#2369 - Ed Calderon

Summary

The Joe Rogan Experience #2369 – Ed Calderon (August 22, 2025)

Episode Overview

Joe Rogan welcomes security expert and former Mexican law enforcement officer Ed Calderon for a gripping, deep-dive discussion into Mexico's cartel wars, the history and psychology of violence in Mexican culture, the complex interplay between organized crime and government institutions, and the ripple effects of these conflicts on both Mexico and the United States. Calderon brings insider expertise, personal experience, and a critical eye toward both nations’ failures and complicity. The conversation covers ancient ritual practices, the evolution of cartel power, cross-border corruption, weapon and drug flows, the fentanyl epidemic, and the human cost of open and militarized borders.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mexican History, Rituals, and Ancient Warfare

• Aztec Death Whistles and Psychological Warfare ([00:59]–[03:56])
  • Ed recounts the history and modern fascination with the Aztec death whistle, explaining its psychological use in ancient war: blowing these whistles at night to terrorize enemy camps during the "flower wars."
  • "If you heard dudes in the distance making that noise and you knew that people were after you and you heard that, you'd be like, oh, yeah." – Joe ([02:14])
• Mexico’s Layers of Ancient Civilizations ([04:01]–[06:23])
  • The Mexica (Aztecs) were late arrivals, with cities like Teotihuacan abandoned before their arrival. Ancient Mexico was a patchwork of older civilizations; being "Aztec" is just one part of a much broader heritage.
• Rituals of Pain, Sacrifice, and Early Psychedelia ([13:59]–[15:17])
  • Ed describes how many religious rites involved bloodletting and self-mutilation—visions through agony, not just through plant medicines.
  • Notable: Aztec priests sometimes pulled cords with thorns through their genitalia for ritual visions.
• Human Sacrifice and Skull Racks ([16:19]–[18:45])
  • Human sacrifice is both depicted and archaeologically evident; Ed pushes back on contemporary denialism, citing skull racks and murals as undeniable records.
  • "Well, that was that one statue that's on top of the pyramid that's like a bench. They were explaining to me that that's where they would sacrifice people." – Joe ([16:44])

2. Colonialism, Mestizaje, and Modern Mexican Identity

• The Spanish Conquest & Complex Legacy ([06:42]–[09:13])
  • Ed discusses the Spanish as both conquerors and "already mixed" people, and how Mexico became a land of mestizaje (mixing), resulting in a culture that paradoxically "hates parts of itself."
  • "We were very much taught to hate ourselves in a way. And I think that that has something to do with a lot of the psychology and the culture in Mexico." – Ed ([08:13])
• Cultural Survival & The Mayans Today ([09:13])
  • The Mayan people and culture persist in southern Mexico, busting myths of their disappearance.

3. Cartel Violence: Evolution, Brutality, and Recruitment

• Origins and Escalation of Drug Cartels ([28:43]–[32:12])
  • Cartel power began growing in the 1970s–80s, initially with heroin to supply U.S. wartime needs, evolving through cocaine and other drugs.
• Narcos, Witchcraft, and Early U.S. Awareness ([28:43]–[30:00])
  • The "Narco-Satanist" Adolfo Constanzo blended occult rituals with cartel life, giving Americans a first glimpse of the brutality.
• Militarization and Political Corruption ([33:21]–[36:11])
  • Cartel organizations are now deeply intertwined with politics (mayors, chiefs of police, governors) and local government, with overt assassinations (60 politicians killed in the 2024 cycle).
  • "Cartels are like, they have their own candidates running for office. The mayor of a city and the police chief of the city, they're all cartel members." – Ed ([34:42])
• "Hydra Effect" and Failed Drug War Policies ([32:12]–[35:19])
  • Attempts to decapitate leadership, or militarize police, only splinter cartels further, increasing chaos and brutality.

4. Brutality, Normalization, and Human Cost

• Extreme Violence as a Tool ([24:06]–[25:16]; [25:51]–[28:24])
  • Psychological operations have roots in both ancient and modern violence, with brutality meant to terrify and control rivals and the population—reflected in how the murder and display of corpses has become “normalized.”
  • “It is the evolution of what is considered normal in Mexico. People will get shot by the dozens...and people will just go back to work.” – Ed ([27:57])
• Recruitment through Social Media ([52:18]–[56:13])
  • Cartels recruit openly on TikTok, luring desperate young people with promises of high pay, then using torture and tests (including being asked to kill) to select and train soldiers.
  • "The cartel uses TikTok." – Joe ([53:05])
• Training Camps and Foreign Influence ([57:20])
  • Training by Mexican and Colombian ex-special forces, rumors of U.S. veterans involved; advanced tech and tactics imported from global war zones.

5. Innovations in Criminal Warfare

• Armored ‘Mad Max’ Tanks & Drones ([48:55]–[52:05]; [52:09]–[58:46])
  • Cartels deploy homemade tanks and drones for attacks and surveillance; technological sophistication is constantly evolving.
  • "Now you're seeing drone cartels fighting against other cartel drones." – Ed ([67:07])
• Body Disposal Methods and the Mass of the ‘Disappeared’ ([61:31]–[64:53])
  • Detailed and chilling accounts of mass body disposal techniques—industrial-level burning, chemical dissolution—explain why missing persons numbers vastly understate reality.

6. US-Mexico Relations: Guns, Corruption, Covert Ops

• Weapons Flow & Operation Fast and Furious ([99:54]–[106:31])
  • U.S. weapons—sometimes with paperwork still attached—end up in cartel hands, often as a consequence of failed “gun walking” ATF operations.
  • "My friends got killed with those guns." – Ed ([100:53])
  • Joe and Ed speculate on the true rationale behind the US allowing arms shipments, hinting at covert support for favored factions.
• Cooperation and Complicity: Cartels & the State ([117:28]–[118:03])
  • Ed argues the U.S. government sometimes channels communication and cooperation through cartels, not Mexican authorities, for border security.
• CIA, Drug Running, and Deep State Conspiracies ([107:55]–[116:14])
  • Extended references to proven cases of CIA involvement with drug trafficking, both historic (Iran-Contra, Freeway Ricky Ross) and current.

7. Fentanyl & Human Trafficking

• The Rise of Fentanyl and Changing Drug Economies ([125:38]–[129:22])
  • The opioid crisis in the U.S. led cartels to switch to poppy and then augment weak heroin with fentanyl—first in local Mexican test markets, then for export.
  • Strict cartel controls ensure fentanyl is not distributed inside Mexico—dealers face death if caught; contrast with relative impunity in the U.S.
• Chinese Involvement—a Geopolitical Chessboard ([129:22]–[133:21])
  • Most fentanyl precursors come from China, with Ed suggesting state intelligence could hardly be ignorant of the scale of these operations.
• Human & Child Trafficking ([140:10]–[142:34])
  • Joe and Ed discuss the horror and complexity of child trafficking, with young kids drugged and moved across borders, noting both the scope of the trade and the bureaucratic cruelty of “overcorrection” deportations.

8. Immigration, Identity, and Overcorrection

• Border Politics—Both Sides Guilty ([143:41]–[153:22])
  • The back-and-forth between open borders and mass deportations; mass removals under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with Obama deporting over 3 million people and Bush over 5 million.
  • Both agree: U.S. policies have been fundamentally hypocritical and driven by political expediency, not compassion nor security.
  • “It’s an overcorrection... People become numbers.” – Joe ([150:01])
• The Human Cost of Policy ([147:22]–[149:13])
  • Deportation of individuals raised in the U.S. since childhood is common; many are dumped into “home countries” where they don’t speak the language.

9. Mexico’s Economic Potential, Gentrification, and Future

• Mexico as Industrial Powerhouse Under Threat ([92:00]–[94:13], [178:39]–[179:38])
  • Ed predicts Mexico is poised for a manufacturing boom ("the next China"), yet is at risk of derailing under cartel violence and the lure of socialism.
• Gentrification and Role Swap ([176:34]–[177:37])
  • Ironically, Mexicans are experiencing gentrification in their own cities by incoming Americans.
• Shared Destiny and Need for Cooperation ([181:36]–[182:05])
  • Both men agree that the solution can only come through deep cooperation and mutual understanding, not militarized confrontation.
  • “I don’t see a future without both of our countries just, like, figuring things out together.” – Ed ([182:03])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ancient Psychological Warfare:
  "If you heard dudes in the distance making that noise and you knew that people were after you and you heard that, you'd be like, oh, yeah." – Joe ([02:14])

• On Internalized Shame and Mestizaje:
  "We were very much taught to hate ourselves in a way. And I think that that has something to do with a lot of the psychology and the culture in Mexico." – Ed ([08:13])

• On Political Corruption:
  "Cartels are like, they have their own candidates running for office. ...They’re all cartel members." – Ed ([34:42])

• On Weapon Flows:
  "My participation in all this was... a bunch of my friends got killed with those guns." – Ed ([100:53])

• On Cartel Recruitment on TikTok:
  "The cartel uses TikTok." – Joe ([53:05])

• On the Futility of Militarized Solutions:
  "You just abducted the head of the Sinaloa cartel and brought him to Texas. And all, and all that did didn't quell cartel violence in Mexico. It didn't end the Sinaloa cartel. It just made a giant war..." – Ed ([180:01])

• On US–Mexico Interdependence:
  "We are going to need each other more than we think in the coming years. And open warfare between both countries is not... it’s not going to lead to anything..." – Ed ([182:05])

• On Weaponized Immigration Policy:
  “It’s an overcorrection... People become numbers.” – Joe ([150:01])

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Key Timestamps for Critical Segments

• [00:59] – Discussion of Aztec death whistle origins and psychological warfare.
• [16:19] – Aztec human sacrifice, denialism, and archaeological evidence.
• [28:43] – Onset of cartel brutality and the rise of occult violence.
• [33:21] – Cartel influence in local and national Mexican politics.
• [52:18] – Cartel recruitment and propaganda on TikTok.
• [61:31] – Industrial-scale body disposal; reality of Mexico’s “disappeared.”
• [99:54] – Operation Fast and Furious, and direct U.S. responsibility for cartel firepower.
• [125:38] – Fentanyl’s rise and the economic drivers behind it.
• [140:10] – Human and child trafficking along the border.
• [143:41] – Immigration absurdities and the human cost of policy swings.
• [181:36] – Ed and Joe’s closing: The only way forward is US-Mexico cooperation.

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Tone and Language

• The discussion is candid, intense, and at times darkly humorous. Ed's delivery is matter-of-fact and pragmatic, mixing street wisdom with systemic critique. Joe uses incredulity, comic relief, and straightforward questions to ground and clarify the conversation for listeners.

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Summary

Ed Calderon's return to the JRE delivers a devastating, wide-ranging diagnosis of Mexico’s criminal insurgency, its deep roots in both pre-Columbian and colonial violence, and its present entanglement with politics, economics, and culture on both sides of the border. The episode connects ancient history to contemporary brutality, exposes the logistical and psychological machinery of modern cartels, and reveals the unintended consequences of U.S. policy—often complicit, sometimes naive, usually ineffective. Both speakers ultimately agree that militarized solutions and blame games are dead ends—only binational cooperation and deeper cultural understanding offer hope.

Transcript

[Ed]

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Our bell was the best.

[Joe Rogan]

Driving home from the Comedy Store at like one o' clock in the morning, hearing some dude claimed he was a time traveler.

[Ed]

Remember when he. There was a dude that claimed to work at Area 51 and then it cut out. The radio show cut out.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that was a good one. Art was the man.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That's why we put that photo up there. Because he was, you know, a lot of the subjects that we covered, he was the original guy talking about these things on the radio.

[Ed]

Yeah. And the fact that he just kept the open lines. If you're a time travel. If you're a time travel, just call, call in and tell us what's going to happen in the future.

[Joe Rogan]

People that were kidnapped by Bigfoot, like, no matter what. Art was like, interesting. Tell me more.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah. Like, he was open to just talking to anyone. It was great.

[Joe Rogan]

Never called.

[Ed]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

So, Ed, the last time I saw you, you gave me an Aztec death whistle and Brian Callan blew it on the air and it caused the. The pandemic.

[Ed]

He was very good at it. Out of nowhere, he just like grabbed.

[Joe Rogan]

It and we have another one.

[Ed]

Oh, no, don't look at this.

[Joe Rogan]

Probably that's Luke Caverns gave us this one.

[Ed]

Yeah, that's a good one, right? That is a beautiful one. Probably. Let's not repeat it again.

[Joe Rogan]

I'm not blowing it. I don't know if it's true or not true, but it's an odd coincidence. It definitely.

[Ed]

It definitely was. I got a lot of messages about it. Like, hey, this was kind of coincidentally at the start of this pandemic that could. Don't put this on me.

[Joe Rogan]

Listen, man, people have been blowing them whistles all over the world.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

There's a bunch of those whistles out there. There's no way.

[Ed]

There's no way. No.

[Joe Rogan]

The only thing is, I don't think anybody ever blew one on a podcast that was seen by millions of people.

[Ed]

I mean, you were directly responsible for those to become this viral popular thing. No, like, few people knew about them, but they became this international thing now. Like, everybody talks about death whistles now because of it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, well, I don't know. They are weird. The sound is creepy.

[Ed]

Yeah. You know, definitely weird. Ghostly.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. If you heard dudes in the distance making that noise and you knew that people were after you and you heard that, you'd be like, oh, yeah.

[Ed]

I mean, it keeps. It definitely keeps. You up at night, seeing people do pranks with them, just screaming them at randomly in the middle of the night in the street, you know, people running around.

[Joe Rogan]

What is the origin of that? Like Aztec death whistles. Like, when did they start using them? Does anybody know?

[Ed]

People keep finding them. I mean, Aztec is a modern word for Mexica, which were a bunch of tribes that moved from northern, you know, Northern America down there. And they brought with them a lot of customs, but I think those were around before them. You know, a lot of them emulated animals. So a lot of it was like shamanistic people trying to in view themselves with the spirit of an animal. So a lot of them, you know, have jaguar sounds coming out. But some of the ones that, with the scream, apparently they're more about the screeching owls that live down there. Oh, but they've been like. People told me native people down there have told me that they were very much specifically kind of utilized for psychological effect just to. With people. Yeah. Make them not sleep. During these flower wars that were they. They would have. With the. I think the classical Tekkens, they had this agreement where they would go and try and capture people to bring back to the pyramid to sacrifice. And the way they would. They would, you know, tire them is to, you know, blow those at night where they were encamped or were the. Or the places where they were about to attack. So, you know, lose sleep with those, like a few hundred of those. Just.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, people can be really devious.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

When they know how to mess with your head.

[Ed]

Yeah. You know, the Mexica, meaning people glorify. A lot of people from Mexico, everybody's Aztec. You're probably not Aztec. You're probably some other tribe that didn't lose that initial conquest.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, a lot of badass dudes have like Aztec tattoos on their back and stuff like that.

[Ed]

But that's the losing side, though. The, the. The Spanish came and allied themselves with everybody that hated the Aztecs, including like the Tlascaltecans, who were apparently like badasses. They. The Aztecs used to send tax collectors out to them, and apparently one of them didn't come back, according to one story. And the soldiers came over like, hey, where's our tax collector? Let's feed you before you. Before we talk about anything. So they fed them pozole and at the end of the meal they were like, well, you can take your people back with you. Where are they? You just ate them. They were in the stew. And those are the guys that the Spanish allied with. Fight against the Mexica Jesus.

[Joe Rogan]

The history of Mexico is so strange. I mean, it's so long and storied and there's so many chapters of it that are very confusing because like where the Mayans go, like the, when they found the Aztec pyramids, people weren't even living in them. When the, the people that eventually wound up living in them, it's. They found them.

[Ed]

The Teotihuacan, which they call, it's basically the City of the Gods is what the Aztecs call them because they didn't, it was abandoned when they went through, which is nuts. Yeah, they were, the Aztecs in essence were violent immigrants coming from the north into, into the south, which is pretty interesting foresight, you know. But yeah, the city was abandoned completely. And when they passed through, it was City of the Gods they call the Pyramid of the sun and the Moon. But realistically, nobody knows what those pyramids are for. And when they made their way into the valley of Mexico, there were already a bunch of tribes already there and peoples, older peoples. So Mexico has an ancient history. People that want to assume that the Aztecs are ancient history don't know anything about history. They're pretty new on the, on the scene as far as history when it comes to Mexico, which is really crazy. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And it's really crazy that most modern people don't even, I mean especially in America don't even understand that the reason why everybody speaks Spanish is because of the Spaniards. It's not that the Mexican native language was Spanish.

[Ed]

No, no.

[Joe Rogan]

It was the language they assumed once they were conquered. And there's a bunch of lost languages.

[Ed]

Yeah. Something interesting happened with them. And Hernan Cortez and the Conquista and the Spanish are all perfect villains in history, I guess people. It's perfect, man. If you kind of look at it from the outside perspective, colonial invasion. But when you look at it, I mean, they were just getting off their own conquest. They were conquested by the Moors, so they were getting free from that. So they were already mixed in there. They're brown people on that boat. It's not blonde haired white people coming on that boat. There's already brown people on that boat coming. Hernan Cortes is very much painted as a villain in this story. But when you kind of look at the ways that the conquest took place in Mexico versus other parts of the world, there was a lot of brutality, there's a lot of ignorance, a lot of religious nonsense on both sides because the Aztecs also did a lot of horrible things. But in the End. I think Mexico went around the route of mestizaje. We decided to mix like the Spanish decided to take wives among the natives. They decided to give honorary titles to the people that helped fight the Aztecs to help with the conquest of what was in Mexico was just this valley at that time. And it gave birth to this culture, this mixed culture that very much hates parts of itself, which is a weird part of Mexican culture, because you ask anybody in Mexico, a lot of people, I went to Mexican school, so I got a lot of this education of how the evil Spanish came in and wiped out all of the natives, you know, or most of the natives, when in reality, you know, a lot of. A lot of us in Mexico have mixed blood. Most of us have mixed both. There's a lot of Spanish blood in us. So we were very much taught to hate ourselves in a way. And I think that that has something to do with a lot of the psychology and the culture in Mexico. There's a whole part of our history in ourselves that we hate. But it's essential. Like we say, like the president of Mexico, the past president, the current president, are all about sending the king of Spain letters to have him apologize for the conquista. And it's funny, like, some of the bloggers from Spain will respond, like, you're asking that in Spanish. Yeah, right.

[Joe Rogan]

And you're probably an ancestor of those very people. So it's kind of you more than us.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because we didn't even go over there. We're still here.

[Ed]

Yes, yes, well, right. And people ask where the Mayas went. They're there. You go down there, they look exactly like the paintings. If you've ever been to the Anthropo Anthropological Museum in Mexico, which I highly ask people to go and visit, it's beautiful. They have a whole Mayan exhibit there. And it's like, startling how their culture was so advanced and so detailed, so detailed, orientated, and they, you know, the whole feeling of them just being gone or like disappearing as a mystery. But then you go down there and you see these people there.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Ed]

A lot of strong backs, a lot of work ethic. You know, there's no doubt, there's no.

