Donald Trump makes Mexican cartel leaders tremble. Or so they say

Yahoo

03-03-2025

What a weird story.
Members of the notorious Sinaloa cartel are petrified, their hands even 'trembling,' as they talk about the law enforcement crackdown on them.
They are especially unnerved when they whisper — anonymously, of course — about Se·ñor Donald Trump and the big stick he carries in the form of the U.S. military.
Trump threatens tariffs on Mexico and possible attacks on its cartels, putting so much pressure on the Mexican government that it turns around and puts the squeeze on the cartels, The New York Times reports.
'You can't be calm, you can't even sleep, because you don't know when they'll catch you,' one high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel told The Times.
Whoa. Wait a second. This is the Mexican cartels?
These are the guys who hang mutilated bodies like Christmas ornaments from highway overpasses, who torture prisoners with power drills before they burn them alive.
These are the guys who gun down Mexican journalists in their driveways, who assassinated nearly 40 candidates in last summer's Mexican elections and who recently beheaded the mayor of a major city.
The same guys who kill with such frequency that Mexico sustains a murder rate of about 30,000 people a year, three times greater than the United States, according to the Washington Post ... those guys?
Mexico's 28 intentional homicides per 100,000 people, in fact, makes it one of the deadliest countries in the world, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime reports.
And yet here's what The New York Times reported on Sunday:
'One cartel leader says he's trying to figure out how to protect his family in case the American military strikes inside Mexico. Another says he's already gone into hiding, rarely leaving his home. Two young men who produce fentanyl for the cartel say they have shut down all their drug labs.'
Understand that the Mexican cartels are no longer local franchises. They're international conglomerates. They're the biggest criminal syndicates in the world.
Their reach is so long that an unaffiliated newspaper, The Times of London, published this headline on Feb. 14:
'How drug cartels are turning France into 'the new Mexico'.'
In 2024 alone, turf wars of rival trafficking gangs killed 110 people in France and injured another 341, the British newspaper reports. The gangs have reeked violence in places like Besançon, birthplace of literary great Victor Hugo and home of the renowned Saint-Pierre restaurant, celebrated for its lobster and scallops with truffles.
Opinion: Every Arizona teen needs 'the talk' about Mexican cartels
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau says the drug gangs have become so powerful and violent that they are creating the 'Mexicanization' of France, The Times of London reported.
But back in Mexico, in Culiacán, in the heart of Sinaloa, part of the roughly one-third of the country that the drug cartels control, the narcos are cowering in fear.
At the thought of Donald Trump.
Yes, there's a line deep in The New York Times' story on how the cartels would not 'just sit here with our arms crossed' if Americans start dropping commandos from choppers into the country, but mostly this is a story about their apprehensions and deep-seated fears.
I trust that the Times is conveying faithfully what the cartels are telling them. This isn't a case of media bias. The Gray Lady swings left. This is one of its rare stories that swings right and makes Donald Trump look good.
Only it reads like the kind of market-placement quotes you'd get from legitimate conglomerates, such as Amazon or Walmart or JP Morgan Chase. It's like Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos doing the Trump two-step to get in sync with the American vibe shift.
Only, it's the Mexican cartels who are spinning like tops.
And the whole thing is too weird to be true.
Phil Boas is an editorial page columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mexican cartel members claim fear of Trump. Don't believe it | Opinion