Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was at it again on Thursday, this time obliterating the woke, “libertarian” Cato Institute during a press conference about what the GOP intends on doing with its power that ended up touching on the fentanyl crisis, among other issues.
During the part of the speech about fentanyl, a reporter claimed that the fentanyl crisis is being caused by Americans, not illegal immigrants, saying:
“Most fentanyl comes across the border from people who are US citizens, not immigrants.”
Rep. Greene didn’t entertain that and play along with the whole thing, instead she said:
“What’s your proof? Because that’s not what we’ve been shown by border patrol.”
The reporter then cited the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, saying “from the Cato Institute.”
And that’s when MTG when savage mode on the clownish libertarian outfit, saying “We’re not taking the Cato Institute seriously.”
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Watch that exchange here:
Reporter: "Most fentanyl comes across the border from people who are US citizens, not immigrants."
MTG: "What's your proof? Because that's not what we've been shown by border patrol."
Reporter: "From the CATO Institute"
MTG: "We're not taking the CATO Institute seriously." pic.twitter.com/tcSc2mFE2P
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 17, 2022
The Cato Institute report to which the reporter refers is a September of 2022 one. In it, David J. Bier of the Cato Institute argues that it’s American citizens that are to blame for the fentanyl crisis, saying:
Fentanyl overdoses tragically caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths last year. Many politicians who want to end U.S. asylum law claim that immigrants crossing the border illegally are responsible. An NPR‐Ipsos poll last week found that 39 percent of Americans and 60 percent of Republicans believe, “Most of the fentanyl entering the U.S. is smuggled in by unauthorized migrants crossing the border illegally.” A more accurate summary is that fentanyl is overwhelmingly smuggled by U.S. citizens almost entirely for U.S. citizen consumers.
Here are facts:
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Fentanyl smuggling is ultimately funded by U.S. consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99 percent of whom are U.S. citizens.
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In 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers—ten times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.
That does appear to be true. Many of the CBP press releases on seizures of fentanyl and other drugs note that it is US citizens who were caught smuggling drugs. But from where are those illicit drugs coming? From Mexican drug cartels, often supplied with the base chemicals necessary for fentanyl by CCP-connected entities.
So even if it’s not illegal immigrants that are bringing the majority of the drugs across, it is the drug cartels that are arranging the process and pushing the drugs across the border, and a large amount of revenue for those cartels also comes from their human smuggling operations.
So, to damage the drug cartels and attempt to strangle them economically, defending the border and stopping the illegal immigration routes is a must, as is dealing with the US citizens that are working for those cartels.
Further, regardless of who the low-level suspects are in drug smuggling cases, MTG is right that the Cato Institute need not be taken seriously by serious people. Its open-borders stance, not to mention its often woke stance on social issues, shows it to be full of theorists with no grasp of reality and the effects of their preferred policies on the body politic.
By: Gen Z Conservative