[Joe Rogan]

Doubt there was a lot of that. But there was also a lot of like incredibly sophisticated engineering.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like this isn't just like a one time project. You got it right the first time. Like how were you guys so good at, like when you look at the, the Chichen Itza pyramids where you can't walk up them anymore unfortunately. But.

[Ed]

But you'll get lynched.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, you get in big trouble. But when I was there back in the day, you could climb up them. This is like I guess early 2000 and you were, you were allowed to walk up that. But they'll you up now there just been videos of people doing things and then.

[Ed]

Yeah, the locals, they'll get lynched in the bottom if, if you manage to climb that thing right now. Yeah, there's a, there's a watch guy all the way on the top and a bunch of dogs always on. That's a weird thing about old pyramids. I don't know why dogs like hanging out up there.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh really?

[Ed]

Yeah, like the, the one in, in, in the sun pyramid in Mexico, there's always dogs on top of it. And this one. Oh, there's also always dogs on top. Feral dogs or domestic wild dogs just hang out.

[Joe Rogan]

But I mean when you see these things like give us some of the images of. When you see some of these, there's some dogs. When you see some of these pyramids like that, like that's so different. I mean that is so sophisticated. It's so bizarre.

[Ed]

Yeah, we had a really good guide there.

[Joe Rogan]

When I went and the guide was showing us this one area where they would take whatever psychedelic plants they had like some ceremonial room where they would take psychedelic plants. And he was telling me that it's not totally understood what they were doing or why they were doing, but it is widely accepted that some of what they were into had to do with psychedelic rituals. And he thinks that had a lot to do with why they were able to make these kind of insanely complex structures.

[Ed]

And a weird thing that I've also kind of like realized after just talking to people and going down there and kind of seeing some of the artifacts. A lot of the psychedelics that they actually took were self harm and mutilation, bloodletting type type activities. Really? Yeah. A lot of the Aztec priests, you see the pictures of them pulling a cord with thorns through their private parts trying to, trying to, trying to invoke in them these, I don't know, visions.

[Joe Rogan]

So just being in such extreme pain and such a bizarre state of mind that you transcend.

[Ed]

Yeah. Which is which, which matched up perfectly with some of the Catholic worldviews when they arrived. When you look at a lot of the cultures specifically in Mexico, you see that they met kind of like a perfect culture. Like they matched in a lot of.

[Joe Rogan]

Ways when The Catholics arrived.

[Ed]

Yeah. The Mexicans were venerating a mother goddess at a grotto area in Mexico. That's where the basilica is. Yeah. These. Some of the rituals. Oh, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What's going on? They're calling these.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

But they're spine Bus, Porky, Spine something.

[Ed]

Spine. Yeah, yeah. They're coming out of that area. And there's a. Oh, that's wrapped around his dick.

[Joe Rogan]

It looks like it's pretty close.

[Ed]

A lot of people want to go. A lot of people want to go take ayahuasca down there, but I don't see a lot of this probably coming back or maybe. I don't know. But that. That was. That's a big part of what they also did, you know, a lot of bloodletting, pain.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot of human sacrifice, too.

[Ed]

Yes. Which they. Which a lot of people in Mexico are now. Oh, it's a big exaggeration. It's like a propaganda denial. And then you go there and there's like stone skull piles commemorating whatever war and depictions of them. And Cody sees that they themselves made of just getting sacrifice people on top of pyramids, pulling out their hearts.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that was that one statue that's on top of the pyramid that's like a bench. They were explaining to me that that's where they would sacrifice people.

[Ed]

I mean, it makes sense even the way that in the art it's depicted. You can't fake that. Most people would think you'd go through the rib cage to get at the heart, but now they go through the diaphragm right down here. So that's why there's a lot of depictions of some of these gods, like Mikantl C. Which is the lord of the underworld in the Aztecs. Sometimes it's depicted in. With a skeletal form with its hands spread out like this, and you'll see a split diaphragm on the bottom coming out underneath its rib cage as a signifier that, you know, that's.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, they go up to grab the heart. That's where they go up show that sculpture. That sculpture. That flat bench sculpture that is like a man. It looks like he's sitting on his hands and knees, but with his, you know, torso faced upward. That one. Yeah, yeah. That was the one they were explaining to me.

[Ed]

And. And again, I. I imagine that a lot of these things, I mean, you have to interpret because there's. There are things out there that I. I don't understand, but I know blood was very essential, and it was an essential thing for these cultures. It's one of the most powerful offerings you can make. And a lot of the Catholic side of things that came into the country, that came into this area just intermingled perfectly. You know, they also. They were also talking about a God that.

[Joe Rogan]

Those skulls in the corner right next to your curser, Jimmy, in the middle there.

[Ed]

Yeah. Where the capital of Mexico is right now, there's a big cathedral behind it. There's the Templo Mayor, the major temple of the Aztec Empire. And there's a lot of those types of symbologies around, just skulls, because that's where they would have the Zen pantli, I think it was called. Sorry, if I butchered the word. They would have these racks of skulls on top of the pyramids, on top of their central pyramid, kind of displaying all of the people that had gone, you know, off it.

[Joe Rogan]

And what was the story? Was it the completion of Tenochtitlan or one of the Aztec pyramids where they sacrificed 80,000 slaves over, like, whoever they had.

[Ed]

I've heard numbers of 50,000. I have no idea how you would kind of figure out those numbers.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Ed]

But you do get accounts of some of the Spanish conquistadors describing the smell that some of these pyramids had, which, if you ever been to a kill house, like. Like a slaughterhouse. Yeah, this. This.

[Joe Rogan]

This dark smell.

[Ed]

Yeah. It's like. It's an uncanny. And there's something about human tallow that I've also smelled and. And blood that is very distinct. I mean. Yeah, we're monkeys, and we probably have some genetic memory of what that smell is, and it makes us want to run, I guess. And they describe the smell on some of these pyramids when they. When they. When they finally got into the city. The city, don't get me wrong, the Aztec Empire, like, these Spanish peasants coming off that boat were, like, awestruck of when they saw this city.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Like, it had water coming into it. Super sisters complex. Just this. This structure and culture that was un uncontested there. So when they. When they got there, they're looking and.

[Joe Rogan]

Completely different than anything European.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So they came over here and they're like, what is going on in this part of the world?

[Ed]

Yeah. What.

[Joe Rogan]

What are you guys doing?

[Ed]

Yeah. How do you have so much gold? Well, there was some gold. I mean, you hear these stories about the city of gold and stuff like that. There was gold there, but they valued other things. That wasn't their main central thing. There was a kind of puzzle about why they were so interested in some of the golden Regalia they had. But when the conquest kind of like, finally kind of subsided and the parties that lost were all being divided up, because that's what happened. The lords within the same culture became allies of the allies of the invading forces. And when they won, they were like, you're now the title owner or the leader of this area. And here's the royal decree.

[Joe Rogan]

What is this, Jamie?

[Ed]

Oh, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Sacrificial stone.

[Ed]

Yeah, that's. That's in the.

[Joe Rogan]

That's in the 60,000 human sacrifice. Holy God.

[Ed]

They can see where the blood was channeled to drip down from that. I think. I think. I think this is. I'm not sure if this is the one. But there was one stone where they would tie somebody onto the stone and he would fight several people until he finally died. It's like a. I don't know, it's like a sacrifice above, like a fighting sacrifice. It was a different type of sacrifice they did.

[Joe Rogan]

Human intelligence applied to cruelty is very bizarre. It's very bizarre when you see.

[Ed]

Yeah, torture.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, torture. Just that kind of stuff. Just the. What people would do for just pure entertainment or ritual or to.

[Ed]

To.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, because everyone's afraid to die. So you just show death in the worst form, in the most cruel and uncaring sacrificial form in front of everybody, children cutting people's hearts out while they're still alive. It just keeps everybody on.

[Ed]

It's a spectacle.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. This is the part of the show where I talk about AG1, which I've done for years, and usually I like to talk about routine. And don't get me wrong, because routine is super important. And AG1 is exactly the kind of daily, easy routine that can help you feel healthy and help you get the nutrients that your body needs. But even if you love a routine, isn't it nice to switch it up a little? Well, here we go. After 15 years of the original, AG1 has introduced three new flavors, Tropical berry and citrus. It's still daily, it's still a routine, but it's no longer one flavor fits all. And honestly, the best part is that's the only thing that's changed besides new flavors. We're talking about the same science, the same 75 plus ingredients, and the same exact benefits. I partnered with AG1 for so long because they're committed to constantly improving. And now that includes offering three new flavors. Subscribe today and choose tropical citrus berry or the classic original variety. If you use my link, you'll also get a free bottle of AG D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit and five AG1 Tropical Travel Packs with your first subscription. Just go to drink ag1.com Joe Rogan or head to the link in the description to get started with AG1 and try the new flavors yourself. That's drink ag1.com Joe Rogan it's a spectacle, and I'm sure it keeps. Yeah, there they go. Sacrificing people and then throwing their bodies off the side.

[Ed]

Yeah, people keep denying that that actually happened, but it's. We, like. I think it's the same phenomenon you get in the US where all of Native Americans were, like, peaceful and it was like utopia before. Before they came in and.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, but. Well, that's one that really bothers people when they want this binary sort of analysis of North America. You know, the white people are bad and evil, which for sure they were. And they came over here and there's this good people that were just living off the land in harmony. Like, not really. In fact, they were killing each other.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Not only that, that was their favorite thing to do where we are right now, the Comanches, all those did was eat meat. They didn't have any artwork. They didn't have anything other than bows and arrows. That's all they made. They made teepees, they made bows and arrows. And they. Everybody up. And their favorite thing was to go to nearby tribes and kill everybody. Yeah, that was their fun time. They love to. And they would torture people in the most horrific ways in Empire the Summer Moon, which is an amazing book on the Comanche from right in this spot. And they would take people that they captured. They would cut their arms and legs off while they're alive. So they would hold them down immediately, hack their arms and legs off, and then throw them on a bonfire to watch them wiggle. Yo, like, you gotta be.

[Ed]

That's dark. Yeah, that's. That's bloodlust. I don't know what that is. I mean, if. Let's say. Let's say they did that in front of the enemy. The enemy that they just conquered.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Well, they would make. They would keep one guy alive to watch and let him go. Yeah, go tell everybody.

[Ed]

Psychological operations.

[Joe Rogan]

Everybody else gets butchered. One guy that let go, you go tell everybody. No, we're out here.

[Ed]

No, no. And also, like, if you think about it, some of the horrors that are still happening down south. Yeah, we. You sent me this message last night. Of these six or seven, I'll send.

[Joe Rogan]

It to Jamie because it's pretty crazy how often this stuff happens down in Mexico and how little of it we ever hear about it. We, we don't really hear too much about these insane mass murders that take place down there.

[Ed]

There was a, there was a beheading in, in, down, down in Mexico and it was, it's a, it's a safe or not a historically safe part of Mexico that, where this type of stuff doesn't happen that much. But things are changing rapidly down there. It's evolving quickly. The, you know, and the, the, the culture that we have down there. I, the, I, I don't know. Like I, I, I do believe that there's some sort of genetic memory.

[Joe Rogan]

I bet there is, it makes sense. I think there's genetic memory. Six severed head founds on the side of the road. The chilling message. One of Mexico's safest regions. And what part of Mexico is this?

[Ed]

I think this is Puebla region, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I mean it's a beautiful place. If you go to Puebla, visit Pueblo guys, it's beautiful.

[Joe Rogan]

But this is, don't be there at the wrong time.

[Ed]

Just don't work for the cartels, I guess the, the act. So this is an interesting thing that I heard long ago from somebody. One of the first jobs I did was cut somebody off a bridge. And one of the older guys that was with me, I was like horrified by what. But by this kid, you know, 16, 17 year old kid told me oh, they're being kind that I'm like what's kind about leaving somebody hanging from a bridge naked? His family's gonna get something to bury at least. So it dawned on me that that was an act of kindness. So having somebody beheaded is even so normal. It's even crueler.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Because now nobody, they have no body to bury. Yeah. And there's a lot of coffins with just the head or not even that in Mexico buried in the ground.

[Joe Rogan]

But just think of how insane it has to be to where hanging someone from a bridge is an act of kindness because at least you could find the body.

[Ed]

It, it is the evolution of what is considered normal in Mexico. People will get shot by the dozens. People will get displayed in this horrific. And people will just go back to work. It is, that's every day. And that's the scary part of it. I think for most of the people that live down there is how normalized it has become. There's not, it's not an abnormal thing to hear some of these things.

[Joe Rogan]

And this is not in terms of America, our understanding of Mexico and cartel culture. This is not something that was ever talked about when I was in high school. It was never talked about when I was a young man. It never came up. It wasn't a thing in the news. Cartel violence was not.

[Ed]

I think, I think the first time people start getting like an inkling of this was in the 90s when the phenomenon of this guy, Adolfo Constanzo happened. This was on the border between Texas and Juarez area. He was a. They called him Narco Satanico, the Satanist narc.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh boy.

[Ed]

He was a high level practitioner of something called Palo and Santeria. And he would do rituals for people like in cartels. And he started his own cartel because he was pretty successful at social engineering and, and folk magic basically is what he was doing. And at some point he started believing in his power and he instructed some of the members of his gang to abduct an American because he needed a brain for his cauldron where he would do some of these rituals. And I think that's the first time Americans got a little like a, like a, like a small glimpse of the underground brutality monster, religious occultism and just torture and murder that has been going on down there for many years. But it has gotten really bad in the past 20, 30 years.

[Joe Rogan]

So this has always been going on.

[Ed]

In, in a lot of ways. Yes, brutality in Mexico has, has been going on for a while, but cartel.

[Joe Rogan]

Brutality, like when, when did the cartels really start gaining power?

[Ed]

I think the 70s, 70s and 80s is when they. We start seeing the formation of the first large organizations and federations that are working to produce and, or to traffic substances through Mexico up into the United States.

[Joe Rogan]

Was it originally cocaine, marijuana?

[Ed]

I think originally heroin actually was at the start or the initiation of a lot of this stuff.

[Joe Rogan]

And where were they getting the heroin?

[Ed]

They were, they were planting, they were planting poppy in the Sierra for the war effort apparently for the Americans because they were, they, they were running out of shortage of morphine. So they need to place the planet. And that's one of the places where they kind of started, like, oh, you can grow this here. And people start getting ideas.

[Joe Rogan]

This is the Vietnam War.

[Ed]

Yeah. Around. Yeah, that's a Vietnam, World War II era. That, that's when you start seeing the initiation of like, people planting certain things.

[Joe Rogan]

40S, 50s, 60s, 50s.

[Ed]

Yeah. Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it's like Vietnam itself is connected to heroin.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because that, that's the dirty secret about why we were interested in that whole area of Vietnam. And there was a trafficking area.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah. The Golden Tribe.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And coincidentally a lot of people Got insanely rich. Somehow or another connected to that. But we had to be over there to stop communism or something.

[Ed]

And it's an interesting point you bring up of Vietnam because it has something to do or elements of it remind you of Mexico. It is. Mexico has been a place that has been ruled over by a single party for 80 years. If. If that the pri and then it went through its democratic period and now we have other parties coming into play. And now you have a ruling party all over Mexico called Morena, who is, you know, this is the party of the Everso Novalazos. That's how they started, you know, hugs not bullets against the cartel's policy, which allowed them to grow and also super effective.

[Joe Rogan]

Hugs not bullets.

[Ed]

But this is coming off a. Mexico.

[Joe Rogan]

Has liberals too, I guess.

[Ed]

Yes, we do. Mexico's three. Mexico's three things. Southern Mexico, that's. That's rural Mexico, Central Mexico. That's where all the.

[Joe Rogan]

All.

[Ed]

All the woke comes from. The capital of Mexico. That's where the city. That's where all the gender pronouns get issued into law. That's where violence against women specifically and feminic side is now a new thing cataloged under the law. You can kill a dude, you're smiling, but if you kill a woman, that's feminic side, which is way worse. So it's. That's where a lot of that, A lot of that policy comes from. And then northern Mexico, where I'm from, that's where, I guess, I don't know, conservative. That's where all the factories are. That's where all the people, the hard work, hard working people and people that kind of like go the other side of the politics that are woke. That used to be the case, but now Morena is ruling all over the country and a lot of the policies they're bringing with them are to the left. Mexico was very tired from the drug war that had been going on for 20 years that I was a part of for 12 of those years. They saw Felipe Calderon bring the military into this fight to fight the cartels and just kicking a giant beehive. He had. Realistically, he really didn't have a clue what he was about to kind of kick off. He had the idea that if you just put the military out, you know, which are not corrupted. Well, he thought they were not corrupted. And you militarized a lot of the policing going on around it. You can eliminate all these cartel members, like, oh, just this guy's gone, this guy's gone. And we're gonna just now secure this area and control. But it's been just basically gremlins. You know, one gremlin will turn into four or five. You cut one head off and it's hydra. Just a bunch of heads come out now. So Mexico has been going through that for a while. And then this president comes in, Manuel Lopez Obrador, with this plan, like, we'll just leave them alone and they'll stop. Violence will stop because we'll stop fighting them. How'd that work? He has one of the most violent presidencies in history. His main crit. He criticizes Calderon, who started this drug war, over his handling of it. He outmatches him from death during his administration. What we saw in his administration was the politicalization. And they were already in politics, but now they're really overt about it. Now. Cartels are like, they have their own candidates running for office. The mayor of a city and the police chief of the city, they're all cartel members. And the police force, they're all cartel members in parts of Mexico. Oh, boy. All of the political killings that happen in Mexico don't happen because there's a bunch of John F. Kennedys out there that are trying to change things, right? It's because that cartel is sponsoring that candidate, and this cartel is found in that candidate. So I don't want your candidate to win, so I'm going to go shoot them.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, there was some insane amount of murders during the last election, wasn't it? Like 30 plus murders. See if you can find out how many murders there was.

[Ed]

That sounds about. So. It sounds about right. It is. Again, these criminal organizations have politicized. They figured out that, you know, how can we operate in this region without having too much issues, right? Let's put. Let's make the mayor our guy and let's elect the governor.

[Joe Rogan]

So we like to think that we're innocent over here, but how much different is it with what we do with pharmaceutical drug companies sponsoring people? Because they pay for people's campaigns, and those people get in with a specific understanding of what kind of laws you need to push through, what kind of mandates you need to make in terms of the, you know, mandating the use of certain medications.

[Ed]

It. It's a different type of corruption. It's different, but it's, it's, it's. It's still drugs.

