One of the things Alejandro Robles said in 2025 is that Mexicans who come to the United States and assimilate and embrace American values and learn the language are traitors. They're traitors to Mexico and ought to be treated as such. And he added that Scheinbaum, the president, who he knows well, agrees with him. So the point is they do not want their countrymen coming here, embracing the American dream, adopting American values and assimilating. They want them not to be assimilated. They want them to be loyal to Mexico. Well, hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hanson. In his own words, I'm Jack Fowler, the host. We are recording on February 12th, Thursday the 12th, and I'm pretty sure this episode's going to be up tomorrow, on the 13th. And pinch hitting for Victor today. We've had some great pinch hitters, but this one is like Babe Ruth pinch hitting for you. And that's Peter Schweitzer. Peter is the author. I'm going to show it here. This is a podcast, so some people listen. But Peter, word on the street is more people actually watch podcasts than listen to it. So for those who are watching it, The Invisible Coup, how America, American elites and foreign powers use immigration as a weapon. Is it number one on the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks in a row? Is that the word on the street? It is. And I'm humbled by the support. And I'm very pleased that the New York Times apparently didn't engage in any shenanigans. So I'm very happy about that. When you're on the New York Times bestseller list, that's the only time a conservative will use the New York Times in a positive way. But I'm happy it's for you and well-deserved. I've got five questions, actually six. I'm going to ask Peter. That's the format we use on the pinch-hitting shows for Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, which is carried by the Daily Signal. So I'm going to ask Peter question number one when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words with Peter Schweitzer, the author of The Invisible Coup. Peter is the president of the Government Accountability Institute. And you see, he's the author of many books, which this is number one, but you have had other New York Times bestsellers, other number one New York Times bestsellers. Have any risen to this? I've been very fortunate, Jack. This is the fifth one in a row. I don't quite know why, but I'm grateful for it and happy that we're hitting a nerve. And people will always say to me, oh, your timing's amazing. You know, timing assumes intentionality on my part. I start writing the I start working on these things, researching them two years before they come out. So I have no idea what's going on. But I'm very grateful for the support and encouragement by everybody. Well, I'm going to ask you some questions about this book itself, but the first general question before I ask the five, and I've written them down. Folks appreciate the non-mumbling. Peter, before I get to those questions, just give our listeners and viewers an understanding of what prompted you to write this book. Was there a specific trove of information you came across that tripped a wire for you, or have you been noting and assembling these threads? I think they're more like cables or ropes are so thick, of troubling information over the years and finally found the time to tell the story of this particular strategic, coordinated effort to undermine America through immigration? Well, it's a good question, Jack. You know, I think there were a couple of trigger points. I've started thinking about this book in early 2024, presidential election coming up. Remember, we all saw the videos of people pouring across the border. Trump was making it a campaign issue. And of course, a lot has been written on immigration. But I felt like we were kind of missing the larger point of it. There was the you know, the great replacement theory was out there, which didn't seem to me like it actually explained what was going on. It's kind of this Marxist construct that capitalists, capitalism is the problem. I don't think that was quite right. And I ran across a couple of interesting factoids that led me to think there's something more here that we're missing. The first one was I was curious as to what in Mexico they thought and were saying about immigration. And I ran across, you know, really kind of stunning quotes from top Mexican officials saying that this was actually something that was good, that mass migration out of their own country to the United States was good because it was an opportunity to extend Mexico's sovereignty into the United States. Sometimes they call it Reconquista. And they're quite explicit about it. And I thought, that's kind of weird. I mean, they don't really believe that. And then I poked a little bit more and saw that they actually had built infrastructure in the United States, that that literally there are Mexican senators and Mexican members of their chamber of deputies or Congress that live in the United States. Their job is to represent Mexicans living in our borders in the Mexican legislature, which struck me as utterly bizarre and an intrusion into our sovereignty. So that got me thinking about the larger scope of what was going on here in terms of motivation. The other factoid was China's birth tourism industry and the scale of it. This is related to the idea that the 14th Amendment birthright citizenship, that if you are born here, you're automatically granted citizenship. And yet China has this industrial scale program