Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax that President Donald Trump’s stepped-up pressure campaign against drug cartels is beginning to disrupt their financial and logistical networks, but cartel-linked retaliation inside the United States remains a “clear and present danger.”
The cartels should be understood as more than violent trafficking organizations, describing them as “the vascular system to everything illegal on this planet,” Holt told Newsmax’s “Sunday Report,” including “co-opted politicians, paid-off staffers, lobbying firms that work on their behalf.”
He said signs of growing pressure are not limited to maritime interdictions, adding that the impact is showing up in the cartels’ bottom line.
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