[Joe Rogan]

Still drugs, yeah. Up to 60, 60 politicians. In the 2024 general and local elections, 60 politicians were assassinated during pre campaign and campaign periods. Fucking yo. Imagine if that was going on in America. Marjorie Taylor Greene's get whacked AOCs get whacked. Like that would be crazy. This episode is brought to you by Visible. I want to let you in on something your current wireless carrier does not want you to know about Visible. Because Visible is the ultimate wireless hack. No confusing plans with surprise fees, no nonsense, just fast speeds, great coverage without the premium cost. With Visible, you get one line wireless with unlimited data powered by Verizon's network for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Seriously, $25 a month flat. What you see is what you pay. No hidden fees on top of that. Ready to see? Join now and unlock unlimited data for just $25 a month on the Visible plan. Don't think wireless can be so transparent. So Visible. Well, now you know. Switch today at visible.com/rogan terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details.

[Ed]

And it is a clear sign that whatever division people had in their heads about the cartels or this organization here, and they're. They don't. They're not openly at least involved in any of this political stuff. And no, all that shit's gone. Something happened. Something happened last year. The arrest of one of the biggest cartel heads in history from Mexico, El Mayo Sambada. He was arrested in Texas. He flew into a private air. They flew him into a private airfield under pretty interesting circumstances. And then handed hand. He handed himself over to authorities. He was arrested there. I mean, that kicked off a lot of violence in Mexico.

[Joe Rogan]

Why was he willing to fly in?

[Ed]

So there's different stories around that. He's told his own story. He's actually talked about this many times openly with his drivers and stuff like that are driving around. So he just speaks about it. He's. He's older now. He was a ghost. This is El Mayo Sambada was the legitimate leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. The US would say that it was Chapo Guzman. Not really. The Sinaloa Cartel was a federation. And a lot of the bigger, older parts of that cartel were kind of headed up by this figure, El Mayo Zambada, who in 50 years was never arrested, never grabbed, never caught. You would hear about them about him vaguely in certain circles, but everybody knew that guy is the head of the Sinaloa Cartel or he's the bigger guy in that organization, which is a federation of groups. Last time I was here, it was after the Culiacanazo, the incident where they rescued Ovidio, one of El Chapo's sons, two years ago. They finally caught up to him, right the army did this operation. Same thing happened. All the cartels burned the city, blocked roads and stuff like that. A lot of Special Operations soldiers died in his arrest, a few of them. And he was finally arrested and extradited to the United States. Conversations probably happened within the United States with Ovidio when he was finally in U.S. custody. And El Chapo Guzman is in a hole and he's not going to get it out of the hole. His sons probably figured out that if they don't want to get into a hole too, they probably need to cut a deal. And I think. And the theory is that that deal probably included handing over the head of the Sinaloa cartel, Mayo Zambala.

[Joe Rogan]

Sought by US Law enforcement for more than two decades. He was taken into custody after arriving at a private plane at Texas airport with Guzman son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez. Guzman Lopez has pleaded not guilty to federal. Not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges. In Chicago, his brother, a video. Guzman Lopez pleaded guilty last month. Zambara said that he was kidnapped in Mexico and hauled to the US by Guzman Lopez, whose lawyer denies those claims.

[Ed]

So this is the, the, the, the. The shady stuff that happened. El Mayo gets. Gets brought into a meeting in, in Sinaloa by, by. By Joaquin, who is. He is not one of the, he's not really into the drug. He's not one of the powerful brothers of the, the Chapa Guzman brothers that are in the drug trade. He's kind of like wanting out, basically. So at some point he cuts a deal and in this deal he's gonna. I'm gonna get this guy on a plane and I'm gonna fly him over, you know, and we're gonna make a deal. That's the story. He has him, he has El Mayo come into a meeting between the governor of Sinaloa, which is known publicly. People know this. The governor of Sinalo was going to be in the meeting with El Mayo, Zimbabwe head of Sinaloa cartel, who is a member of Morena, the current ruling party all over the country. Also no investigation. Also, he's still in power, which is shady as between him and a man named Gwen, who was, I think he was the director of the university there. They had some sort of political dispute and am. I was being brought into, I don't know, negotiate or like influence that, which tells you a lot about how the cartels and politics and the universities are tied. Right at that meeting, Nemesio, who is a friend of El Mayo, the guy who's the director of the university, gets killed. They shoot him there's a video published of a gas station shootout where supposedly this man who was the director of the university gets killed. But it's made up by the state prosecutor. You know, they're trying. They're trying to make this shit go away. Meanwhile, all this stuff starts unraveling. Oh, they abducted Omayo at that meeting and that's why they killed this guy. We don't know, or at least I don't know if there's any specific confirmation that the governor of Sinalong was there. But he said he went to the U.S. he was in the U.S. he wasn't there. But there's no travel logs of him being in the U.S. it's a. It's a shit show. They somehow overtake his bodyguards, El Mayo's bodyguards. They're gone. Nobody knows where they went. Probably dead somewhere. Got El Mayo on a plane and flew him into Texas. Homeland Security was apparently involved. FBI says that they may have been involved, but I was taught when last time I was here, I was talking about at some point we're going to see either a direct US intervention or military action in Mexico that's going to kick off things. And I think that was it. After that happened, El Chapo Guzman's sons cut deals. Seventeen members of the Guzman family were secretly flown to Tijuana and crossed the border with suitcases and were put into FBI vans and suitcases. Yeah, they rescued their family members and they took them out of the country. So they're in the US Somewhere under.

[Joe Rogan]

Some kind of protective custody.

[Ed]

Yeah, of course. And if you want to talk about people that know everything, like all the ins and outs, El Mayo Sambala is one. He's the guy, he knows.

[Joe Rogan]

Where is he being detained?

[Ed]

I think he's in New York, and I think he just declared himself guilty. And he's probably going to cut a deal. He's older, he's diabetic. He's not going to spend life in prison. El Chapo Guzman went to, which is wild.

[Joe Rogan]

We think about how long he was running shit and how many people died and how many drugs got.

[Ed]

He learned his tradecraft from. He learned his tradecraft in LA. Here it is.

[Joe Rogan]

It's August 25th, so it's soon. A Brooklyn federal judge on Monday, scheduled August 25th. Change of plea hearing for Zambada, longtime leader of Mexico Sinaloa cartel development comes two weeks after federal prosecutors said they wouldn't seek the death penalty against him.

[Ed]

There's a deal there.

[Joe Rogan]

They're gonna put him in the same prison as Ghislaine Maxwell.

[Ed]

I don't see him jogging, but, yeah, probably doing yoga. This, this. There's a deal coming. And I. There's a. There's this sense in the US that, you know, Trump came into power and declared these organizations terrorist organizations. And there was an ex. There was a expectation that that meant gloves off and you're going to see military action pretty soon. But what have we seen has been a very calculated surgical operation, it looks like. I don't know. I mean, you see, they took out the head of the Sinaloa cartel, and Sinaloa has been on fire ever since. It is open warfare between the last remaining sons of El Chapo Guzman and the sons of Omayo, who are now.

[Joe Rogan]

I've seen video. It's bananas. It is a war zone on the streets. See if you can find some of that Sinaloa video, Jamie, because it is.

[Ed]

Shocking when, when, when, when that. When. When this. When this war kicked off between these two factions in Sinaloa. Schools closed. You know, people didn't want to go out because their cars were going to get jacked to get burned and put in the middle of the street. Companies closed. All of the environment around these criminal organizations that they built up. I mean, these were criminal organizations that had Louis Vuitton stores and click on, you know, and really. And an exotic car, exotic cars being sold and in store in these dealerships and all of the bands that would play live music at their places and all these sea. Exotic seafood places. All these places just. And how are they going to sustain themselves now? This economy started crashing and the Mexican government comes out. The president. The president. The current president, Shane Bomb comes out and she blames this state being on fire. The U.S. like, the U.S. came in here and abducted El Mayo Zambada, a Mexican national. And they charge Joaquin Guzman, who was involved in the operation to pick up El Mayo. They charged him with high treason in Mexico for abducting Elmo somebody and putting him in the US which is high treason. He's charged with high treason.

[Joe Rogan]

So if abducting a drug lord.

[Ed]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Ed]

Which is like. I don't know, like I'm doing the math on all that.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Ed]

But you have this. You have this situation now where she's blaming the US for basically causing this stability.

[Joe Rogan]

Give me some. Some volume on this, cuz.

[Ed]

Oh, this is the. This is. This is the members of O's family shooting up all the luxury houses of those chapitos.

[Joe Rogan]

Jeez, I hope these guys are using ear protection.

[Ed]

No, they're not. We'll Talk about that in a bit.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, you could probably sneak up on all those.

[Ed]

They're probably all deaf, but they're basically shooting up all the luxury apartments that they know are owned by the Chapos in that area. They, they love a hundred round drum magazines in Mexico for some reason.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a 50 cal with no hearing protection.

[Ed]

Why you don't need it.

[Joe Rogan]

How many of those guys are deaf?

[Ed]

Oh, a lot of them have a severe hearing loss. And I recently went to Jalisco with a friend of mine who's a. He has a YouTube channel called the Connect. Johnny Mitchell. He talks to drug dealers and like people in that life. There's a friend of mine in Mexico and who's. He's basically the Mexican Shawn Ryan agafe423 is his handle and he interviews like cartel members and people from that life.

[Joe Rogan]

And do they wear masks?

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked to a kid that was six months out of working with the. What is currently. I think priority number one should be priority number one for the U.S. the new generation cartel. This militarized cartel out of Jalisco that has been with this war going on between the Sinalo factions. I mean it's Christmas for them. So when, when, when we went down there, he introduced us to this kid who was freshly off, basically. He, he was involved in tank warfare on the borders between Jalisco and Zacatecas against Los Mayos. Who you see there firing at those houses. Tanks, they, they're making their own tanks. If you get your truck stolen up here and probably gets driven to Mexico, they're gonna make a tank out of it probably. They're making these, these artisanally made tanks basically. Mostly what they are. Yeah, that's a pretty old one. I think that's. That a period. That's cool though. That looks like a fucking Mad Max vehicle. But what they do is they make these, these tanks and his job was to be in the back of one of these with a 50 cal rifle. So what they do is you'll, you'll get, you'll get into a dirt road and they'll put their trucks like this with their backs turned. And I was like, why don't you just ram with the front? The engine will go out. You have to ram with the back of the truck. So they'll just go into like this destruction derby in the hills and shoot at each other until there's a clear winner is what they did. They do basically. And their main weapons are 50 caliber rifles. So they'll be in the back of the truck. And they're like, now, now, now. And they'll just. Somebody's on radio inside the cabin trying to call out what's going on? And they'll pop out and start.

[Joe Rogan]

How come no one's figured out Ear protection.

[Ed]

They put bullets in their ears. I've seen, I've seen that. They put like plastic things in their ears. But realistically, they don't get. And they're expendable. That's why they don't give. That's why there's no earrings.

[Joe Rogan]

You get like a pair of Walker's game ears on Amazon. It's not that expensive.

[Ed]

No, none of that is down there. This kid walked us through how he was all the way from his recruitment, through his training, through this tank warfare thing that they sent him on, and now into his life where he's like, why I laughed about your question about hearing protection is I was the first person that showed him what tinnitus was and what hearing loss was because he kept like, what did you say? It's like, hey, dude, do you have hearing loss? Like, no, like, I just, you know, like, dude, you have severe hearing loss from what you went through. This is. Yeah, probably.

[Joe Rogan]

These tanks going after each other.

[Ed]

Yeah, this is. You'll see this in different. I mean, they're fighting over drug routes basically and territory.

[Joe Rogan]

And they're so close to each other.

[Ed]

It's.

[Joe Rogan]

It's 50 caliber at like 10 foot distance.

[Ed]

And the. The drones are now involved in this as well because why not?

[Joe Rogan]

Of course.

[Ed]

So the. And the way he was recruited is pretty interesting. He was an Uber driver. This kid. Again, you will look at this kid if you found him somewhere. Just normal kid. He's 20, 23 right now, I think, but looks like a kid Uber driver crashes into somebody, accident. Doesn't have enough money to pay the extra for the insurance. So he's like, God, what am I gonna do? You know, Married, newly married. What am I gonna do? Goes on Tick Tock and he sees an advertisement on TikTok for like, hey, you need money? This is how much we pay you if you come work with us. The cartel advertisement.

[Joe Rogan]

The cartel uses Tick Tock.

[Ed]

Yeah. Crude. Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Ed]

Tick Tock of course, totally makes sense. But specifically, Tick tock is one of their biggest recruiting methods. And it's in the open. It's not like, like you have to access this private page and go and do this. No, it's like, hey, you want to come work for the four letters is the way they call themselves. Yeah, just call this number. Right? So he called this number and he was like told to meet somebody at a bus station. He goes, meets these people at the bus station. They put him in a car. They check them like, give me your phones. We don't want to be tracked. And then they drive them to a place where they were going to be trained, I guess is what he said. And then cops stop them in the road, beat the shit out of all of them. There's torture. A few of them, what are you doing? Where are you going? They don't, don't tell them anything. Don't tell them anything. And after they got the beating of their life, they got good. You passed the test. And now you're gonna go, oh.

[Joe Rogan]

So that was what it was for.

[Ed]

But the uniform cops were all cartel members.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh my God.

[Ed]

And the police, like all these are Places where everybody's in on it.

[Joe Rogan]

So it's just to see if you'll crack.

[Ed]

He. He gets driven to one of these ranches, these training camps. And it's not like, you know, I remember seeing the Al Qaeda training camps where the guys are on the monkey bars and stuff like that. These are military compounds that are, that are in the Sierras and in the mountains. There was a case recently where they, they thought they found these mass graves that turned out to be actually training camp. There were dead people there, but there was. They. They found all these shoes that Mexican. They were calling them Mexican Auschwitz. But what they actually found is processing space. Like, you go there and they strip off all your clothes and your shoes and you leave them there because they give you new shoes because they don't want to be tracked. So it was one of those processing places. So then you end. And then you, you then end up in some of the training camps. He describes active duty military personnel training them in the hills, Mexican military personnel training them in the hills. Former special operators from Colombia, former special operators from Mexico, some from America as well.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Ed]

There's rumors, and again, I have not talked directly to anybody that knows of that, that had eyes on them, but there are rumors of at least two American specialists of some sort. Because I've heard Delta Force and SEALs and I don't know, but there, there is a clear communication of methods and technology. IEDs are a thing in Mexico now. Like, IEDs are very reminiscent of things that you would see in Afghanistan, in Iraq. And the only way that they come over here is not from an Afghani or an Iraqi coming over and showing us how to do IEDs. It's probably an EOD tech of some sort from the US that has some experiences and know how to make some of these. That's one where, that's one place where they were learning their trade craft. Another one is Colombia. Colombian operators have been showing up in weird parts of the world, fighting. I mean, they're in the Ukrainian war right now learning about drone technology. Some of the operators from Mexico that went to fight in the Ukrainian front are now back in Mexico showing the cartels what they learned about drone warfare in the Ukraine war. So this kid describes his training camp where it's the army, people are marching around, people are in uniform, people are getting trained. And you, you. They'll get people bring. Brought into this training camp and like, hey, let's see if you're worthy. And they'll give you a gun and.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, kill, just kill some random Person.

[Ed]

Yeah. And this kid describes how that's, that's the first dude he killed. Just an unarmed dude that he was dragged into that camp.

[Joe Rogan]

So they just drag a dude just to see if you're capable of taking one of them.

[Ed]

I think he was one of the guys that tried to run because it's, it's. I mean it's like, it's. I say it's like the military, but they'll kill you there if you up or although beat, you know, or they'll beat you, flog you. It is a job. It is a. It is like a structured job. You get a, you get, you get money paid to you every, every quincena every 15 days and a bonus at the end of the month. You get equipment, you know, you get selected for certain activities. He was selected for tank duty and they sent him on his fucking tank to fight in the hills. Some people get selected to be. To manage some of their drugstores. Some people get managed to just be lookouts. But it's a giant network of people that they've managed to create for themselves in this region. This new generation cartel. It's one of the largest and fastest growing cartels in Mexico. And it is now probably operating all.

[Joe Rogan]

Over Mexico and recruiting people on Tick Tock.

[Ed]

The most of the. Their recruiting is through Tick Tock. Yes, openly. And again, it's not in, it's not. You don't have to search for it. It's, it's there. People. Smugglers advertise on Tick Tock constantly as well. Like they'll have videos of people here in Texas that went through the border recently and with a newspaper like, hey, I'm in Texas now. Look at the newspaper. And like they were, but they were in Mexico like a few hours later, a few hours before with the newspaper. And like, this is Saul. Saul is the best smuggler out there. Hire him for like a, like a safe crossing. This is on Tick Tock. I mean it's in the open. People, people, people don't realize how, how big of a tool that's being utilized in Mexico as a recruiting tool. It's propaganda tool as well. That's what they'll. They'll talk to each other through that medium.

[Joe Rogan]

How did this kid get out?

[Ed]

He ran. I think he, he, he managed to prove himself a bit and he managed to get the favor of one of their leaders. And he told them like, hey, I know you don't want to be here. Leave your shit and run. I guess. Don't, don't come back don't look back.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, so they let him run.

[Ed]

They let him run. But not everybody gets that opportunity.

[Joe Rogan]

So it was just somebody who liked him, maybe.

[Ed]

He got. He got. He. He got. He. He said he worked well in that organization. He got favor and eventually said, you know what? I have a wife and a kid that I need to get back to you. Is that. Is there a way let him go?

[Joe Rogan]

How long was he being held?

[Ed]

I think he said something about six or eight months. And he went through some. Most of what he went through was inside and the border between Jalisco and Zacatecas, where the Mayos are trying to fight over that territory, it's basically one of the corridors up into the border region of Mexico. Through Mexico. So that's. People are always fighting over these. These regions. He. He came back with ptsd, hearing loss, and again, all these things are unknown. Like, he's a Mexican kid without health insurance. How is he going to know any of these things? Right. When I talked to him for a bit, he was like, oh, that makes sense. I was like, yeah. Do you drink a lot? Yeah, I know. Why? I used to drink a shit ton, you know. Nightmares. Yeah. Like rage moments. Yeah. Like this sounds like you have ptsd, dude. Like, sit down. So. But he's like one in a thousand. Thousands of kids like that out there who are gone through some of these things, both on the military and police side and also the cartel side. Highly traumatized individuals that just. But there's no. There's nothing for them down there. If they talk about what they did, they're in trouble. If they look for help, there's no help out there. So this kid is trying to reform his life with all this damage in him. He lost his family that he fought so much to get back to, which is, you know, these. It's just. It's one small. One small story and tragedy of. But you go to Jalisco and they have a roundabout there in Jalisco. It's Losillas, where the missing are. And it's covered in posters of missing people. In Guadalajara. It is like one of those zombie movies where they have all these, like, the. Where the missing people posters on them because zombie outbreak happened. It's like that, except it's people over a hundred thousand, according to official numbers in Mexico. As far as missing, just gone. And that's another aspect of this war that people don't kind of like realize the numbers are skewed because there's no confirmed dead person for a number of the amount of people Murdered if there's no body. And Mexico has become very good at getting rid of bodies. The cultures in Mexico. I was in Coahuila working with a tactical group out there. They showed me. I'm always learning from people. Different regions have different ways of getting rid of bodies. Some just burn them, just throw fuel on them to see if they can burn. In this part of the country, Coahuila, which is on the east side of the country, they will heat up fuel drums with diesel inside of them. And diesel's. Diesel can get really hot without igniting. And that's where they put the bodies inside. Basically boil them down to their essential essence and there's nothing to find is what they tell me with that process. You go to my hometown of Tijuana.