whereby members of the Chinese elite will fly their pregnant wives to the United States. They will give birth. And as soon as the infant is ready to fly, a week or so after birth, they will fly back to China. The child will be a U.S. citizen, but they'll be raised in the People's Republic of China. And when they turn 18, they're going to vote. Those two factoids led me to wonder, is there something larger at work here? And I'll say before the book came out, I had the opportunity to sit with the president, with Marco Rubio and with Scott Besant in the Oval Office for about 55 minutes sharing these findings. We also went to Capitol Hill, met with people there. And everybody was kind of equally shocked by these things that I had been shocked by. So it was, for me, kind of confirmation that, yeah, there's something that we've been missing. So those weren't factoids. Those were facts. Well, Peter, here's the first of the five pointed questions. There's a Bernie Sanders-launched nonprofit named Progressive International. didn't exist 10 years ago, but certainly exists today, much to our great concern, I believe. It's populated not by bleeding heart liberals, but by bad ideological actors, particularly in Central and South America, such as the former leftist president of Ecuador, Rafael Carrera. Tell us, Peter, about Progressive International, its quick rise, its hemispheric web of drug involvement and crime, and what it does to try to destabilize the United States of America. Yeah, so Progressive International was an idea that Bernie Sanders came up with in 2018. That's when it was launched. And the idea, in his words, was to create an organization that would bring under one tent progressives in North America, primarily the United States, and Latin America, so they could work jointly. It would be kind of an international, so to speak, for progressives in the region. His former foreign policy advisor was put in charge of it. They brought in members of the Latin American left including you know the gentleman you mentioned and the current president of Columbia for example Petro and others And it got involved with American politics You had people like AOC, Congressman Craig Cesar, members of the Senate, progressive senators that started participating in the in the program. Well, in and of itself, that's not, I guess, entirely unusual, right, that, you know, political movements try to create international. The problem is when you start to look at who is on the council of leaders for this organization, roughly 30 percent of them, I mean, clear cut, have ties to drug cartels. You know, they're politicians or they're individuals who have long records of known ties to the drug cartels. And then I started looking at, well, what is Progressive International focused on? What what are their priorities? because there are a lot of things that, you know, progressives from North America and South America could be working on. And they started working on two really important issues in their mind. The first one was open borders, right? We want a borderless world. There should be no wall. There should be nothing on the U.S.-Mexican border. And number two was a call for the ending of any military operations by the United States or allied governments against the drug cartels in Latin America. Those were the two priorities, which almost immediately you realize those are two high priorities for the drug cartels themselves. They like open borders. It's sort of well established in law enforcement circles that during the Biden years, the drug cartels made more money smuggling people than they did smuggling drugs. And the second one is probably self-explanatory. They don't want military units coming after them. So to me, this represents sort of an intrusion of the drug cartels into American politics directly. And the problem is, is they have a pretty strong foothold because, you know, people like AOC and Congress have actually introduced resolutions calling for the end of military operations against drug cartels and all sorts of other initiatives. So this, to me, is related to the immigration as a weapon because you've got various bad actors, including the drug cartels, that benefit enormously from mass migration. They benefit financially and they also benefit politically. And I think Progressive International is an illustration of that problem. Yeah, the cartels, by the way, Peter, the headlines today and we're recording again on the 12th of February, this closing of the airport in El Paso has to do with cartel drones. I mean, it sounds like we should go to war with these, literal war with these bad actors. Before I ask you some more questions, though, we have to pay the bills. 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Peter, tell us about the, quickly, if you don't mind, where should people, you have a website, peterschweitzer.com, is that correct? Yeah, peterschweitzer.com. And then my podcast is the drilldown.com. And you can also find me on Twitter X at at Peter Schweitzer. Okay. And tell us about Government Accountability Institute, which you are the president of. Yeah, this is a 501c3. We've been around for about 15 years. And we work at exposing cronyism and corruption. We started with really exposing insider trader on the stock market by members of Congress. That was our first big project. We've gone on to expose a whole host of other corrupt actors. And you can find out more about what we do at Government Accountability Institute. If you just Google that, you can come to our website and see the kind