President Donald Trump opened the so-called “Shield of the Americas” summit in Doral, Florida today, attended by “likeminded allies” from the Americas, and organized, said he, by the “fantastic” Marco Rubio ("Marco’s gonna go down, I think, as the best Secretary of State in history"). Publicly, the summit was called to cement an “historic coalition of nations will work together to advance strategies that stop foreign interference in our hemisphere, criminal and narco-terrorist gangs and cartels, and illegal and mass immigration.” This project goes under the name of the “Americas Counter Cartel Coalition” (A3Cs),” unveiled two days before at the U.S. Southern Command headquarters, as EIR News reported.
Participating were the heads of state of 12 nations of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile (its incoming President), Costa Rica (outgoing and incoming presidents), the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Trump first bragged of the alleged success in his administration’s war on those “bad people” of Iran. Lest these “allies” miss that message, he stated throughout his address that the United States is the greatest military power in the world. While never saying the phrase “Greater North America,” as Hegseth had at the preparatory Southern Command meeting, he reminded that “the situations in Venezuela and Cuba should make clear under our new doctrine—and it is a doctrine—we will not allow hostile, foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere.”
The premise of this new A3Cs is that the drug cartel and immigration crises can only be addressed through lethal force, “our” militaries, he stressed, “offering” that “we have amazing weaponry, as you probably noticed over the last short period of time;” if you want missiles, we’ve got them.
He claimed great happy progress made by Venezuela after the U.S. intervention, pointing to how the U.S. is now not only making deals with (their) oil, but it signed a “deal” on Venezuela’s gold last week. Next comes Cuba. After going on about how Cuba is negotiating with the United States, he promised: first, the U.S. will “do” Iran, and after that, he joked, “Marco” will “take one hour off, and then he’ll finish up a deal on Cuba…. I’ll take care of Cuba.”
And then: “As part of our commitment to countering the cartel presence in our region, we must recognize the epicenter of cartel violence is Mexico… The United States government will do whatever is necessary to defend our national security…. the cartels are running Mexico. We can’t have that. Too close to us. Too close to you.”
Trump gave his rap, signed the A3Cs proclamation, and left, leaving the visiting Heads of State to be lectured by members of his cabinet. Notably, those present included his economic team (Scott Bessant, Howard Luttnick and Jamieson Greer), as well as Rubio, Pete Hegseth, newly-minted Special Envoy for the Americas Kristi Noem, and Stephen Miller.