[Joe Rogan]

That's where we had cauldrons of diesel to dispose bodies.

[Ed]

Yeah. And then you go to Tijuana, where I'm from. And then you got the phenomenon of. A phenomenon of pozolero, who would get rid of people with caustic soda, just a mixture of chemicals that you could buy and find at a hardware store. And they would make people into pink slurry and just dump the pink floor in a hole and just cover it up. So the numbers that we see as far as dead and dead and missing, there's. There's. It's. It's not a real number. That has to be bigger, you know, It's. It is. It is a place where you'll go into some towns and there's just a bunch of old men and females because all the old men were gone, you know, or you'll see. You'll see, like, these abandoned graves in some places. This. There was. I talked to a lady who's a part of some of these. There's these organizations all over the country now. They're grassroots organizations that are basically just dedicated to finding clandestine body disposal places. They're looking for their family members, basically.

[Joe Rogan]

How do you say that word is a guerri?

[Ed]

That. Yeah, that's. That's. That's a. That's the. The one I told you that was. People were trying to make it seem like this was like an extermination camp.

[Joe Rogan]

How do you say the word?

[Ed]

Isagiri.

[Joe Rogan]

Isagiri. High concentrations of ash suggests the presence of clandestine crematoriums.

[Ed]

Yeah, bodies were disposed of. They're not at the volume of an Auschwitz level thing, but yeah, there were definitely people getting burned there.

[Joe Rogan]

So they're just killing people all the time.

[Ed]

Yeah. I mean, body disposal to a level where there's Nothing left is something you do in a place where you're worried about the government catching you. But this is, this is Guadalajara. This is New Generation Cartel, Georgia territory. They're not worried about bodies being found. There's no for the forensic services in some of these places are like here, here's some spent casings from this murder. Oh, thank you. Just throw them in this hill of giant hill of casings that they have in this evidence locker. Right. They're overwhelmed. There's no.

[Joe Rogan]

You can't solve any crimes. You're dead.

[Ed]

90% of all.

[Joe Rogan]

Imagine your job, if you do it well, you're dead.

[Ed]

Yeah, exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

But you're not gonna do it well.

[Ed]

90 of all murders in Mexico are never solved. 90, maybe a bit over that. So it's you, you, you, you have this cartel now that is, you know, you have El Mayo. Sambad is gone. El Chapo's sons are cutting a deal. One of them apparently has made an alliance with the, the head of the, the. The New Generation Cartel, a man by El Mencho. His nickname is El Mencho. Nemesio Seguez Cervantes is his real name. Last time I was here, there was like this almost five years ago. I was here. There were questions about if he was even alive or not. You know, people thought that he was like being kept alive as this folk figure because he's low key, very low key. Not like he's not flashy. Everything's militarized. He's very good at his tradecraft. But recently, you know, he's very much alive. He's very much exposed himself a few times. He was almost arrested recently, and the federal police apparently tipped off his security about the operation against him. It's the second time he was almost arrested. He's the biggest target right now in Mexico. We recently learned through the media of Trump's authorization of utilizing military action in Latin America in general, all the way from Venezuela all the way up to Mexico. And you hear these rumblings of how is this military operation going to look like? Is this going to be an invasion? Are we going to see a column of U.S. marines driving down to Tijuana? I'm probably getting spent some time in Tijuana. It's probably not a good idea. Are we going to see, like, people, Delta Force guys showing up in Tijuana, in Kuliakon and going on a raid on their own without permission of the local authorities? What's this going to look like? I don't see a direct trust between Mexico and Mexico and the United States. Anymore. There's like, there's issues there. The US has realized that politics are compromised at high level in Mexico completely. With the example of the recent almost arrest of Cervantes Elementio, you see that the federal forces are compromised as well. So, like, who do you trust as an American force that is trying to cut the stem of drugs into this country is kind of the excuse that they're utilizing for this designation. And who do you trust down there? I posted, I'm friends with a bunch of dorks and they're all looking at flight tracker and intelligence stuff like that. I'm a dork too. And one of them sent me this suspicious drone, American drone, flying over the state of Mexico in circles. And I posted it immediately. I think I was one of the first ones to post it online. And a press briefing happened almost immediately. And the head of public safety in Mexico, Omar Gaze, said like, oh, yeah, this is. We asked for this drone to fly over this area. Who did you ask? No, this is not a military drone, but we asked for it to fly over this area, which I don't think he knows what's, what the going on. I don't know why. I don't think, I don't think he knows why there's a drone flying out over a very small, specific part of Mexico. I don't know. It seemed like he didn't, or either he didn't want to reveal the, this, this drone or. But there have been many times recently of drones just flying close to the, close to the border or over, over Mexico. They're clearly drawing a map, an intelligence map of targets in Mexico. So something is coming, I think.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Ed]

But what is it going to look like, though? Is the question that people are asking. I don't know. Speaking to somebody like Gafe down in Mexico. He was a former member of the special operations and I asked him like, hey, what is the military going to do with the US Says like, we're going in without your approval. He said, well, if you start fighting the cartels without approval of the Mexican government, you will turn criminal organizations into freedom fighters. And they're already integrated into the military in certain ways because some of them are working for them and some of them are working for us. So you will make the whole. A cohesive force against you. Oh, boy. Which is an interesting theory. You know, if that happens, that seems likely. It does, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because there's like anti US sentiment already. It is. And then also the, the closing of.

[Ed]

The borders and it's a perfect storm. I mean, Trump is divisive. And in Mexico, he has been turned into this very clear, like, enemy. Like this is the enemy, you know, specifically bad politicians down there. He's pretty easy to just vilify. Like it's. I said, well, you know, why is Sinalo on fire? Maybe it's because you have a corruption governor there who was clearly in cartel ties and stuff like that, who's part of your party, but you haven't figured out how to get him out of office. Maybe it's that or. No, it's the U. S because they abducted El Mayo. That's why that place is on fire. Someone with treason, that's why they charge somebody with high treason, which is unheard of, but there you go. So, like, who. Who are you going to trust in that realm? And so Mexico has pressed the whole, the US Is responsible for this and they're kind of wiping their hands from it. And the US Keeps pointing their finger at high level government, which is something. Again, five years ago I spoke about this on this podcast and I got a lot of shit for it. I said, there's no way of going after cartels in Mexico without going after the government because they're one and the same in a lot of places. And that was back then. And now it's even more clear as how tied they are.

[Joe Rogan]

If nothing happens, if the United States doesn't do anything, how much bigger can the cartels get? This is the question. It's like, yeah, what is going to happen to just this entire country? Wouldn't it be great to manage your portfolio on one platform? Well, now you can trade all in one place on Robinhood. That means you can trade individual stocks and ETFs and also buy and sell crypto using seriously powerful and intuitive tools at one of the lowest costs on average. Without needing to manage multiple apps. Robinhood makes withdrawing and depositing crypto seamless. Send crypto to your Robinhood account or send crypto from your Robinhood account to other wallets without deposit or withdrawal fees from Robinhood Trade all in one place. Get started now on Robinhood Trading. Crypto involves significant risk. Crypto trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Crypto llc. Robinhood Crypto is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Crypto held through Robinhood Crypto is not FDIC insured or SIPC protected network Fees.

[Ed]

May apply to crypto transfers.

[Joe Rogan]

Crypto transfers may not be available to all customers. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Securities trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Financial LLC member sipc, a registered broker dealer. This episode is brought to you by Morgan and Morgan.

[Ed]

Morgan and Morgan has recently filed a.

[Joe Rogan]

Lawsuit against several major food companies.

[Ed]

The lawsuit claims these companies designed and promoted certain ultra processed food products in.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Ed]

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[Joe Rogan]

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[Ed]

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[Joe Rogan]

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[Ed]

Attorney advertising this. If you have a. If you have. And this is what. That's why you have a lot of conflicts happening in routes that are leading towards the border. The Sinaloa cartel operated in a very old fashioned way. You know, they wouldn't no cagas on the comas. It was their politics. Don't shit where you eat was their politics for a long time. You saw a change in this when the brutality aspect and how just shit changed in Mexico. There was an incident. Members of Los Arellano Felix cartel, the Tijuana cartel, were in a direct conflict with elements of El Chapo Guzman's organization. And they had a assassin. They had an assassin basically infiltrate the living circle of one of El Chapo's main guys, El Guero Palma. And he seduced his wife, killed her and abducted his kids and threw them off a bridge and sent that video to El Guero Palma. And I think after, I mean, brutal shit had happened after that, before that, but I think that set off this at some point, that whole war that happened, you know, you start getting the element of the Zetas coming in, who were former special operator guys who basically said, like, we can start our own cartel, which a lot of them were Fort Bragg trained individuals that went down. Yeah, some of them, some of them went through the Green Beret course. Foreign nationals go through that course a lot. So they went to the Green Beret course and then they go back to Mexico and then as soon as they get back to Mexico, like, oh, congratulations on your cool Green Beret and all this training. Come Train our guys or come work for us. So at some point all of this started militarizing the conflict in Mexico. It went from gang against gang violence, which is like very reminiscent of some of the stuff that happened up here during the gang era or some of the Al Capone era, you know, shootouts between people. The Zetas changed the game. They started bringing in guerrilla warfare tactics into the, into this realm. They started doing all of those torture videos and cartel execution videos that comes from them. They realize that part of a guerrilla warfare campaign is propaganda. And how can you make propaganda of shooting a guy in a field, right. Film it. So they changed that game. They started realizing that, yeah, it's one thing having a kid with like sneakers on the back of a truck with an AK whose dad was part of the organization and he brought his kid in, but it's probably a better idea to have militarized or paramilitary groups working with us, you know, so they started getting these evolutions of ideas of what a criminal organization should be and all of that. You know, the members of the new generation cartel that is now kind of like dominating Mexico started off as a Zeta hunting force that the Sinaloa cartel formed in Jalisco. And they said like, well, we can do this for ourselves now too as well. So that's how they originated in a lot of ways. So this organization has taken the textbook learning process of all these other cartels and is now this cartel with all this foundation, educational foundation, as far as how to set up an organization, how to set up all these transnational routes, how to operate on both sides of the border, how to augment their capabilities constantly through technology. Drone warfare was first seen, I think in Mexico. You start, you saw drones dropping bombs and shit like that. In Mexico before the Ukrainian conflict, it. But they got really good at it. I mean, the Ukrainians have taken that to an art form. There are Mexican nationals fighting for their foreign services, their foreign brigades in, in the Ukraine. And some of them have gone into that route, drone operators. And some of them are coming back and you started seeing this sudden sophistication. It used to be bomblets dropped from these commercial drones and the explosives in the mortar, probably mining level explosives. You start seeing these, these bomblets made and they were more reminiscent of Colombian explosives or IRA era explosives. And now you're seeing these coordinated drone attacks on military forces in Mexico. I think they recently got a. Some high level army official. They got him with a drone. They didn't kill him, but almost, they almost killed him. So we started Seeing these drone now being operated. Drones now being operated as scouts, so you can't get close to them because these drones are in the sky. So now you're seeing drone cartels fighting against other cartel drones. So now we're seeing cartel guys with these futuristic drone anti drone guns in the field.

[Joe Rogan]

Seen those things?

[Ed]

Yeah, they look like space guns, but they, but on the hands of a cartel guy wearing like sandals, which is what's going, what the going on with these people. So you start seeing all this augmentation of capabilities. This single cartel now has all of this history behind it, all of these lessons behind it, all this training, behind all this technology. And it is poised to make punch a hole right through its territory and go up north into the United States. Right. There are no segments of the border wall currently that are, that are actually controlled and or a city that is controlled by the new generation cartel that is on the border. That's not the case now. But there are places that are starting to maybe look like they're going that way. Tijuana being one of them. Where I'm from, you start seeing the last remaining sons of Ochapo Guzman that are free. Archivalo is the strongest one. And his faction of Los Chapitos, as what they call themselves this past year, announced that they had reached an alliance with this new cartel, this new generation cartel. So it's now it's a cohesive force and they had historical ties and a part of the border that they owned already that they inherited from their dad. So that nightmare scenario having this cartel now having a clear doorway into United States is pretty close if it's not there already.

[Joe Rogan]

And how wild would it be if the border was still wide open because they've cut down on illegal immigrants by some high 90%.

[Ed]

Yeah, it's. It's way down. There's still crossings going on. Oh, yeah, it's just, it's really expensive. It's really expensive. You got to get that guy off.

[Joe Rogan]

Tick tock.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of ways they do. I saw one where they were like, hey, they'll grab a, a portfolio full of copies of IDs and like, oh, you look like this dude. And then they'll give you. You know, they said like, just get really drunk before you cross and pretend you're asleep. And they'll give you paperwork that looks like the dude that looks like you. And that's how they cross up people. And that's a lot. It's very expensive. That's how they cross you fast. Boats. You know, there's a bunch of videos online. Just boats just arriving on the beach and just dudes jumping out. It's a classic. Running and running.

[Joe Rogan]

There's like, once they're in, they're in.

[Ed]

There's a shortage of those wave runners. There's a shortage of them in Mexico because they just buy them.

[Joe Rogan]

Just a well, short trip. I mean, if you think. If you get on one in Tijuana and you hop over to San Diego. Yeah, it's not that far.

[Ed]

No. And then. And they'll swarm it now. They'll do many of those boats. And. And if you were in tj, you could see off the coast. There's a bunch of Navy ships now off the coast there. So, like. Which is a cause for alarm for a lot of Mexicans. The Mexican. When I say Mexicans view any sort of intervention by United States with fear, although they are also fearful of what happens if this is allowed to continue in Mexico, and they don't see any solutions from the government.

[Joe Rogan]

So it seems like the opposite. It seems like it's going more and more towards the cartel.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So what would happen if the United States States didn't infiltrate, if the United States didn't attack, if something didn't happen.

[Ed]

If they just stepped away? I think we're already involved, you know, this arrest of Amayah Zambada, this designation that allows a lot of things, safety's off type thing against some of these cartels. What's worrying in the eyes of Mexico and in the eyes of Mexicans, I guess the, you know, the fact that there was a promise of no negotiating with terrorists, or it's. At least it's something that is assumed, you know, you don't negotiate with terrorists. It's like a thing, you know, but all of a sudden, one of these factions just made a deal, and now they're negotiating with them. And now all these people are crossing that border. Their family members are crossing that border. And now in the safety of the United States, the dude that the United States made a deal with is responsible for the death of a few special operators that were a part of his arrest. Arrest. What. What are they going to tell their families of that loss and why they died? You know, and also the. The. The piles of bodies that were around after both of his arrest attempts. So there's distrust on all sides. Mexicans don't trust the government to solve.

[Joe Rogan]

It, because what's the deal with your president? What's her deal?

[Ed]

Shay? Mom woke very. Woke very to the left. A few guerrilla Forces in Central America have come out and said that she's one of her. That she was one of the resistance fighters with them. Jewish heritage.

[Joe Rogan]

That's kind of odd.

[Ed]

It is very odd for Mexico. Very loved by large segments of the population.

[Joe Rogan]

What is about it that she's loved? Like what is about her policies or what she represents?

[Ed]

I think she's feeding off a lot of the love that they had for amlo. Amlo was our Trump. That's the best way of describing him. Popular populist guy, drain the swamp rhetoric like all these other guys. All the conservatives can go, gone. We're gonna win this. He won by a landslide. But he keeps talking. He kept talking about conservatives and the previous parties and that. But. But all the Morena party is made up of all these other politicians just switching sides and joining his party. So, you know, shame on shame. Mom came in with a big job on her hands as far as security. She immediately reversed the whole of Raso. No velazos. I mean there's velazos on the table now. You know, I recognize that she brought into the, into, into office with her man.

[Joe Rogan]

What did you mean by that?

[Ed]

When you're saying velocities like hugs. Not hugs, not bullets. She got rid of that. Now there's, there's a lot more. There's a lot of molasses, there's more bullets now.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Ed]

There's a man in power right now, a security official named Omar Garcia Fuch who he has assorted history in Mexico. He comes from people there's. There. He has been in circles of people that have been involved in some, but he himself has not been in. There's nothing on him that we know of. You know, the super cop is what he called. He's very well loved by his men. I actually talked to a few people that work directly with him. He seems to be like a guy who's willing to go up to task and he's receiving all this pressure from the United States. So like we need results from you guys, like what are you doing? So he has had. He has been heading up operations against some of these organizations, specifically in Sinaloa. And we've seen record breaking fentanyl seizures and high level politicians being caught up in some of these things. And specifically the interesting part of the operations he's conducting all over Mexico is he's actually going after municipalities. So he's going after like municipality presidents and some of the local governments that are basically all corrupted. He realizes that, hey, where's the cartel here? Oh, the Cartel's a government, local government's cartel. Oh. So they do these mass swarm operations on some of these places where they arrest the police chief, they arrest the mayor. That this is, that he's realizes that this is the front that he has to now fight. Because the cartel isn't just these organizations out in the hills anymore. They're inside, they're infiltrated, they're in politics. You know, and people think about drugs only, but drugs don't. These cartels are fighting for huachicol as well. Fuel trafficking. You know, there was a family. Avocados. Avocados. If you go to, if you go, if you, if you go to Chipotle and order extra guac, you're putting money in the, in the pockets of this new generation cartel and, or the Famida Michoacana. How crazy is, is it's wild and, and it's, it's a fuel theft. And the fuel theft side of it, what you call, is, what they call it in Mexico is interesting. But that catches that. That puts in a lot of people in the United States that have been involved in it taking illegally siphoned fuel from Mexico by some of these criminal organizations, putting it on a ship and fly and then doing a lot of magic with the paperwork. And then it ended up ending it up and ending up in the US and money exchanging weird hands. So that's another side of it that people don't kind of realize. One of the.

[Joe Rogan]

Look at this. Mexican authorities seized nearly 4 million gallons of stolen fuel. AP News.

[Ed]

This has been going on for years and against another part of the way they finance themselves. And these criminal organizations have been able to grow without.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they branch out.

[Ed]

They diversified years ago.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So they're not just because even if you shut off the drugs totally, they're still making billions and low key.

