For decades, America has tolerated a slow-motion disaster disguised as “due process” and “fairness.” While courts crawled at the speed of molasses, drug cartels pumped billions of dollars’ worth of poison into our communities. The result? Generations destroyed, families shattered, and a culture softened for collapse. President Trump’s decision to take the fight directly to cartel operations—blowing up drug boats in international waters—is not just bold; it’s necessary. This is not about policing petty crime. It’s about defending the United States from a military-grade invasion disguised as commerce. Fentanyl alone killed 73,960 Americans in the 12 months ending April 2025, according to CDC data. That’s more than the total U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam. When Trump authorized strikes off the coast of Venezuela, he signaled a new era: America will no longer play defense while cartels wage war on our soil. Critics in Europe wring their hands about “due process,” but let’s be clear—cartels are not misunderstood entrepreneurs. They are terrorist organizations, and their weapon is chemical warfare.

Why did it take so long to get here? Because cartels mastered the art of hiding behind our own institutions. They’ve turned the American legal system into their own version of a Trojan horse. Every time a kingpin gets caught, billions flow into law firms to stall extradition, manipulate loopholes, and buy influence. The Sinaloa Cartel alone generates up to $11 billion annually, and much of that bankroll fuels legal defenses and bribery. Lawyers addicted to cartel money are as dangerous as people with an addiction to heroin. This isn’t hyperbole—it’s systemic corruption. Court cases drag on for years, not because justice is complicated, but because money makes complexity profitable. Meanwhile, politicians posture about “comprehensive reform” while quietly pocketing donations from interests tied to the drug economy. The result? A judiciary that moves more slowly than a glacier, while cartels move faster than a hypersonic missile. Trump’s approach bypasses this charade. No more plea deals. No more courtroom theater. When a cartel boat crosses international waters loaded with fentanyl, it’s not a defendant—it’s a target.

If you think this is just about drugs, think again. Cartels are not mere suppliers—they are warlords. Since 2006, Mexico has recorded over 460,000 homicides linked to cartel violence, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. That’s nearly half a million lives erased in less than two decades. In 2021 alone, 18,000 people died in cartel-related conflicts. These aren’t sanitized numbers—they represent real atrocities: beheadings, bodies hung from bridges, families slaughtered to send a message. And it’s not confined to Mexico. Along the U.S. border, innocent Americans have been kidnapped, tortured, and killed—crimes that rarely make headlines because they don’t fit the narrative of “immigration reform.” Illegal immigration has been the perfect smokescreen for cartel operations, scattering enforcement resources and creating chaos by design. Every migrant caravan is a Trojan horse, hiding cartel scouts and smugglers among desperate families. This is not immigration—it’s infiltration. And every fentanyl pill that slips through is a bullet aimed at America’s future.

The time for half-measures is over. Trump’s strikes on cartel boats are a start, but they must be the beginning of a relentless campaign: destroy cartel mansions, burn their plantations, seize their offshore accounts, and dismantle their propaganda networks. Treat them as what they are—terrorists. Fentanyl is not a recreational drug; it’s a weapon of mass destruction. In FY2023, U.S. authorities seized 27,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border, a staggering 480% increase since 2020. That’s enough to kill every man, woman, and child in America several times over. Over 107,000 Americans died from overdoses in 2022, with fentanyl responsible for 70% of those deaths. This is not a market—it’s a battlefield. And the enemy is winning because we’ve been too polite to call this what it is: war. Trump called it. He acted. And for that, he deserves not just support but a mandate to finish the job. Blow up more boats. Raid more compounds. Cut off the financial arteries that keep this beast alive. America cannot afford another decade of courtroom theater while cartels wage chemical warfare on our streets. The choice is simple: escalate or perish.

History will judge this moment. Will we continue to let cartels poison our culture under the guise of “due process,” or will we fight back with the full force of a nation that refuses to die on its knees? Trump chose the latter, and that’s one of the reasons we elected him.  Drug dealing is not a harmless, free market enterprise; it is meant to feed the worst of any society, the slack-jawed losers who supply the poison and the diabolical menaces who use them, and make them both the moral imperative of all social structure.  Because of the United States’ power and its successful military, threats against it have taken the form of guerrilla warfare.  They have no plans to fight a direct war with America, but they indeed plan to subvert it, which has undoubtedly been the case of many socialist countries around the world, and yes, Mexico and Canada fall in that category.  They are OK to support a power like the drug cartels to cause the inward destruction of America, and even the lawyers play their part by putting their personal profit over the good of the nation.  Just like the drugs the cartels deal, the money that spawns from it has given significant amounts of wealth to the legal profession in America to keep the dealers out of jail, for the most part.  The drugs themselves aren’t the only addiction meant to exploit a culture to its own self-destruction, and many enemy countries to America have learned to use a much more passive-aggressive approach to military attack.  Venezuela certainly falls under that category.  So knowing all that, I would like to see more drug boats blown from the water.  I would like to see their drug mansions raided and destroyed.  I would like to see all drug assets eradicated and the perpetrators punished to the fullest extent.  Drug dealing and use is not an innocent crime; it’s the poison of society itself.  There is no innocent drug use when the destruction of human minds is the intent.  And when you look at the many socialist countries where many of these drug dealers spawn from, the endeavor is all too obvious.  They let the cartels be their military and chaos their agent of destruction as they seek to overthrow capitalism and to usher in communism as the replacement for sanity.  And in large sections of America, it has been working.  When you trace back the origin of many of the anti-ICE riots in America to its root cause, the perpetrators are primarily drug users who have had their minds poisoned by the cartels, and in many cases, they are proud of it.  The many members of all communist movements, in most cases, also have a relationship to drug use because, in their destroyed minds, they lose the ability to think for themselves and instead seek centralized authorities to do it for them.  And that is the reason why these drug dealers need a spectacular end to their life of crime and villainy.  And the Trump administration couldn’t destroy enough of them to make me happy.   But I am glad to see the intent headed in the right direction.  I am looking forward to a lot more blowing up of drug dealers, and if the Trump team ever wants any help, call.  It would be a privilege. 

Rich Hoffman

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