position. We are losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. We have blocked the shipping routes, but we know all the routes, we know all the addresses of all the drug traffickers,” he said on Monday, despite there being no evidence that attacks on drug ships have had an impact on drug supply in the United States.
“We know the doors of their homes, we know everything about them. They are killing our people, it’s like a war. What if I did it? I would be proud.” The stage for a military intervention, built by the MAGA universe and President Trump himself, is ready. The final calculation is less clear.