[Ed]

Mexico has become first world in a lot of ways. First we're, you know, we're welcoming all your huddled masses. You know, Mexico is, Mexico is the Statue of Liberty. All of the economic migrants that can't afford to live here in the U.S. move to Mexico.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh yeah, a lot of people do.

[Ed]

There's like giant communities of Americans living down there. When we were in Jalisco, we were surprised to find like, like God damn gringos living in the middle of cartel territory.

[Joe Rogan]

Weren't the Mormons the first people to do that?

[Ed]

There was, there were some of the first ones to do some of these communities. But like expat communities down in Mexico are common. Yeah, the Mormons were pretty big down there. Actually, yeah. Yeah, there's. Yeah, they, you know, I think the last time I was here was when that, that massacre happened.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes, yes. So they're, they're, they have Mormon compounds in Mexico.

[Ed]

Yeah. Armed. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That have been there since the 1800s.

[Ed]

Yeah. Mitt Romney's dad was a Mexican.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Yeah. Ms. Romney's dad was born in Mexico. That's why he couldn't be president in the United States. Wild.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And Mitt Romney's dad was a part of one of those massive encampments of armed people.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Protecting Joseph Smith's ideas.

[Ed]

Yeah. Crazy. Also like I remember like when I talked about it on, on this podcast, Mormons from the U. S. Corrected me and said that those guys weren't real Mormons.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, how convenient.

[Ed]

And I'm like, I don't then.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, didn't they go over there because they want. Didn't want to get rid of polygamy?

[Ed]

I think so. There was, there was.

[Joe Rogan]

They should have stuck around. It's coming back. But polygamy's back in Toronto.

[Ed]

Oh cool.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Canada because of Islam. Because so many Muslims have moved to Toronto, they made polygamy legal again.

[Ed]

Yeah. I was in Canada recently. It's like, wow. It's pretty interesting. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Good job, guys.

[Ed]

Keep. Keep at it. The again, I think Mexico was on its. Mexico is probably the. If you can invest in any country in the world right now, I think Mexico would be it. Really. The industrial plant that is. That it has a lot of the stuff that is leaving China, it's moving to Mexico. Youth. It has a consumer base that is growing exponentially.

[Joe Rogan]

So how do you get population, all the violence? Is that possible at this point in time? Is it so soaked into the culture?

[Ed]

I think it is. I think, I think we're point. A tipping point where the Mexican, Mexican culture as in general is like sick of it. Like it, it doesn't want this yet anymore. We're seeing attacks on freedom of expression in Mexico in a way because some of these popular singers that would sing cartel songs are now banned from performing. Performing them live. So that's like an attack on freedom of speech. But population is pretty cool with it though. They're letting it slide. So it means that they're. They're kind of like ready to give up.

[Joe Rogan]

It became an issue in America right. Where there was a popular singer that they wouldn't allow back into the country and he had these huge sold out arena shows.

[Ed]

Yeah. I mean again, I talked about how if you're going to attack these organizations, you have to attack all of these. Or like, just like you attack Al Qaeda, you attack who finances them, who. And a lot of these, a lot of these organizations were basically utilizing some of these popular singers to launder money or to gain influence in the US or to sing about their exploits. They would pay them to sing about their exploits. So when this designation came down, it was clear that some of these guys were on the chopping block. This terrorist designation came down from the government. The US Government is clear that some of these singers are going to be on the chopping block. Wow. Another phenomenon is that the US Is actually this the guy.

[Joe Rogan]

Four million listeners on Spotify every month.

[Ed]

Month. Yeah, it's one of them.

[Joe Rogan]

Parking lot yesterday.

[Ed]

There's a.

[Joe Rogan]

He was killed in a parking lot yesterday. Oh, wow. Musicians celebrated drug cartel exploits and song shot dead in parking lot in Mexico.

[Ed]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

This is yesterday.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Or is this today?

[Ed]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Ed]

Yeah. This is the singer. Yeah. Grupo Enigma. Yeah. He used to hang out with El Maya Sambala and El Chapo Guzman and talk about it openly on podcast in Mexico. And, you know, that's another phenomenon that's currently happening. Youtubers.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Ed]

Since, since it was so normalized in Mexico, you just. A bunch of YouTubers started popping up. Like, I'm a cartel YouTuber, I'm gonna talk about cartel stuff on YouTube and, and they've been getting. When, when the, when the Chapitos and the Mayos started fighting over Sinaloa, those Mayos put a plane up and started dispersing pamphlets with pictures of all the YouTube influencers that they, they knew were helping out the, the Chapitos faction or they were working with them. And they've been going down that list. They recently killed one, one dude at his house who was talking about cartels. You know.

[Joe Rogan]

So like TMZ for cartels?

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah, they, they, they. The, the, the, the, the hackers. That, that, that's him. He apparently the cartel hired a hacker to figure out to send a link to his wife that she opened and they trapped, tracked the attractor to attract them where they were hiding.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Ed]

Like he was, he's also, he was all over social media in Mexico and even, even regular media in Mexico talking about the cartels.

[Joe Rogan]

As of Sunday, no arrests have been reported.

[Ed]

No, somebody's walked into his house with a ski mask and shot him through the bathroom door when he tried to hold it shut. And this is, these are all signs that, that the populace in Mexico, independently of cartels, just the general mass of Mexico is. This is the tipping point. They're done with this. They don't want this anymore. Which, you know, what do you do with that energy, that momentum?

[Joe Rogan]

How many people are we talking about? When you talk about all the cartels.

[Ed]

How many people are in there?

[Joe Rogan]

Like how big?

[Ed]

Thousands.

[Joe Rogan]

So if it was an army, how big would the army be?

[Ed]

I don't know. 400, 000 people. Whoa. Just like doing, doing really quick math in my head of like approximations of how many new generation cartel members are apparently out there, which there's no way real way of knowing, but there are the formulations.

[Joe Rogan]

How many Taliban were in Afghanistan?

[Ed]

I don't I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

Jeremy, Google that. During the height of the war, how many Taliban were in Afghanistan?

[Ed]

And, and, and, and then you, you see these organizations. I mean, there's the people fighting out there, the people in charge, the people settling up shop, the people in finance, the people that are running the shell companies, the people that are running the actual companies because these cartels own companies, you know, so like, okay, look at this.

[Joe Rogan]

Early estimates from 2001 to 2017 range from 45,000 to 60,000.

[Ed]

I think there's way more fighters down there.

[Joe Rogan]

How crazy is that? So we were, we spent trillions of dollars. We were there for 20 years in Afghanistan for 60,000 dudes.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That were hiding out in the mountains. And then we left and we left behind Blackhawk helicopters, tanks.

[Ed]

And a lot of the, and a lot of those firearms are showing up in Mexico.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, of course they're for sale.

[Ed]

The, the, the, the, the, the night vision equipment or the night vision. Like high sophisticated, expensive. I know about night vision. I've been learning about all this. Stu from my friends were all gun nuts. And I'm looking at like, oh, God, look at these. Like, dude, where are those? They're in a house and cool. They're gone. It's like, holy shit, dude. How the did they get from there's routes.

[Joe Rogan]

I bet dudes got on a plane the moment the US Left. They were like, look at all this shit. We got money. Let's make a deal with these guys.

[Ed]

Yeah, weaponry is coming, coming in from that side. Obviously, the US Is responsible for most of the gun running down to Mexico.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, let's talk about Operation Fast and Furious, which was bananas.

[Ed]

Wide Receiver started off as White Receiver.

[Joe Rogan]

I think that was the original name for it.

[Ed]

It's a Bush era.

[Joe Rogan]

Explain it to people what happened. So Bush administration, it was Wide Receiver. And then Obama administration, it was Fast and Furious.

[Ed]

And again, I'm gonna speak of this. My participation in all this was. I was in Mexico and a bunch of my friends got killed with those guys. Sense. Wow. We started. See, just imagine I'm. I'm in my 20s back then. And you know, we get in shootouts and people are running around with guns and stuff like that. It's mostly like AR15s, AK47, some of them are really rusty. And old Norinco rifles from China, just weird firearms. And all of a sudden you start finding people with.50 caliber Barrett rifles with scopes on them zeroed in, in the box with munitions. And then look at the box of where they came in and you see a label that says Arizona on it and you're like, you know, that's a weird thing to find on this fucking crack house that we're at. And then a few of my friends got killed with these FN57 pistols that come, It's a, it's a high velocity round that comes in them. It was kind of fabricated in the Cold War to fight Russians invading Europe. And they wanted to be able to penetrate their body armor with small pistols and small sub guns that they might have in urban areas. So we started seeing those and just a massive amount of firearms being delivered specifically to the Sinaloa cartel groups in the area we're working with. And we didn't know anything about it, where all these things come from. Apparently in the US during the Bush administration, they started an operation that was meant to track firearms being straw purchased in places like Arizona and other parts of the US by individuals being gathered by cartel members, put into cars and then driven down to Mexico to supply the cartels. The ATF was involved in all this. Eric Holder was very involved in all this. Their plan or theory was we're going to track these guns when they go down to Mexico. But nothing got tracked or at least we don't know of anything that got really tracked or any high level arrest made because of the guns that they, they were just allowed to.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you think's really going on? Because that sounds like a cover. We're just tracking these guns.

[Ed]

I mean, what do you do when you want to destabilize a region? If you're another country, you give guns to the shit suckers.

[Joe Rogan]

Why would they want to destabilize them in, in such an immoral way that they, they needed this to happen so badly, they were willing to give them weapons to kill each other.

[Ed]

I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a, Back then it was a Sinaloa cartel trying to fight control over the area over some people that were coming, like the Zetas and other organizations. And I don't know why, why would you send guns to this specific region? I'm not, I'm not saying that the US purposely armed a single cartel in Mexico, but that's what it kind of looks like. Yeah, you know, that's what it looks like.

[Joe Rogan]

That's the only thing.

[Ed]

And this was the purpose of it and this is what we saw because, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the things that they were request, because it looked like a laundry list. Some of the stuff that they were bringing down 50 cal. Why do you think 50 calibers started getting like we're so hot back and still aren't so hot? It's because people started doing armor. So they need a way to get getting through armor. So 50 cows, right? And Americans, especially some of my American military and police friends are always making fun of the fact that none of these big ass rifles have any sights on them. They do have sights on them, but they get stolen by the cops before they put them in front of the picture for the news. But I've heard, I've heard it wasn't me.

[Joe Rogan]

That makes sense. Get a nice expensive red dot on that.

[Ed]

Fuck you. These guys don't even have sights on their guns. They can shoot. They can shoot far. They can shoot. They could shoot. Well, some of them, not all of them.

[Joe Rogan]

If they've got expensive guns, of course they've got science. Yeah, that's ridiculous.

[Ed]

Yeah, but everything gets ripped off, you know, donations, of course. These, these started showing up in Mexico. A bunch of people started dying, and then two federal agents that were doing a protection detail died down there during a cartel shootout. I'm not too sure on the details of this, but they were involved in a shootout in Mexico. They were doing a protection detail down there. One of them was a border patrol agent assigned to this Ryan Terry. He set up, they actually set up a foundation. They set up a foundation in his memory. And I think I raised like a few grand for this foundation. And I did that only as a point to like be able to say, yeah, yeah, I raised this money for this foundation to honor this fallen police officer that was going. That was in Mexico that was killed by American guns that were given to the cartels to bring attention to the fact that, you know, we know who Ryan Terry is, but do we know who my friends are who were killed by these guns or a lot of the unknown people that were killed by some of these guns that were allowed to walk through that border knowingly by ATF officials. Even though the people running these gun shops were like, hey, dude, are you sure? Like there's. They want like 4 AKs. Like, are you sure? Yeah, yeah. Let him walk. We're. They're under surveillance. We, we're tracking these and they just go down.

[Joe Rogan]

So if you had to imagine, no one's saying this is true, but if you had to imagine what kind of a deal would be made where you would guarantee the shipment of weapons, weapons from the United States into Mexico by the federal government. For what purpose? To destabilize destabilize.

[Ed]

Support a specific faction. Right.

[Joe Rogan]

But that's the question, why them? And like, was it money? Was it influence? Were they working on something? You know, there's a lot of.

[Ed]

We're in the realm of theory right now, of course, but El Milo Zambada learned his tradecraft in Los Angeles 50 years ago. And one of the people that was instrumental in showing him how to run drugs and move things through countries was a man who was a Castro era police officer who was involved in the Bay of Pig incidents. That man married his El Mayo sister and that's who taught El Mayo Sambada everything he knew about moving things around borders. Wow. So I'm not going to say the CIA, but.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh my God. Well, you know, I've had Freeway Ricky Ross on the podcast multiple times. And for people who haven't seen those episodes or heard me talk about Ricky, Ricky is the real Rick Ross. Like Rick Ross the rapper. That's not his name. He named himself Rick Ross because Freeway Ricky was a legend. He was a legend in Los Angeles. He was the number one cocaine dealer in Los Angeles and he was getting it all from the CIA and he was helping funding the Contras versus the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And he had no idea because he couldn't even read.

[Ed]

And that same Contra situation pops up again with the death of Kiki Camaren, the DEA agent. They, one of the people, one of the. There was two major prisoner extraditions of cartel members from Mexico to the US and the first one that came through, I think a year ago, was the apparent murderer of Kiki Camarena, was cartel member. And they've always pinned it on him like the cartels were. There was this giant grove of marijuana out there and that Kikamare saw it and reported it. And Caro Quintero, who owned this plantation, had him killed. Right. And we actually went down to Jalisco where he was tortured and killed and talked to the locals there and they were like, oh, la casa de la Silla, like the CIA house. Like what? That's what some of the people there say. And I.

[Joe Rogan]

Have you ever seen the video of Michael Rupert, who was a friend of mine who passed away years back. He was a former Los Angeles narcotics officer and he was on C Span at a hearing and during the, during the hearing said, I have personally witnessed the CIA selling drugs in Los Angeles and everybody goes crazy. It is the wildest thing to see because this is like. Jamie, was that the 90s?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you remember, were you around when Rupert was a guest? No, Rupert was pre Jamie.

[Ed]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, so Rupert was on a couple of times and then he took his own life one time. He was very depressed. I. I don't doubt that he took his life. He was living pretty destitute. I think he was in a trailer.

[Ed]

You know, I get it.

[Joe Rogan]

It wasn't the end. Wasn't good. But there was a movie here. Listen, Mike. Rupert 1996. Let's play some of this because it is crazy. It's crazy. This is all live on C Span.

[Ed]

Los Angeles police narcotics detective, and I work South Central Los Angeles. And I will tell you, Director Deutsch, emphatically. And can you further into the mic, Sir? These mics don't seem to be. I. I will tell you, Director Deutsch, as a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective, that the agency has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long time.

[Joe Rogan]

Yo, it was great. And he goes into. To detail and look at. These are all LA people and they're like, thank you.

[Ed]

But it's. This is like the CIA is up there too.

[Joe Rogan]

I believe at the. Yes, yes.

[Ed]

This is like conspiracy theory. This never happened. But there you go.

[Joe Rogan]

Look at the head of the CIA.

[Ed]

Look at him. I refer. Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.

[Joe Rogan]

That guy's got a human skin suit on. That's a demon. Listen to what he taught. When Rupert talks. Just wrote a note to that guy too. Yeah.

[Ed]

Wait a minute. If you don't like what's going on here, please leave now. No, no, no.

[Joe Rogan]

Leave.

[Ed]

No, no, no. Leave now. Because there are others who do want to hear what's going on in this room.

[Joe Rogan]

Shout out to Juanita for getting control of the room. Because everybody went nuts when he said that. So he elaborates.

[Ed]

I mean, when you say you went.

[Joe Rogan]

Nuts, he talks to the Director Operations.

[Ed]

Known as Amadeus, Pegasus and Watchtower. I have Watchtower documents heavily redacted by the Agency. I was personally exposed to CIA operations and recruited by CIA personnel who attempted to recruit me in the late 70s to become involved in protecting Agency drug operations in this country. I have been trying to get this out for 18 years and I have the evidence. My question for you is very specific, sir. If, in the course of the IG's investigations and Fred Hitz's work, you come across evidence of severely criminal activity, and it's classified, will you use that classification to hide the criminal activity or will you tell the American people the truth?

[Joe Rogan]

He's like, should I handle this?

[Ed]

They're going to activate the bomb in his head right there. All right, you want to hear the response first from Congressman Julian Dixon and then from the Director.

[Joe Rogan]

He's like, I don't want to talk.

[Ed]

Wait. Wait a minute. From York.

[Joe Rogan]

From York.

[Ed]

I'm sorry, sir. I will allow the director.

[Joe Rogan]

Look at that guy in the back with his fingers touching.

[Ed]

So nervous he's there to try and pull him out if something happens. I have information about CIA illegal activity. I don't know about.

[Joe Rogan]

Those hands that guy's doing. Bill Gates hands.

[Ed]

You should immediately bring that information to wherever you want. But let me suggest three places. The Los Angeles Police Department.

[Joe Rogan]

Please.

[Ed]

Others want to hear this answer. I am sorry. Others want to hear.

[Joe Rogan]

Check out the dude in the front with the leopard hat, the leopard scarf.

[Ed]

Amazing, amazing segment of time or office of one of your Congress persons from this 18 years ago, sir. And I got shot at for it. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, sir.

[Joe Rogan]

You hear him? I did that 18 years ago.

[Ed]

I got shot for.

[Joe Rogan]

Jamie. Find that. Find the trailer for that movie they did with him. So there was. They were interviewing him. I forget what the entire premise of this thing was. They were interviewing him for something, and he was so intense, they decided to do an entire movie of just Michael, Rupert sitting in a chair in, like, a warehouse smoking cigarettes and talking about the collapse of the global economy. Collapse. Play the trailer for this because it's so nuts. See if you can find the trailer for collapsed.

[Ed]

Yeah. The whole CIA thing is.

[Joe Rogan]

This is Michael.

[Ed]

We are all collectively responsible for what may be the greatest preventable holocaust in the history of planet earth. I have 30 years of experience as an investigative journalist. I've broken major scandals going out to try and map how the world really.

[Joe Rogan]

Worked as opposed to the way we were told it worked.

[Ed]

Our map has proven deadly accurate. My economic predictions, we had it so right in 2006. We said, get out of debt right now. Check your mortgage carefully. We issued a whole series of warnings.

[Joe Rogan]

It will be nothing like we have ever seen before. That's January 2005.

[Ed]

Was going to happen. Is taking place right now. Gold prices, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the stock market. It's not that Bernie Madoff was a pyramid scheme. The whole economy is a pyramid scheme. Of course I've been called a conspiracy theorist, but I don't deal in conspiracy theory. I deal in conspiracy theories. In fact, the mortal blow to human industrialized civilization will happen when oil prices spike and nobody can afford to buy.

[Joe Rogan]

That oil and everything will just shut down.

