Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis does not simply want to secure the U.S.-Mexico border — he wants to flatten the criminal elements on the other side whose illegal drugs helped kill at least 109,000 Americans last year alone.

During Wednesday's Republican presidential debate, DeSantis reiterated that he would send U.S. special forces to go down to Mexico blasting.

"Yes, I will do it from day one," he said. "When these drug pushers are bringing fentanyl across the border, that is going to be the last thing they do. We are going to use force and leave them stone-cold dead."

That force would be applied to crush fentanyl labs, disrupt cartel operations, and stem the flow of the drug into the U.S., reported Bloomberg.

Such an attack would hardly be unprovoked. After all, in 2021, synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl manufactured with the help of the communist Chinese, killed over 70,601 Americans, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

President Joe Biden’s Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram has called fentanyl the "singled deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered."

DeSantis, who is not alien to the course proposed, having previously deployed to Iraq in support of the SEAL mission in Al Anbar province, added, "The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander-in-chief to protect our country and to protect our people. So when they're coming across, yes, we're going to use lethal force."

The Republican governor's remarks Wednesday echoed his suggestion to Tucker Carlson last month that on his first day in office, he would "declare a national emergency, mobilize all resources, including the military, [to] stop the invasion."

Extra to building the wall, he said more important would be the authorization of the border patrol and military "to deal with the cartels. If they’re breaking into our country bringing product, if I’m in charge, that’s going to be the last thing they do because they’re going to end up stone-cold dead."

The liberal media has balked at the suggestion that a potential president might eliminate the threat that yearly contributes to the slaughter of over 33 times more Americans than had died on September 11, 2001.

The New York Times characterized DeSantis' comments as "fringe" and suggested they contributed to a "steady drumbeat of menace."

MSNBC's Steve Benen, producer of "The Rachel Maddow Show," picked up where his Russia-hoaxer star left off in the way of criticizing DeSantis, suggesting the governor's talk of deep-sixing America's enemies was rhetoric for the benefit of "GOP audiences [who] respond favorably to the idea of lethal violence at the border."

While this a proposal he has locked into, DeSantis is not an outlier in wanting the cartels dead.

Various other Republican lawmakers in Washington have discussed ways to do what Mexico is incapable or unwilling to do.

TheBlaze previously reported that Reps. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) introduced a resolution on Jan. 12 to "authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for trafficking fentanyl or a fentanyl-related substance into the United States or carrying out other related activities that cause regional destabilization in the Western Hemisphere."

The resolution went nowhere, but that didn't kill the dream.

"We need to start thinking about these groups more like ISIS than we do the mafia," said Waltz, a former Green Beret.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) indicated in March he would support a military intervention in Mexico to deal with its drug lords, even if that meant doing so without the nation's permission.

Sen. J. D. Vance (R-Ohio) similarly said he wants to see "the president of the United States, whether that's a Democrat or a Republican, ... use the power of the U.S. military to go after these drug cartels."

Even DeSantis' rival — former President Donald Trump, who leads him by over 40 points in the polls — has humored the idea of using missiles to atomize drug labs and the cartels.

Mark Esper, Trump's former secretary of defense, noted in his memoir that Trump twice asked whether the military could "shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs," adding that "they don't have control of their own country," reported the New York Times.

While Esper appears to have shrugged off the suggestion that Mexico was descending into a state of anarchy that directly threatened Americans' well-being, even the Biden administration recently pointed out that it is "fair to say" various regions of Mexico are controlled by the terroristic gangs.

Bloomberg noted that Mexico might get its dander up over such unilateral American military operations, regarding kinetic actions on its soil by an ally a violation of its sovereignty.

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