Show Notes
As the riots raged in Los Angeles, four things became clear – LA’s leaders are feckless; foreign money is behind the rioters; protesters are expressing a soup of different grievances, and all this may happen elsewhere.
As with the BLM riots in 2020, the LA disturbances are not spontaneous or chaotic. They have been planned, supported, and even staffed by activist organizations whose goals have nothing to do with immigration law or the plight of day laborers lingering in Home Depot parking lots.
On the most recent episode of The Drill Down, co-hosts Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers break down these connections and follow the money to Mexican cartels, China, taxpayer-funded NGOs, and even teachers and service employee unions.
The first incident in Los Angeles that led to the protest came when Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) served criminal warrants on a money-laundering operation in LA’s fashion district. That operation, as Tom Homan told MSNBC in a clip in the show, launders millions of dollars in drug money every year for the Mexican cartels.
“Some of the people rounded up included Eswin Uriel Castro, a previously deported illegal alien who was convicted of molesting a child and being armed with a deadly weapon. He’s also been charged with robbery and domestic violence,” notes Peter Schweizer.
“So, it’s not as it was presented [by the media]. This was not day laborers at Home Depot. This was actually a strike against organized crime, potential cartel activity, money laundering, and really bad dudes,” Schweizer added.
The Mexican government is also upset over a provision in the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill that would add an additional 3.5 percent tax on remittances sent by Mexicans in the US back to Mexico. Those remittances are valued at $64.7 billion a year, amounting to between 3 and 5 percent of Mexico’s GDP. Its new left-wing President Claudia Sheinbaum vowed to “mobilize” to defeat the tax proposal.
Then there is a shadowy tech billionaire named Neville Roy Singham, an American who relocated to Communist China and now lives in Shanghai. Singham provides massive financial support to the “Party for Socialism and Liberation,” a literal communist political party that is pro-Beijing and printed the signs carried by demonstrators. As described by Schweizer in his #1 bestselling book, Blood Money, Singham has been actively coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party for many years now.
Another group active during the protests is something called “Union del Barrio.” Schweizer and Eggers play a clip from one of their spokesmen saying that the socialism of the Soviet Union “in its first four years” is what they support. This group also believes the entire American Southwest still belongs to Mexico.
Eggers quips, “Maybe their slogan should be ‘From the Valley to the 10, LA will be theirs again?’”
Then there is a nonprofit group called The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA),” which received for “citizenship education and training.” Teachers’ unions, the Service Employees union, and others are also active in stoking the protests. A local SEIU union president was arrested for committing property damage during the riots.
Schweizer asks, “Where is all this going next?”
Efforts like this have a way of metastasizing to other cities, as occurred during the George Floyd riots that began in Minneapolis but popped up in many other cities after protesters were bussed in. Disturbances have already occurred in San Francisco and Austin, and a group called “No Kings” is working with teachers’ unions and others to plan disturbances on June 14, which is the day of a parade commemorating the US Army’s 250th birthday.