[Ed]

Unlike the Great Depression, we do not have infinite resources. Nothing grows forever. There is a cycle birth Growth, maturation, decline and death. Cars don't run, mail stops getting delivered, planes don't fly, law enforcement stops working. This is all part of the collapse. If you're in a camp and a bear attacks, you don't have to be faster than the bear. You only have to be faster than the slowest camper. Challenge being faced by the human race now is either evolve or perish. Grow up or die. You have have to believe, not hope, not pray, that there's a way out of it and you're going to find it.

[Joe Rogan]

The, the whole documentary, just this dude sitting there freaking you out there.

[Ed]

It's like Mexico's, Mexico's UFOs are, it's always been like Mexico's Bigfoot is CIA. Like there have been. Manuel Bendi, I think was, he was a writer in the 760s 70s. He was, he would talk about the CIA and he got shot there. Reese, like recently, in the past 10 years, a bunch of CIA documents have come out of Mexican presidents being on the payroll by the CIA from like all the, like all the Cold War era presidents were like CIA agents on the payroll. So Mexico has this vision of the CIA and it's the US's responsibility for some of the things that are going on down there. That's very different than the US's perception of responsibilities.

[Joe Rogan]

It's probably more accurate.

[Ed]

I mean it's direct. It was shocking to me when we were there at Kiki Camarano, the house where he was kept and I think tortured and, and finally killed that the people around there that have lived there when it happened, some of them would call that the CIA house. So that was, that was a weird thing to. And maybe they've been kind of like polluted by all the, all the stuff they'd been looking at or seeing after that happened. But.

[Joe Rogan]

Or maybe they're just being accurate.

[Ed]

Maybe they're being accurate. Let's say this again, realm of theory. You have the United States dealing with Mexico and a 911 happens and then you're worried about things going through the border like a nuke. You know, you're paranoid. Do you entrust the Mexican government to keep that border safe and tell you if anything go through that border? Or you talk to the cartels that actually own that border. Who do you talk to?

[Joe Rogan]

You have to talk to the cartels.

[Ed]

So I think there's, there's always been a backdoor channel communication there going on or direct communication going on of some sort.

[Joe Rogan]

Which only makes sense.

[Ed]

Yeah. And also makes, I wonder how much.

[Joe Rogan]

Of an influence it has in our drug laws.

[Ed]

The.

[Joe Rogan]

Because sensible drug laws would treat all drugs the same way we treat alcohol. Yeah, sensible. Because alcohol is a drug and we know that when we had a prohibition when. Lasted for how many years? Like 13 years in this country, it did nothing but prop up organized crime.

[Ed]

Yeah. And last time I came here, I was on my way to becoming alcohol sober. So. Alcohol is a very dangerous drug. You can kill yourself with it very easily. You could buy a bottle that will kill you.

[Joe Rogan]

Yep.

[Ed]

And no.

[Joe Rogan]

In any store.

[Ed]

Any store.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

I had to lock myself in a ranch. I did it old school. Just how long did it take? My whole life it's gonna take. I think I'm always going to be. I like to think about it, you know, sometimes. But I. I've been sober for about four years now.

[Joe Rogan]

Congratulations.

[Ed]

Thank you. That's awesome. But it's hard to do. It is not easy. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't have the addiction gene, the physical addiction gene. I don't know why, but, like, even I chew on these nicotine pouches all the time. I went on vacation and I said, no nicotine. Let's see what happens. For five days, I was fine. Nothing. Coffee. I said, I'm gonna quit coffee. I quit coffee for five days. Like, no. No weirdness.

[Ed]

Yeah. I think for me it was medication. When I got. When I got out of work, I had. I had loads of PTSD the first time I was on the podcast and we talked a little bit about it. And then afterwards you, like, gave me some names of some people that you talked to. And I did. I went out and looked out for help. Eventually I just got sober. But it's insane to me how differently alcohol gets treated versus all other substances.

[Joe Rogan]

What's one of the only ones that if you get off it too quick, you'll die.

[Ed]

Yes. Which I did research.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you get real close to that?

[Ed]

I had to. My heart. I started feeling my heart do.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, did you think, well, I just have a little drinky poo and get back on track and do this slowly. A slow drip.

[Ed]

When. When I left the studio the last time, it was, you're still in la. My marriage ended around that same time, you know, and I had a few things going on. PTSD and trying to figure things out and drinking myself to sleep every third day because it's the only way I can go through a sleepless. Through a dreamless night was unsustainable. So my life was falling apart and I had to do something. I had a friend who owns a Big ranch, and he had a cabin that I could stay in. He said, hey, you can stay here.

[Joe Rogan]

How long did it take to.

[Ed]

I got there and I didn't want to feel like a freeloader, so I. I got there and I gave them. They had a little small community school there for the kids, so I brought a TV and, like, DVDs and, like, gave them all this stuff. That's awesome. Stay here. He stood me in front of everybody and said, this guy's an alcoholic. If I catch anybody give him an alcohol, or if you see him give him alcohol, you're out. Embarrassed me. Like, I felt like shit, but it gave me what I needed. Third night, shakes and sweats, Just wild dreams. I think I'd pissed myself, but it was a sweat. Then I started getting my heart, chest, veins, and shit like that going on, and I think it took me about two weeks, I think, to really, like, be, you know, on the level. It's. Don't do it that way. It's a stupid way of doing it. You'll almost die eventually. I got.

[Joe Rogan]

Some people do, right?

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I think that's how Amy Winehouse died.

[Ed]

Yes, that's probably. Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That's.

[Ed]

What.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't that the case, Jamie? Don't they think that Amy Winehouse died from complications of alcoholism of trying to get sober?

[Ed]

Yeah, it is. It is. You. You feel it. Whatever. People often say, like, I feel like I'm dying. Like. No, that feels like you're dying. Like you. Like somebody sitting on your chest and you can't get up. And also your brain is screaming for something that it can't get right. I.

[Joe Rogan]

Alcohol poisoning after binge drinking following a period of abstinence. Oh, even worse.

[Ed]

Eventually. Eventually I started speaking about it. I was embarrassed about it, but I started writing about it and publishing on my. On my Instagram account. Just like, my experience with it. And I. I got a lot of help from a lot of people.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you ever do ibogaine?

[Ed]

Yeah. Yeah. Did things. It opened up a few warm cans of worms of the past in me, but it. Yeah, it helped.

[Joe Rogan]

That's the one thing that I hear over and over again for people that do suffer from PTSD and people that do suffer from addiction. Yeah, ibogaine's the one.

[Ed]

It's like a weird conversation. You've avoided these very specific things for decades, and now there's no way of avoiding them. And they're there, and it's like, you know, I don't know. I don't think. I don't wanna Led me on a path, and it specifically opened up a bunch of doors for me in the realm of, you know, you know, I'm the cartel guy. And, like, I used to do this, and that's what I do when I train people on that. But then, guy going through alcohol sobriety in public, you know, I had Randy Blythe, the lead singer of Lamb of God, reach out. Out of nowhere. This random guy that I used to listen to when I was working, you know, my headphones, he's like, hey, Ed. Yeah, he's speaking about you. If you need. Do you have a sponsor? It's like, I never went to aaa. I just locked myself in a roof. You're stupid for doing that. But he, like, I'll be your sponsor. He's so. Oh, wow. So he started.

[Joe Rogan]

How cool is that?

[Ed]

I still a sponsor. He is. I don't know. He's. He's a. He's an amazing guy. Like, that's why I call him when I'm close. But I. Yes. It is insane to think about the fact that the bottle of. A bottle of liquor you can buy at the store. It'll kill you. All you. All you have to show is your id.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it's the problem of addiction. You know, this is. This. This is the actual fuel that runs the cartel, is there's a giant problem in the United States of people. And this appetite for illegal narcotics.

[Ed]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

And this pretending that people aren't doing these drugs and, like, the pretending that making them illegal is going to stop this. No, all you're doing is propping up the cartel. That's all you're doing is funding the cartel and then also helping the alcohol lobbyists in this. In this country.

[Ed]

Yeah. The. You know, the perfect storm was the outbreak of the prescription opioid epidemic in this country. That was like this initiation of what later turned into, like, oh, well, this is off the table now because we passed all these laws and didn't put some people in jail that should be in prison, some families that I don't know how they're free. Yeah. But then what takes its place? Somewhere in Mexico, people were growing poppies. And they said, let's add a little bit of fentanyl into these very weak poppy yields of heroin and see what it does. And it kicked.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, so that was the source of it, that the heroin was weak.

[Ed]

These. These hillsides have been leached for years from growing weed on. So.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, so the topsoil was bad.

[Ed]

Let's. Let's.

[Joe Rogan]

They were doing monocrop agriculture. With drugs.

[Ed]

So.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, my God. Industrial monocrop agriculture with drugs led to fentanyl being introduced into them to make it more potent.

[Ed]

Wow. And also weed legalization in parts like California led to interesting phenomenons. Some of these fields were no longer profitable, so they would switch to poppy. And one thing that people don't realize is that a lot of these things get tested out first in the markets in Mexico, because Mexico has giant drug markets that are fought over. And people will try this, you know, try this.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, boy. It's like trial samples that they hand out the supermarket. Oh, no.

[Ed]

So at some point in the past, somebody down in Jalisco probably tried the first load of Mexican fentanyl, loaded heroin. Somebody somewhere out there probably did the first hit and was like, holy, you got a winner here.

[Joe Rogan]

Or died immediately.

[Ed]

Or died.

[Joe Rogan]

Hey, that's a little too potent. Because the amount of fentanyl you need to kill somebody so small.

[Ed]

Yeah. But it. It was a hit here, though. It was a giant hit here in the US and then, you know, is.

[Joe Rogan]

It as big a problem in Mexico as it is in the United States?

[Ed]

No, the reason is. The reason is wild, though. It's not because Mexico cracks down a fentanyl. There's no fentanyl on the streets. It's because the cartels down there will kill you if they catch you selling that locally.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Ed]

Because this poison is a manta export. Wow. If the cartels catch you selling anything that isn't from them or fentanyl in certain areas, kill you. So that's the. That's the best. That's the Mexican DARE program.

[Joe Rogan]

That is so crazy. Like, they know it's bad.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah. Level the other they know. And you see some of these cartels publicly claim, like, ah, we're. We don't deal in this fentanyl thing. This is not us. Fentanyl as a whole, I think, in the US Is kind of down. And I know. I know that not all of it or not most of it is now coming from Mexico. I mean, you'll get pill shipments of fentanyl pills coming from Mexico. A lot of. A lot of those. But you also get fentanyl from in the mail all over the US There's a loophole that is finally being closed about exporting things into the United States. So if they're below 800 or something like that, they don't get the full scan. So I know for a fact there are cartels in or groups of people in the United States organizing, shipping things to the United States that have fentanyl in them. And they started loading and they're selling fentanyl loaded substances into, into the US without any sort of cartel or Mexican involvement. That is also happening in the US.

[Joe Rogan]

And the precursors for this stuff all come from China, Correct?

[Ed]

They all come from China. And this is my observation. I guess when Covid hit, these precursors started getting really rare for some of these organizations. Specifically, the senior cartel was actually getting their fentanyl in the US from some of the last shipments that they were receiving in the ports in the U.S. because the U.S. kept the ports open for a bit longer. So you had cases of people, cartel members, getting caught with fentanyl smuggling into Mexico because they couldn't get their regular supply from China from the regular ports. And that's what they were utilizing to infuse the drugs that they would send over to the US but the one that didn't have any of those issues was the new generation cartel, because they own a lot of the ports on both sides of the country. And also they've always had. I don't know this. I don't want to say that the People's Republic of China purposely has been sending fentanyl or has been turning a blind eye to all this phenomenon as a way to. With the US it's probably the case though. Yeah, it's probably the case.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it seems like that would be a good move if you want to destabilize a country. How would you get hundreds of thousands of people hooked on this terrible drug?

[Ed]

Yeah. And I mean, they're all, they're. They're all over the legal weed trade in, in the US as well. Right now? Yep. Hundreds of them I saw on the border crossing in. In single file.

[Joe Rogan]

I was watching some, some video that some guy made about Maine. About. There's this town in Maine, but there's all these Chinese nationals living there, and they've taken over weed operations in Maine.

[Ed]

It's. Wow. It's. It's. When we talked about Vietnam, I think Mexico is a weird Vietnam in a lot of ways, because you see foreign influences in Mexico in different ways. The current administration is very close with Venezuela and Cuba, which are enemies of the United States. They're pretty friendly with them. So that's one influence in the country. All of these precursors and supplies, and all of these involve Chinese chemists, industrialist individuals. A lot of the cartels were basically hiding their money through Chinese banking institutions. That's the way you hide money from the US you take it to a Chinese money broker, he Puts it in the Chinese banking institution. You go to Mexico, you have a shell company down there or a real company down there and then you have your investments with that Chinese company. Now you have legitimate money just transferring from one end to the other and nobody the wiser. So Mexico is a war is a warfield or a battle. A battle is being played out in Mexico that has a lot to do with the United States and affecting the interests of the United States. And China is clearly not the US's friend in this battle probably. And things have changed, the dynamics have changed. But you can clearly see that at some point they people in China and when it's. I've heard people say that the largest intelligence opera intelligence organization in the world is this Chinese popular, the Chinese government. Because everybody in China is part of the intelligence apparatus basically. So it's hard for me to believe that all these industrialists and all these chemists come to Mexico and show these cartel members how to cook, manufacture, make or actually fabricate. Like they've been fabricating fentanyl in Mexico. There have been a few laboratories found in Mexico where they're actually making fentanyl in Mexico. This is very common now. But they learned their tradecraft and scalecraft from people from China. How can the Chinese government have these people moving in and out of the country and showing these things in the back and forth and not like, oh, we don't know anything about this. Right.

[Joe Rogan]

They're probably direct.

[Ed]

I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

Look, it makes sense. It makes sense. You know, there's so many countries that are involved in destabilizing America, just like we're involved in destabilizing other countries. There's a whack a mole game that's.

[Ed]

Going on all over the world trend which is talked about a lot here in the us. These Venezuelan gangs, they're operating in central Mexico openly now. There's power vacuums all over the country where all these cartel guys are getting hit and people are. The age of the large organizations is probably coming to an end. Sinaloa is. The Sinaloa cartel doesn't exist anymore. There's smaller factions basically in control which is allowing things to come in. Trendarawa are these Venezuelan gangs that are operating in a way where the Mexican government hasn't dealt with that. It's more like localized gang shitalian mafia type dealings that they have. So they're, they're. Which is like old school Mexican cartels used to do. So now they're having to devolve. I mentioned this because I Talked to some people who are actively working against that federally in Mexico. And then all of a sudden we hear these mentions of Maduro, the president of Venezuela, being placed on that 50 million I think they were offering for his ad. And he's basically now the head of the giant cartel, which is an interesting narrative that the US is putting out there. Now.

[Joe Rogan]

Is that real?

[Ed]

I don't know. You see a lot of these Venezuelan people having clear like knowledge and skills, you know, and training. And then they're operating in Mexico clearly with some sort of command or directive structure that. But is in clear like no, there's no, like who's the head of the Tender Hour Cartel? Like nobody's, nobody's gonna tell you. They don't know, you know, who's supplying them, who's sending them, who's sending them out, who's controlling them, who's organizing what. And it's, it's, it's like a destabilizing thing element. I think. You know, it, it's interesting that he, that when we hear this new mention of well authorized military actions in South America, they don't say Mexico specifically, they say just South America. And a very big thing that comes up is Venezuela and Mexico. I think this, I think whatever the US is attempting is beyond cartel and drugs. And this is about regional stability now and security. Mexico's industrial plant is the most valuable resource on the planet right now. I think moving into the future, it's poised to be the next China. China. And the US sees this. And what does the US need more than anything right now? An industrial plant.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Ed]

And where is it going to get one?

[Joe Rogan]

Mexico and Maduro. Is this the first time where there's been a gigantic bounty on a president of a South American country in our lifetime?

[Ed]

I think I don't remember anybody else with one of those, but it's barely making the news. But it's, it's wild. It's wild.

[Joe Rogan]

It's the president of a country and they're offering $50 million for his capture.

[Ed]

Yeah. And he's, he's on the TV screaming. He's has these daily.

[Joe Rogan]

How does he keep from getting kidnapped?

[Ed]

I have no idea. They've tried to kill him. They tried to blow him up with a drone once. They tried.

[Joe Rogan]

Imagine like for 50 mil. Like some figure out you figure high level guys might snatch him up.

[Ed]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how that works as far as a bounty on him, but he's worried. He's mobilized militia forces all over the country. There was three years ago, five years ago, a bunch of Americans were apparently hired by these private institutions, private groups to go and try and liberate Venezuela. And they all got caught by fishermen on the coast.

[Joe Rogan]

They got caught by fishermen.

[Ed]

There was some fishermen on the coast that were like, hey, what are these guys doing here with them? 50 cal on top of a pickup truck? And I think they were, they were, they were, they were, they were grabbed and they were put on media and like, oh, these guys were all people. They, I think one of them did security for a Trump event. So they put it all on Trump. Like Trump organized this. I don't know the whole of the details. This is like a little bit out of my wheelhouse. But what I've heard is that a lot of that money actually came from Cuban intelligence people who were just trying to orchestrate an embarrassing moment for the US by paying all these mercenaries who are American to try and liberate Venezuela and just catching them. Wow. I think that something like that's happened. There's a lot of gold coming out of that country. It has a lot of gold. There's a lot of shady things coming in and out of that country. Any country that is outside of the scope of Friends of the United States is a country where shady shit can happen.

[Joe Rogan]

Jamie, what is the official reason why they have a bounty on Maduro cocaine.

[Ed]

Smuggling operation allowing or responsible for in Mexico? The President says they don't have any evidence of that. Yeah, see, and it's, it's like you don't have any evidence of that. But there's a bunch of as well, and organizations in Mexico trying that you're fighting against, you know, that are clearly involved in smuggling. Yeah. And they clearly have some sort of free movement between Venezuela and Mexico. What's going on?

[Joe Rogan]

What is going on?

[Ed]

But I think we're headed for something. Last time I was here, I said, in five years we're going to see some sort of direct military intervention in Mexico, which has already happened, I think with the arrest of El Mayo Zambala. I kind of called the whole terrorist designation thing. I said I didn't think he was going to do it on, on this first term, but the second one and he skipped. He skipped a term and then we had some time and then he came back with a force.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you think would have happened if he didn't win?

[Ed]

Who didn't win?

[Joe Rogan]

If Trump didn't win, the border stayed wide open.

[Ed]

Oh, I'm an immigrant, Joe, and I've seen that side of policy in the US and how it's affected the community and generally the people. But on the other end, I've also experienced Biden and the open borders policy and the amounts of horrible shit that I saw on that border and people being a bunch of kids that went missing or kids that were like, what's going on with all these kids? And why do they have armbands? And. And all these. Human trafficking. Yeah. All these migrant camps being set up.

[Joe Rogan]

On the border and which generally good people don't want to believe that human trafficking is a real business.