of research we're doing. And you take on all comers. I don't think you get Christmas cards from Mitch McConnell, for example. Would I be correct? There are some Republicans that are not particularly happy with us. That is correct. Not fans. Before we go to break, yeah, Peter, this is obviously what you're talking about. It's very serious stuff, actually very disturbing. And I don't want to belittle it, but I can't help but think of the show Get Smart. People of a certain age will remember that. The evil operation known as chaos. Or think of all these Bond movies where they're headquarters and lairs where evil people, the forces of darkness. ran their operations. Now, maybe such layers or headquarters are not needed in this age of bandwidth, but if there were to be a headquarters of the foreign actors seeking to destabilize America through immigration, where would it likely be located? For all I know, it could be within the United States of America. And what international personality, and I'm going to ask you more about some of these personalities later, but what particular personality or figure do you think has the most influence on this network of bad actors who hate America? You know, it's a good question, because it's not a network in the sense that they are working together. It's a confluence of interests. I think Mexico, China, the Muslim Brotherhood, they all have different goals. They share a common goal, and they want to diminish the United States, and they want to extend their interests. So I don't know if they're coordinating together. But I think if you look at it from the standpoint of what makes this possible, you have the foreign bad actors who are trying to use immigration as a weapon. They really require people in the United States to allow the gates to be open or to not deal with the political hostile political networks that have been established in our country. So I think you have to look at political figures like Barack Obama and Joe Biden and other Democrats who don't share the same exact goals as these foreign actors, but they benefit politically from mass migration. And I have a section in the book called Voter Mills, where one of the title comes from an email from a White House staffer saying, if people realize what we were doing, they would accuse us of running voter mills. So I would look at those Americans who are complicit in this for their political benefit They have acknowledged as such it is to their political benefit and they should know better But they choosing to do this bargain with our foreign adversaries for their own benefit. Well, I have a few more questions to ask Peter Schweitzer and the author of The Invisible Coup. And I will do that when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, Peter, thanks so much for pinch hitting. You know, Victor's a big fan of yours, and he's very happy to know that you were going to be doing this. So thank you for me. Thank you from him. Before I ask the important question, and it just came to me, I am curious. Do you like writing these books? Do you enjoy writing? Is it pushing a rock up a hill, or is this something? It's terrible. It's terrible. I don't like writing. I love research. My excitement here is when you're working your way through the mine shaft and you find a veil of gold or you find diamonds. That's the true excitement for me. The problem is to convey it to people, you have to write it in the form of a book. So if I could get away with just doing the research, that would be my happy place. And it kind of reflects in the timeline, by the way. I basically take two years. I would say probably 18 months of that is the research. I have a team of researchers I work with, fluent in Chinese, other skill sets. They're enormously helpful in this. And then the remainder of the time, so maybe 25% of the time is writing. And I subscribe to the view, Jack, that if you do the research at the front end, the book will almost write itself. Not entirely, but it'll almost write itself. The flow. Okay. Well, let's get back to Mexico, which you raised before. So hopefully it's not too redundant here. But Peter, let's start next door neighbor to talk about it. It's the portal that is so central to the destabilization process. Who are the baddest of actors in Mexico? And are they members of the drug cartel or more so members of the Mexican government and the Mexican elite? And is there anything that smacks of a de facto strategic or operational plan in Mexico for exploiting the United States for the purposes of, and I say of what, of enriching themselves? Or is it possibly also just the sheer pleasure of seeing the United States harmed? Maybe both. Yeah, I think it's a combination of those. I think it's a fusion, particularly of the drug cartels and the Morena Party, which is the ruling party in Mexico. Lopez Obrador, AMLO, the previous president, the first president of that party to really achieve power. Scheinbaum, the current president, is his protege. As I point out in the book, there's a long known financial history between Scheinbaum, AMLO and the drug cartels. This is the preferred party in Mexico because of the way that it operates. And what the Morena Party has done, Jack, is really worked to radicalize and weaponize migrants living in the United States. So, you know, I mentioned before that you have these elected Mexican officials that live in the United States. Almost all of them are Morena Party members. And so take a guy like Alejandro Robles. he sits in the Mexican parliament he was the international