Mexico ruined Donald Trump's party.
In music, theater, and politics, silences are part of the message. Sometimes it is the silences that make all the other elements make sense.
Don't you find it strange that neither Donald Trump nor Marco Rubio have come out to congratulate or take a stance with Mexico on what happened over the weekend? It was only the White House press secretary who, out of mere formal and institutional diplomacy, addressed the issue, without the political component that characterizes Trump. The president takes credit every time one of his government's demands is met by Mexico, but he has remained silent on the most important one.
Considering that Trump made Mexico and its criminal groups the main focus of his last campaign, it makes no sense that he has not come out to address the issue. At the time of writing, there has been no message. Everything points to him being unhappy that the political trophy has been taken away from him. It was not the Navy Seals or Delta Force who carried out the operation, as in Venezuela, but the Army Special Forces, the National Guard Reaction Group, and the Air Force. There is data to support this hypothesis:
Defense Secretary General Trevilla mentioned in the morning briefing that the operation was carried out with intelligence from U.S. agencies, without operational presence. The operation was planned in less than two days and carried out immediately. The first thing that stands out is that the Navy, which had been the institution that collaborated most directly with the neighboring country, was left out.
The United States had the perfect trap: a few months before the World Cup, they shared intelligence with the Army about his location, valid for a weekend, with the threat that if Mexico didn't do it, they would. Classifying the cartels as terrorists allows the joint forces of the US Armed Forces or the well-known JSOC, which operated in the Middle East, to carry out precision attacks with drones. The attack on Nemesio Oseguera under this regulatory framework was very attractive; far from urban centers, in a remote location with no or few casualties among the armed forces or civilians. Mexico does not have a regulatory framework that allows for such attacks because it is still governed by the rules of combat from the previous generation: repelling attacks, advancing troops on the ground to surround a target and seek to apprehend them, as it is illegal to formally target a criminal.
What Trump did not believe would happen did happen: the Army carried out the operation, with information of little use, with great risks of casualties and with the pressure of having the threat of the United States hanging over it prior to the World Cup. Trump's silence is explained by the fact that he will no longer be able to accuse the Mexican government of corruption and inefficiency, putting an end to his internal discourse ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