[Ed]

It is.

[Joe Rogan]

The child trafficking is a real business.

[Ed]

It is a real business and is a big business. And most of anything related to sex trafficking, specifically related to children. What part of the world do you think is the largest market for.

[Joe Rogan]

For it is the United States. They're always catching people, too. They catch people and you're like, how many have they not caught? Yeah, you know, whenever they catch some.

[Ed]

New guy that's in trouble, the, the phenomena. Phenomenon that's going on that I don't see a lot of people talk about is that the fact that, you know, a lot of Americans who are into this move to Mexico and in Mexico was harder to find some of these people. So a lot of it, some, in some of these expat community places, there are people hiding out who are pedalous and they don't no longer have to figure out stuff in the US So they're moving down there and they're doing some of that down there. Trafficking of children, the sales of children, child theft, kidnappings are common in Mexico. They're very common in Mexico. And it's not something that you hear a lot about, but masses of people and children being moved up into the border have had some sort of organized effort with them to like, help that out. You know, if you're a cartel member and you're on the border and all of a sudden you see 14 kids that are all asleep. You're like, what the. Why aren't all these kids, like, asleep? Oh, they're tired from the trip. I mean, I, I have a kid, you know, she's, she's like, I stop at a Starbucks and she wakes up like, what are you getting? Right, right. All these kids are like, asleep. They're drugged. So they carry them drugged up into the, all the way up to the border. This is, this is Biden era. So they would drug all these, these, these, these kids to not make them interact with anybody that might ask them any questions. Basically, they put an armband on them and they had some sort of organized effort on the US side to receive them and put them wherever they need to be. All that was shady. All that was really shady. I'm not, I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

That's so horrific.

[Ed]

I don't know what happens on this side. I don't know what happens on this side. Side. I know that as an immigrant myself, I know that this administration and specifically in this part of its history and what's happening right now is there's a lot of stress and fear. You know, I see the effects of it in different industries from agricultural to culture to just this general anxiety that is felt across the country by people of my culture skin that look Mexican or are Mexican, you know. But I also am not blind to, or not stupid enough to see and compare it to the past administration and some of the that went on there.

[Joe Rogan]

That's the problem is it's an overcorrection. The problem is when you have an open border and you do know that cartel members are just freely going across and you do have human trafficking and you want to stop it, then you want to get everybody out that came in during the last four years. So now you have 20 million people you have to account for.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And the problem is some of them are good people. Some of them are not gang members. Most of them are just people that wanted a better life. Most of them. But they have mandates now and mandates get creepy because then people become numbers. And if you say we got to get rid of X amount every day and then you just show up at Home Depot and you get some hard working guy with a family who just wants to like do some roofing jobs.

[Ed]

Yeah. You know, dude selling flowers. Yeah. Ladies selling fruit in cups.

[Joe Rogan]

And then there's this pushback on amnesty. People have this crazy pushback. Like if someone's been here for 20 years, they've been working on a farm and they're good people and they've established a family here, let's figure out a pathway to amnesty. And then there's the hard right pushback. They're like, you, you got here illegally. Get the out. It's like those are jobs Americans could do.

[Ed]

It's like, I mean.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, first of all, my take on that is if you're using illegal labor at the very, at the bottom line, what you're doing is not paying people what they should be paid.

[Ed]

Illegal immigration is illegal because people want it to remain so because they need that cheap labor. That's another addiction.

[Joe Rogan]

Someone explained that to me that he was having a Conversation with this extremely wealthy guy who was upset at the crackdown on the border because they need illegal workers. It's a part of their business model. Because you don't have to pay them any benefits. You don't have to pay them whatever the.

[Ed]

They're off the books.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ed]

And they can't complain if they do. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Which is. That's not good. You shouldn't have that. So they should find out. First of all, forget about whether or not someone's illegal or not. Like, what are you paying them? You should have a detailed record of how much everybody who works for you gets paid. And if there's a bunch of people that are working for you that are on record what's going on, why you have this enormous corporation that relies on illegal labor.

[Ed]

There are legal means of coming up to the US and migrating or as a worker, but it's hard.

[Joe Rogan]

That's the problem. If you're poor. If you're poor, it's almost impossible. I have good friends that have immigrated to the United States and they have to prove that their job is something that can't be done by an American or that they're exceptional at their job.

[Ed]

When I went through my immigration process, I had my wife, who I've known since I was 16, next to me, and my daughter, and they didn't believe that our marriage was real.

[Joe Rogan]

Jeez.

[Ed]

So I did it legally and I had all of the things that I needed to have to have that immigration go through. And it was the most difficult process that I've ever gone through. And I can't imagine other people that have.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't know, how about they don't speak English.

[Ed]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

How about they have no money and.

[Ed]

But there are quotas for other countries. Like, I remember when I got mine, there was like a Nigerian dude that couldn't speak English and he got it. And I got like, we need more information. Wow. And that's another aspect of it. Again, somebody brown in this country that is an immigrant.

[Joe Rogan]

Meanwhile, it's the foundation of most cities. I mean, they're crazy.

[Ed]

I'll just.

[Joe Rogan]

Ever see that documentary, A Day Without Mexicans.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

The whole country shuts down, especially la.

[Ed]

I mean, the California fires and all the houses that we've gotten. Like, who. People in construction. You go to some of these work sites. Yeah, you could, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ed]

And it's. It's been wild seeing that. And the effect it has had on. Just general. On the. On the Mexican side is fear and anger and even like more anti American feelings. You know, and also this new arrival of these Americans. Because think about this. And I have a friend that I, that I sometimes help out in places like Tijuana where we recent deportees show up in Tijuana. And there's a lot of them right now imagine you live in the US from when you're two years old all the way your 30s, and then they tell you, right? And then you're. Now you're in a shanty town in Tijuana.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy. That doesn't make any sense. That's immoral.

[Ed]

Speaking the clearest English. Like, somehow they pay taxes for all this period. So like, right, like, look, I paid my taxes and like, some of them have careers, some of them have families.

[Joe Rogan]

That is the kind of, that drives me nuts. That's, that's insane. Like, they should be grandfathered in. You should figure out a way, like if someone came over here when they're two. Stop.

[Ed]

Yeah, stop. The, the amount of people getting kind of separated and also the, the. I mean, they're, they're not. We have, we have a, we have a situation right now where there's American homeless people in Tijuana asking for money.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Ed]

Right. That's one thing. And we also have people that you think are American, but they're actually Mexicans who are recently deported who are living in very dire conditions and. Hey, you want a job? I can't speak Spanish. Like, dude.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh my God.

[Ed]

So, so it's like. And this is a phenomenon that's happening across the border and on this side.

[Joe Rogan]

I didn't even think about people that can't speak Spanish.

[Ed]

Some of them can't speak Spanish. Oh my God. I met one, I met a dude that again, he, I think he was. Since he was 2, he was brought across and he found out that he, he found out that he didn't have any. He found out that he have any paperwork, I think at 18, when he started to do some sort of process. And they're like, wait, where's your birth certificate?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh my God.

[Ed]

And he got cut up, I think somewhere in la. And you know, he sent down this, this, this perception that it's all criminals is. No, no.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, they're saying it's all criminals because if you come here illegally, it's a crime. Okay, so it was a two year old criminal. Two year old hardened criminal in his diaper.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Come on. That's insane.

[Ed]

I, I think, I think you're, you're spot on when you say this is an over correction. Yes, I think that is a Very true statement.

[Joe Rogan]

It's also treating people like numbers.

[Ed]

Yes.

[Joe Rogan]

And, you know, and not having the resources to look at each individual case, not having enough manpower and people. And also, everybody loses their compassion. You just deal with it over and over and over again. You're like, enough.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What's your story? That's not really your kid. That's not really your wife.

[Ed]

Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, like, people, they, you know, they get lied to enough that they lose their humanity.

[Ed]

Yeah, I understand that aspect of it. It's horrible. But, you know, this is. This is. We're gonna live with the consequences of this, and our kids are going to live with the consequences of this probably in the future. And when people look.

[Joe Rogan]

National karma of.

[Ed]

Yeah. When people look back at this, you know, the United States leaving Afghanistan as it did guaranteed that it's going to be very hard for America to find friends internationally. Now, realistically, however it deals with Mexico in the next few years is going. It's going to define this nation. Whatever's happening right now, whatever deals are being done, whatever this administration is pointing at is going to define us for. I mean, my kids are going to have to live with the results of this.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. What were the. There was mass deportations going on during the Obama administration, too. This is what a lot of people aren't aware of. They used to call them the deporter in chief.

[Ed]

And this is one thing that just makes me nuts because whenever I hear people up here, they want to vilify just one side, I guess.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. You can't do that.

[Ed]

But it's a trap. Yeah, that's a trap. Obama, when Obama was. He deported a lot of people.

[Joe Rogan]

I think it was somewhere around 3 million people.

[Ed]

It was like this at the war.

[Joe Rogan]

How many people did the Obama administration deport over the entire eight years? I think it was like 3 million people.

[Ed]

Yeah. So. And. And I. And I. And why.

[Joe Rogan]

Why was he deporting so many people?

[Ed]

Pressure. They probably had some sort of political pressure. I'm not sure. But the thing I point at is that within my same community, they try and point at people in politics as like. No, but he's part of the Democratic Party. He's going to help us, you know, whatever government, governor it is, in whatever state. Yeah, but no, he was a part of the same party that supported Obama and Obama was doing all this.

[Joe Rogan]

Three million, three hundred and seven thousand. So what is that total on the left, Jamie? Total apprehensions. And then the middle number you just.

[Ed]

Read is the border.

[Joe Rogan]

Us, Mexico, border apprehensions. So those are Just apprehensions or what about deportations and then removal? Total deportations is 5 million. 5 million. That's not just Mexico is kind of.

[Ed]

The point it's making. Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Five million million. Bush administration, 10 million.

[Ed]

Whoa.

[Joe Rogan]

Clinton administration, 12.3.

[Ed]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

How many is Trump deported? Let's find that out.

[Ed]

Yeah. And the. Again, the perception of the villainy, like, in the community, it's all. It's. It's about pointing to, those are the enemy. These are our friends. Those are the enemies.

[Joe Rogan]

What they're doing exactly right here. You know, people get so caught up in, you know, it's MAGA versus the Democrats. Like, you're being played.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You're getting. No matter who's in office, the whole thing is a scam. And it's. These giant corporations are laughing in your face. The whole thing has nothing to do with you. You're just a little pawn. And they use Tick tock, too. Yeah, they use. There's so much propaganda being going on.

[Ed]

Online in my mind. I always think about this first. I'm an immigrant. I'm new here. I'm trying to figure things out. I've seen more of the United States than most Americans. I think I'm missing Hawaii, Iowa, and Alaska, but I've been every other place. I was in a room in Tennessee watching a bunch of dudes dance with poisonous snakes at one point.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, boy. You went to Snake Handler Place.

[Ed]

Beautiful experience. Americans go down to Mexico and watch bullfights. Bites. And when I was there, I was like, I'm doing exactly the same you guys are doing. Shut up.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

I grew up around snakes. I used to hunt them and sell the skin to the boot makers and stuff like that.

[Joe Rogan]

So how did you get in contact with snake handlers?

[Ed]

I did a. I do a lot of training across the country for police, government institutions, privately. And we. We got a. I did a medical class out in Tennessee, and somebody there is like, hey, Ed, you're going like, we want to show you around. Show you around. You want to go see a moonshine distillery? He's like, no. Like I said, hey, are there any of these types of churches around here where they, you know, it's like, yeah. Why would you want to go there? Because it's exotic to me.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I want to go there, too.

[Ed]

That's. I want to see.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

I can't tell you too much about them because it's only to keep it low key. But when I went there, they asked me, are you Christian? It's like, I'm Catholic. So you're Not Christian.

[Joe Rogan]

Catholic is Christian.

[Ed]

No. According to them, it's a. It's a satanic institution. Oh. But I said, okay, are you ready to accept their true words? Yeah. I want to see.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Ed]

Baskets start kind of getting pulled out. And, you know, again, I grew up around snakes, so I know what a. What a basket with a snake might kind of. There's something in there. I thought they were defanged. In my mind, those things were definitely real poisonous snakes. I don't know if they give them something so they're like, chill.

[Joe Rogan]

No, they die all the time. Those guys.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

One got whacked recently.

[Ed]

Yeah. But they were still, like, handling. They're just. Just proving their faith with these snakes.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, if you're handling snakes all the time, they get accustomed to you handling them.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

As long as you're feeding them.

[Ed]

I don't know. I was. I was like, oh, it's cool. But I don't have enough faith. I think.

[Joe Rogan]

I think as long as you keep them fed and they don't feel like they're in danger.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't think they're gonna. You up. It's like, when you encounter them in the wild, it's like they're just protecting themselves. They don't want to get you.

[Ed]

Yeah. But there were some pictures around of some of the people that didn't have enough faith, I guess. Oh, you got whacked. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Did they die or they just, like.

[Ed]

I think. I mean, I think they have pictures.

[Joe Rogan]

There of people that passed, because some people don't die. You just get horrible necrosis around the wound.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Where you need massive skin grafts, and you lose, like, half your muscle tissue in your leg.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And see if you can find that article about a guy recently, snake handler, who got killed.

[Ed]

Before I move on. Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

He did his first term. He did half during. During his first four years, he did 1.5 million deportations. That's about half of Obama's first term, which was 2.9.

[Ed]

Wow. And same about the same as Biden's.

[Joe Rogan]

Term, which is 1.49 also. And what is he at now? I mean, they're only six months into the year. How crazy is it that Biden deported 1.549 million while letting in 20? Like, what do you think they were doing? Was that a part of destabilization? I know. There was also efforts to move people to specific states so that you can get a larger number for the census so you get more congressional seats. This is a dark thing that people don't Want to admit because they're a dyed in the wool Democrat. But listen, it is.

[Ed]

Remember who to vote for, and they just get dropped.

[Joe Rogan]

I had a conversation with my parents about it. They're like, no. I'm like, yes, it's about congressional seats. It's like the census counts illegals. And not only that, they're trying to make it so that those people can vote. And if you can make it so that those people can vote, then all of a sudden you ship these people to a place, you give them EBD cards, you get them on food stamps, you give them Medicaid money. They have money. And now who are you gonna vote for? You're gonna vote for the people who got your money gonna people who give you the food stamps. Like, who are you going to vote for? You're going to vote for the people that shipped you to Springfield, Ohio? This is a good spot.

[Ed]

And why do you think that is? Like, yes, boats. Congressional seats is one.

[Joe Rogan]

Swing states.

[Ed]

Swing states. Net population growth.

[Joe Rogan]

I think there's a little of that too. I think there's population collapse.

[Ed]

There's a population. I mean, nobody's immigrant. There's no immigrant crisis in China right now.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Ed]

And I think they're on their way to probably collapsing if they go through this downturn in their population. I think the US Is at some points of its history, I think, has been kind of close to that.

[Joe Rogan]

Japan is in the middle of it. South Korea is experiencing it.

[Ed]

And I ask because I'm trying to find logic between deporting the Biden administration, doing that, and then opening the door in that way. For me, it's always been interesting how a lot of these migrant caravans have a story or a narrative in their head all the way from where they. Where they're coming from up into the U.S. so, like, Sean Ryan was here a while ago, and I think he mentioned that we. We actually went. I took him down to tj, to one of these migrant caravans that was right on the border. And I told, hey, Sean, you want to talk to some of these people? Ah, sure. And he got a kick out of the fact that in the middle of this camp there was a giant Biden flag flying. But that wasn't the funniest thing. I'll see if I could send you the picture. All of the guys that we were interviewing, this is still Covid mask era. Some of them had Make America Great Again masks on. I have no idea who gave them those, but somebody with a sense of humor probably did. I have a Picture of me and Sean Ryan with some of the people that we interviewed. And they have the big America great again mask on. But they were told by the organizers that they had a clear path to the US and all they needed to do was make a lot of noise on the border, make a lot of newsworthy events on the border, talk to all the press they could and somebody there was keeping tabs, and then they could go, wow, that was their, the, the mindset that a lot of them had, which is a weird one, you know, and then some of them would talk to us about the fact that they would get aid from the U. Like, from Americans, would come down and give them their camps, their tents.

[Joe Rogan]

Usaid.

[Ed]

Yeah. And there was a lot of dollars being handed out to pay for things. So it was all. It was shady. Right. Now, like, I actually talked to three. Three, I think they were Honduran. They just got, they just got to the border. Now they're. Their, their idea is to go to Europe. They have this weird sense that somebody told them somewhere down there that Europe is taking immigrants. So they're. They're trying to make their way to Mexico. So from Mexico, they want to go to Europe. Europe. They're not looking at the US Anymore, which is a weird change in their narrative.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you see, the mass immigration in Europe is bananas.

[Ed]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

It's really crazy.

[Ed]

Yeah. And again, I.

[Joe Rogan]

But what is it about? Like, why. Why would someone organize this? Why would someone fund this?

[Ed]

I don't know. Destabilization, Political means. Maybe they want. The US Wants to avoid population decline, so this is one way they can backdoor it.

[Joe Rogan]

There's probably many factors, right?

[Ed]

The political.

[Joe Rogan]

The destabilization is one. But just politically, to get more congressional seats because of the way they use the census, which I think Trump is trying to change. Is he changing that? They said they weren't going to count illegals in the census anymore.

[Ed]

Anymore. I haven't heard of that.

[Joe Rogan]

Is that. I mean, what kind of laws are involved? Could you do that with an executive order? Like, I don't know how you would do that.

[Ed]

I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

But. So you have that. And then you have the true need for labor that people don't want.

[Ed]

Which. Yeah. Which is. I mean, again, I've been all over the country and every time I go into a hotel in the Oklahoma. Buenos dias. Buenos. I was. I always to the Buenos Dias.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

And I. 80% of the time, like, buenos dias. Like, what part of Mexico are you from? We have this cool Conversation kitchens like.

[Joe Rogan]

I've throughout New York City. Anthony Bourdain told me about that.

[Ed]

He said all his best cooks were Mexican from Puebla. Wow. I was in Vegas and this sushi restaurant, High level sushi restaurant.

[Joe Rogan]

Trump calls for new U.S. census that excludes undocumented immigrants. Census has historically counted all residents, regardless of citizen status, as required by the 14th amendment. So you can't really do that.

[Ed]

Congress has the power for the census, not the president.

[Joe Rogan]

So he'd be changing something so Congress would have to agree with him on something like that, which I think politically there might be motivation to do that, because you could game the system by an administration allowing not just mass immigration, but then the moving of all these immigrants to all these areas where you wanted to take over.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Which is crazy. Like using these people as political ploys and then they get a fresh start in America. So it's kind of like a win win. You know, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats.