director of operations for the party in the United States and in 2025 he went across the United States in his words quote organizing the militancy end quote against Donald Trump and the Trump administration he met with the People's Forum which is close to the Antifa movement he was fanning the flames for violent protests in Los Angeles. There are similar elected officials that are doing the same thing that were at ground zero really for the Los Angeles riots. So this is the network that is trying to push its political agenda in the United States and divide us. And to be clear how terrible this push is, one of the things Alejandro Roble said in 2025 is that Mexicans who come to the United States and assimilate and embrace American values and learn the language are traitors. They're traitors to Mexico and ought to be treated as such. And he added that Scheinbaum, the president, who he knows well, agrees with him. So the point is they do not want their countrymen coming here, embracing the American dream, adopting American values and assimilating. They want them not to be assimilated. They want them to be loyal to Mexico. In fact, Scheinbaum had a song commission called The Migrant Hymn, which I have the lyrics on in the book, which is this sort of virulent nationalist cause for ignoring borders and staying loyal to Mexico and against the United States. Oh, wow. Well, it's been a it's been a radical country for well over a century. century. I think we got deluded by these Hollywood movies of the 1940s, you know, that were kind of comedies, but it's been bad actors. Let's talk, Peter, about Pope Francis. In your book, you put a spotlight on him. I'm Catholic. I don't know if you are or aren't. It doesn't really matter. Go ahead. Treat him like a piñata as far as I'm concerned. So aside from the immigration issue, he seemed to be a friend of America. I kind of remember him standing close to the border looking over America, giving it the evil eye when he was visiting Mexico early on when he was Pope. And, of course, maybe he was a Peronist from Argentina. Anyway, as regards the flow of scores of millions of migrants, I don't know if I should use that term, migrants around the globe. Francis seemed to make it a theological requirement or even like a spiritual obligation to accept people from foreign lands who would prove inherently hostile to assimilation, not only in the United States, but in the heart of Christendom in Germany, France, Italy. We must accept Muslims. Give us your assessment of the role of the late Pope, the role he played in this invisible coup against America. And in your opinion, were his actions on immigration willful and strategic, or were they the product of poor theology, or both? It's a great question. I'm not Catholic, so I don't want to speak out of turn because I'm not fully versed in Catholic theology. But there's enough information, I think, clearly that much of his teaching on mass migration is not really consistent with at least what recent popes had said. I mean, yes, there was always this sense of you need to welcome people that are refugees. You need to help people that are suffering and struggling, which I think is a foundation of all Christian teaching. But what you had with Francis were several steps beyond that. And one of the things I focused in the book on, Jack, is his background in Latin America. When you look at the people that mentored him when he was rising up in the church in South America, they all say that he's a liberation theologist. It's slightly different than the full Marxist version of it, but it's kind of a cultural Marxist version of liberation theology. So faith becomes subject to political action. and for francis migration and the opening of borders was a key component of that and when he talked about the reasons that migration were uh was was a positive thing on a mass scale he not only focused on uh the humanitarian sense that it helps people that are victims in the developing world He also said it was important because Western societies needed transformation Europe needed transformation. The United States needed transformation. And that's something you find with a lot of progressives that that at the end of the day, when you sort of scratch below the surface, they admit that that a big part of the reason they like immigration is they feel that Western societies are too individualistic. They're too materialistic, too selfish. And the way you change them, you can't really change them politically. So the way you do that is by changing the demographics. So I think that Pope Francis played a very important role for this. He was very supportive, I would say, or non-critical of the more left-wing regimes in Latin America. Venezuela? meeting that he had with Fidel Castro in the book, where he had nothing but positive things to say about Fidel Castro, and yet he'd be very critical of the United States. So I think he played a very, very important role. And I do think it was not just theological. I think it was strategic. And he viewed this as part of a opportunity to sort of extend a Latin American culture into the part of the United States. Yeah. I always have the sense I'm practicing Catholic. He really disdained America. And it's hard to think your leader doesn't like you because of where you live. Hey, Peter, we got one more question and we'll wrap it up. I hope it'll be a good question. I hope it'll be a good question. We'll do that when we come back from these final important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words