[Ed]

Yeah. You, you. When. Whenever I, When I, Whenever I travel, I always look at people in the service industry. Like, I try to see where they're from. And it's always, it's always Mexican. You know, a lot of them are Mexican. In different parts of the country, it's different. But mostly Mexicans. Minnesota, there's a lot of. Not Mexicans there. Ethiopian. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot of Somalians.

[Ed]

Somalians. I mean, I think there was one that was running for mayor. There was recently.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Was on.

[Joe Rogan]

Young fella.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty radical. He looked. He looked exactly like somebody that appeared in a movie. Yeah. Where he was a captain for a moment.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

That's all I'm gonna say. It was pretty funny. But independently of that, the, the amount of, like, cultures I'm experiencing across the country, it's like, wow, this is just like the UN of countries. You know, everywhere I go, I meet people from all over the world.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's, that's the part of the beauty of America, really. The beauty of America is that it's a melting pot that's supposed to be what's cool about it. But when it's sort of weaponized in this way, when people are using it for their political gain and bringing people in for political gain, and then making a person like you go through crazy hoops and ladders and all this shit to try to get in here legally, you're like, oh, you're discouraging legal immigration in favor of illegal immigration, which is really easy.

[Ed]

Yeah. And I understand the part of the, the part of The American populace that are like, we want to keep America, America. Guess what? I want to keep America. America. That's why I came up here. Yeah. Going to Kentucky and experiencing that in America. Yeah. Cool.

[Joe Rogan]

Listen, there's no more American people than Cuban American. Those are hardcore, hardcore America. You know why? Because they know what the communism looks like. This isn't just like some theoretical they teach you in college. Like their grandparents and their great grand grew up oppressed. Like they had to deal with that stuff. They escaped and they came over to America and they have no tolerance for any.

[Ed]

Well, well, in Mexico right now, there are things you can't say. You know, there's laws that prohibit you from being violent verbally against a political figure if she's a female. And you'll have to go on TV and like, read out like a whole thing apologizing for your insults. Public humiliation basically is being legalized in Mexico, and Mexico is going towards that side of things. And. But I'm up here and I'm seeing some of the things up here as well, you know, so, like, I don't. I have this. I have this vision of the US where it's like, cool. This is a place where I'm safe to pursue whatever happiness I think exists. I don't. I didn't find that happiness in my country, where I'm from, where I came from, because this or this or this or that. Why do I want to bring some of that here? I guess would be one of the ways I think about it. It. See, I don't. I don't want. I don't want. Hey, this Texas is kind of boring. Let's bring in militarized cartel members to roll around the city and pick up kids and like that and drain them into camps.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's the big fear about Texas having Californians come here. Don't California our Texas? Yeah, you know, because they're like, man, California is just. We gotta get out of here. This place, the laws are dumb. What made this place. This place? Those laws, dumbass.

[Ed]

Yeah, like constitutional carry. Cool. Cool. That's a cool thing.

[Joe Rogan]

Keeps everybody super polite.

[Ed]

Yeah, everybody super polite. And also like, hey, you know, call the cops after, you know, whatever mentality that is in Mexico. Airsoft guns are like on weird list. Like, you can't buy a site for a gun. If you want to buy a gun, you have to fly to Mexico City, which basically makes it prohibited to anybody that doesn't have any real means or money to get, get, get guns or training. So it's basically you, you're not, you don't get the privilege to defend yourself in a country where you can't trust the cops. 90% of all murders are never solved. And look at all these fucking roving gangs rolling around with fucking capabilities of taking down helicopters. They're cool, but you can't have a.22 caliber pistol. That's the mindset that when I came up here, I'm like, oh, cool. This is like, this is a place where some of that is not the case. But then a bunch of gun laws passed in California while I was going through my process and people started showing up to the gun range that I would go to train with like weird California compliant guns that you have to like weld the magazine to a certain place and stuff like that. And I was like, oh man, it's changing up here too.

[Joe Rogan]

Just California.

[Ed]

Yeah. So just California.

[Joe Rogan]

Just California. California is rough stuff. Some of the things they did, like they made pistol companies make magazines with lower capacity because if you can't kill people with a ten round magazine, like what, what, how many lives does that save? Zero.

[Ed]

Some of those laws are retarded, but.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, but that's it. It's just the illusion that they're doing something to combat drug violence or gang violence or gun violence or. It's all illusions. Yeah, it's all like optics.

[Ed]

But it is, it is, it is. I mean, it's. It's when I, when I get asked about my American experience, you know, I've been profiled, I've been racist, has been sent to me, you know, where are.

[Joe Rogan]

You living these days?

[Ed]

Texas? Houston. Beautiful Houston. It's the right amount of ghetto.

[Joe Rogan]

I love Houston. I love it.

[Ed]

It's a little bit, it's a little bit of Mexican there.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, Houston is a big ass melting pot. It's one of the best cities.

[Ed]

Yeah, it really is. I, I, when I, when I got there and again, I lived in Kentucky for a bit in California and then there I've experienced great profiling and racism in California, which is pretty funny to say, but that's where I experienced the most of it. I've experienced people opening their houses to me and like just being the best people on the planet. I experienced that in Texas and Kentucky with some people who are just like, like, cool as I've experienced the best and the worst this country has to offer, I think. And I can see in it like, I get it. I get what America is like. I, dude, I finished high school and then I went to work for a paramilitary institution somewhere in New Mexico. And then I came up here, and I have seven employees now in a company. I've spoken to members of Congress, I've trained federal forces and people that I've read about in books on how to do things that I learned in this horrible country. Warfare that I had to go through. There's no other place on the planet would have provided me these opportunities for myself and for my support my daughter. There's no other place in the world. So, like, I definitely have fucking skin in the game when it comes to this country. It is disheartening that with the way things are now, like, we're it. Like, brown Mexican immigrants of any kind, legal or illegal, are it. We are it right now in the sights of ice, in the sights of any sort of authority figure that might want to see, like, wait, wait, what are you doing? Who are you? So that's. It's a. It's an anxiety. And again, it's. I've talking to people from my community across the country. It's. It's. It's a generalized anxiety of not feeling at home at home. Which is. Dark. Dark. It's dark. Yeah, it's dark.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem with these fucking braids. It also makes the rest of us feel awful. Like, people that aren't scared of it. You feel awful about what America stands for, the idea that we would find it right to send some kid who was born here or born in Mexico, but came over here when he was 2, can't speak Spanish at all. Some kid in LA that just doesn't have paperwork, and all of a sudden he's in Mexico.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, that is dark. That's crazy. And that makes everybody else feel like, oh, this isn't a good country, then that's not a good thing to do. That's a bad thing. That's an immoral thing to do. That's a thing that you do when you don't care. And this is supposed to be the shining light of the world.

[Ed]

Yeah. And mind you, I talk to everybody. Like, I'm. I'm an open conversation, open book with anybody. I don't see anybody as an enemy. I don't see anybody as an opponent. I'm. Dude, I've been through. I've been through hell and back. I've. So. I've encountered situations where I've had to talk to immigration officials and, you know, and I'd say, like, hey, dude, what's it like? Like? What's what? Like, being the villain right now. Like, the amount of A lot of these guys are getting doxed. They're utilizing AI technology to take a picture of them and removing the mask. And it gives you a guesstimation of what their faces are. Like. There's. There's people documenting their tattoos and then doxing them online. And I'm like, they are like, why do you ask that, Ed? Because we were vilified too. And that's how they, you know, that's how they got to us. You know, they started making us into the enemy. There is. There was a lot of interest out there, I can see at high levels to separate us and keep us fighting. Like at a cultural level, I think more destabilization.

[Joe Rogan]

So you think this is part of the plan?

[Ed]

I don't know if there's a plan or not, but hopefully it kind of makes sense.

[Joe Rogan]

Like the part of the whole agenda is to create even more conflict.

[Ed]

Hopefully somebody has a plan plan. Like I. Hopefully somebody knows what the they're doing somewhere, but maybe indeed, right. If they don't, man, that's a dark.

[Joe Rogan]

That's what makes me wonder. I wonder. I wonder if it really is a big plan or if it really is just human chaos.

[Ed]

If I find myself in a room with Illuminati people and there's like a. Then I'm like, oh, these guys are smart. Like, you know, whatever, whatever this is. If we're going to be cattle, at least somebody that knows their is going to be in charge. But I don't. I don't know. Like, I don't know. I see this. I see. I see the US in people, like people internationally see the US declining. You know, I got to experience the US in the 80s crossing the border and going to San Diego and going to SeaWorld with my parents and shopping and seeing the portions of everything bigger in the supermarkets. And then as an immigrant in the U.S. now I gotta get everything smaller and infrastructure is very dilapidated in certain parts of the country. And it's not the US of the 80s, it's not the US of the 90s. It's different. So, yeah, I can see why people are screaming at the fact that, yeah, there's something has to be done. We're losing it as a country. But I think you hit it on the nail on the head. We went through Biden administration. That was all about who was in charge is the question I have. Like, I don't. Was that dude in charge? No, somebody was.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, not only that, I think there was more than one of that dude. You know, there's like fake Bidens.

[Ed]

Yeah. And his son going online and doing an interview and just giving us. Giving us like a intimate view of his family conversations and something that's fun. He's. Dude, I party with that guy. Probably. Well, not anymore. Back then, maybe I don't think he even parties anymore, but it's wild to think those. And then people question why things are the way they are and why people are struggling in different parts of this. Parts of society in this country. I came here to work and to make a better life for myself and for my kid. And I somehow managed to be in a place where I have, like, a employees and I have a company and I'm working, I'm doing work, and I. American dream. It is the American dream and it's. It still exists and I'm proof of it still being real. But it is under attack from all sides. From all sides? Yeah, from all sides. I'll do. I'll say that three times. Yeah. People need to realize that it's not just right. It's every. There's, there's. There's definitely an interest to keep us all fighting. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And social media is a big part of that.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, that's literally how most people are getting their information and getting their narratives.

[Ed]

And the same fight that this played on social media statewide stateside is kind of like the same fight that is being sold to us as far as Mexico versus the United States States. We're not enemies. We shouldn't be enemies. We should be the best of friends. There are thousands of Americans living in Mexico now. There's protests going on for gentrification in Mexico City from people being local, being pushed off. Go home gringos written on the walls. Meanwhile, there's ICE raids in LA and people being rolled up and being deported. And that's happening all the while where people are like, Mexicans are, like, sick of all these Americans living in all these cool parts of Mexico and gentrifying them, which is wild. I mean, are we into mass American deportations next from Mexico? Is that going to happen? In the past, you can just cross the border as an American and they wouldn't ask you for shit. Now they ask you for id.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, really?

[Ed]

Yes. A lot of Americans that live in places like Tijuana and then work in San Diego have encountered this. Oh, things are changing. Like, where's your id? They look Mexican. Yeah. Well, where's your federal voter id? It's like, you're an American, right. And you just work in San Diego. Yeah. Go back. And they really yeah, they send them back. Do you have to pay for like a, like a visa extension thing so you can cross the border regularly or you can be in Mexico for long periods. Kids. But things are changing again. These lines are being drawn on the ground I don't think are good for anybody. Free commerce at that border. San Diego and Tijuana are one in the same. From blood family commerce. Yeah, they're one in the same. Why draw a line there?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. When I used to work in San Diego and I used to stand up down there and you know, if I hung out after the shows, I'd meet up a bunch of people that came to the show from Mexico.

[Ed]

Yeah, yeah. And I'd say, wow, did you just.

[Joe Rogan]

Came over here for the show?

[Ed]

Yeah. Drive. Drive across. Yeah, drive across. And there's again we get as both of Mexico is poised to be a powerhouse economically if we don't it off with socialism.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, and why is that being pushed too? More destabilization.

[Ed]

But it is poised to be a powerhouse. You know, we have, we have the youth, we have everything we need to just explode resources, everything. But that's the same reason why we're being targeted so much for destabilization there. Wow. There's no path forward. I think to have a isolated United States with giant walls and guards on the walls and nobody crossing that wall and Mexico next to it. I don't think that. I don't want to. I don't think that's. I don't. I wouldn't want to go there. No.

[Joe Rogan]

There's always been this free flow back and forth. They just gotta make it so that cartel members can't just come across or, or terrorists from other countries don't have an easy pathway.

[Ed]

The flow of armaments going down to Mexico.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh yeah.

[Ed]

Is one issue. The flow of drugs coming up from Mexico is another issue. The organized crime elements in Mexico doing horrific things to the local populace and to each other when they fight each other is an issue. But also the United States historical foreign policy to Mexico and its responsibility for a lot of these things happening in Mexico is also key. What should the United States do about its responsibility in the past and some of its foreign policies in Mexico that have led Mexico to be where it is right now? As far as violence, I don't know. I don't think a full on military attack like Afghanistan or Iraq would be the answer because we see where that goes. It's not as easy as sending just drones down there and exploding a few dudes because we've Also seen what that happens when you cut the head of one snake. You just abducted the head of the Sinaloa cartel and brought him to Texas. And all, and all that did didn't quell cartel violence in Mexico. It didn't end the Sinaloa cartel. It just made a giant war in the state of Sinaloa, and it divided up one cartel into two and probably made one of the biggest threats, the United States national security, as far as cartels go, bigger and more influential. That's what that did. Wow. And again, the path forward, I don't know, man. I, I, this, that's like both countries are linked through blood, genetics, culture. You know, there's a dude online saying that Mexican food is better in the US Than Mexico is nuts. Nonsense. He's just. Idiot. That's hot.

[Joe Rogan]

Nonsense.

[Ed]

Stupid dude. You'll know who I'm talking about. But you, you, both countries are like, again, I've been across this country, I traveled across it, and it is a great country. I, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love Mexico as well. It's my home country, and I travel when I can there as well. I don't see a future without both of our countries just, like, figuring things out together. There's no, I don't see a future like that.

[Joe Rogan]

Well said. Well said.

[Ed]

We are going to need each other more than we think in the coming years. And open warfare between both countries is not, not insane. It's not going to be, it's not going to lead to anything. You, the United States doesn't have the manpower to stop the wave of migration that will come out of that country if you start lobbing targeted strikes in certain parts of that country, there's no way. So if you want to talk about it like my migration is your issue, that you're going the wrong way. And also, what, at what point do some of these criminal organizations, as I said, become freedom fighters?

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Ed]

And once they become freedom fighters, at what point do they start targeting Americans living down there? Right.

[Joe Rogan]

And it's just not good. I wonder if they've thought it out like the US Government's thought it out. The way you're laying it out.

[Ed]

I've, I've spoken to members of Congress and I've spoken to members. I've been in Washington a few times, and I've spoken to people that are in charge of things, and they have notions. Some of them, you know, but some of them are clearly, you know, they took that.

[Joe Rogan]

They don't get that world. And if they're not, like, fully invested in finding out and really diving deep and getting an understanding of it.

[Ed]

How.

[Joe Rogan]

How could they know what. You know?

[Ed]

There's. Well, they're doing the right thing by, like, I've been. Been in rooms with people who were part of this conflict and, and they're. They're asking the right people, but they're. Some of them are verifying, like, oh, we were just in Mexico and we spoke to the local officials there and they told us that they're doing this now. And look at all those drugs that they just got. They're doing their job now. And I'm like, dude, I used to work for them. And I could tell you that those boxes beneath those pills are probably empty and they're just there to, like, produce a visual weight.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Ed]

Of it. And also, like, that unit that. That did that. That seizure. Yeah. They're on a payroll for this organization. And, and also the governor of this place where this seizure happened. Yeah. You just took her visa away because the husband is involved in fuel smuggling. So, like, is this a win?

[Joe Rogan]

Wow. But, yes, you're freaking me out.

[Ed]

I'm sorry. But, yeah, there are people that are trying to figure it out in the government. There are people that are asking the right questions. I just, I don't know what they're doing. I don't know what. What's going to happen with. With the information. But a few things are clear. Everything is on the table as far as military options in Mexico and beyond in South America right now. There is an interest by the United States in some of that going on that's clear. And what that's going to look like, Is it already happening with the abduction and subsequent arrest of El Mayo Sambala on a plane and some pretty kind of weird circumstances do the United States. Is the United States already doing political counter operations against the regime that is ruling over Mexico in some way, shape or form? I don't know. There's a bunch of political exposes going on all over Mexico right now with a bunch of documents and members of their very austere political party having lavish lifestyles outside of the country. And they get photographed and then that goes on the news. And then the president of Mexico says the CIA probably is taking all those pictures as a counter operation to what they're doing.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, boy.

[Ed]

So I think. I think whatever's happening is. It's already in motion. My point is, the cost of this is if it's. If it isn't done in a. In a. If it isn't done, if if it isn't done correctly, if it isn't done in a way where it's not taking into consideration the outcome or the fallout of something like abducting another giant head of a cartel down there or taking him out. And I think the biggest target out there is the head of the new generation cartel. I think that's. If I could be a psychic right now, and I say the US Is going to plan some sort of direct action operation. I think that's going to be aimed at them. But if the Americans have a vision that they're going to go somewhere and everybody's going to be wearing cartel members vest on, I don't think they're ready to go to somewhere and they have a bunch of police officers with, with full uniforms or actually police officer there or members of the military that engage in a firefight with them and call back up from the military. And then now you're involved in a. Nash, in a, in a fight with the, with the army down there.

[Joe Rogan]

Because they're all involved with the cartel.

[Ed]

Some of them are. Again, we hear these stories of these people. Who's training them, who's supplying them, who's, who's showing them how to use those rocket launchers that they're getting from the Ukraine. You hear these stories and you're like, just like that dude standing up there. The CIA was involved in drug dealers like, Ed, you're, you're just talking out of your ass this conspiracy theory shit. Five years ago I said terrorist designation and direct action in Mexico against a high level cartel head. And here we are. Yeah, and maybe I may be on that side of conspiracies, but I've been pretty spot on.

[Joe Rogan]

You've been pretty spot on, Ed. I appreciate you very much. I'm glad we did this. I've been following your work over the last five years and you're always on it. So it's great to hear you lay all this stuff out, tell everybody how they could find you online.

[Ed]

Last time I was here, they deleted my Instagram account of over 500,000 followers. Course, after the podcast I posted something about Chinese people being welded into their homes during COVID and the Instagram didn't like that and they, they took down my account. Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

So what is it now?

[Ed]

It is Manifesto Radio podcast. At. It's at Manifesto Radio Podcast on instagram and on YouTube if you want to check me out. I have a small podcast. I talk to just people related to this environment and I post pictures daily and a bunch of weird memes and stuff like that. It's basically an open blog of my travels. I'm constantly traveling, talking to people that are involved in this and just putting the word out there. I'm not a. I'm not in politics. I am not a reporter. I'm not a cartel reporter. I am a dude that went through some. I'm still going through some. I'm trying to figure things out as a new American, and I want the best for both countries. That's who I am. Beautiful.

[Joe Rogan]

Thank you. Appreciate you, brother.

[Ed]

Thank you. All right, bye, everybody.