pinch hitting for us today on as we're recording Thursday the 12th of February this episode will be up on Friday the 13th is the great Peter Schweitzer New York Times best-selling author his new book The Invisible Coup this week third week in a row number one on top of that list congratulations to you Peter folks go up go go get it and this is it's very well written even though You didn't like writing it, Peter. It's really accessible. And as all your other books are, disturbing. Because you read your books and you sit there thinking, am I the stooge? Is everyone else at the dinner table with me? Then they do a dash and run off and I get stuck with the bill. You uncover regularly so much fleecing of good and normal people. So congratulations to the whole scope of your work, but in particular this book. Final question about the book, though. Let me turn a symbol, a great symbol on its head. I'm going to use Mount Rushmore. If it could be carved with four figures. I'm going to use two Mount Rushmore. Four individuals, the first, whose face would deserve enshrinement as a leader, as leaders in this invisible coup. Who would they be? Foreign Americans who? And then if there was a separate monument to maliciousness, what four organizations would deserve this distinction? They could be actual nonprofits. They could be international government institutions, agencies. It could be World Economic Forum, Davos. Um, what four organizations should Americans consider most negatively consequential to the well-being of our nation? Boy, those are great questions. I would say the four people that I would enshrine on the bad Mount Rushmore as it relates to the book would be President Xi of China. You know, the fact that China has exploited birthright citizenship on an industrial scale where we've got now more than one, according to Chinese estimates, more than one million U.S. citizens living in China that are going to be able to vote and other things they have done as well. President Xi definitely deserves to be on there. I think President Scheinbaum of Mexico, maybe AMLO, maybe you could do a half half face of each one would be the second one. And then I think you've got to look domestically. And I think when you look at the role that Barack Obama played in really opening the floodgates, I know the biggest numbers were under Joe Biden, but it really began under Barack Obama. He, for example, created these 10-year visas so that Chinese birth tourism just skyrocketed. You had people coming and having three or four of their children, military officers, and they could do so because under Barack Obama, you had these 10-year visas. and a whole host of other things that he did. And then the final one would probably be Joe Biden. And I think the evidence is clear that he opened up the floodgates for political reasons. It was not humanitarian. So those would probably be the four that I would put there. There would certainly be some honorable mentions, but those would be the top four. As far as the institutions concerned, that's really a great question. I would have to say one of them would be, you know, it would probably be the Department of Homeland Security under Democratic presidents, because what they literally have done, they did it. Of course, we didn't have the Department of Homeland Security under Bill Clinton, but it started with Clinton, Barack Obama, and of course, Joe Biden is Democratic presidents come into office and they completely gutted the citizenship requirements. Right. You're supposed to undergo a criminal background check. You're supposed to pass a civics test. You're supposed to test a pass, a language test and a morals test. Right. Have you been charged with anything? They gutted those. They ignored hundreds of thousands of criminal background checks because they just wanted to mint new voters. That's clear. So I think the the exploitation of that government agency by Democrats is astoundingly bad. I think if you look at on the charitable side, I would look at Catholic charities and Lutheran services. They've been involved in resettling refugees and migrants. This is a huge source of funding for them. It exploded under Joe Biden. Bigger numbers mean bigger dollars. But when you look at the mission statements of why they want mass migration, they will always say because it's transformative to the host country. In other words, they see this as a means for, you know, social change. And then the final, I guess, element would be the progressive nonprofits like Progressive International, which are providing political coverage for this goal of weaponizing immigration as a means by which they can transform America's society and consolidate their political power. Yeah, it's shocking. Maybe shouldn't be, having read your other books, how much American money through AID bankrolled so much of this madness while we were, some people were sleeping at the switch. Well, anyway, Peter Schweitzer, congratulations again for The Invisible Coup, How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon. And there it is, folks who are watching this on YouTube and Rumble. Great book. And Peter, thanks for all the great work you've done. Deeply appreciate your coming here today, pinch hitting for Victor. And check out Peter's website, petersweitzer.com. And you'll find other entities of his life through that. We will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Thanks and bye-bye. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at VictorHanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.
