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March 18, 2024 - The Tucker Carlson Show
15:37
Tucker Carlson - Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau have in effect been running domestic politics in Haiti for the past few years. The result is chaos and cannibalism. Pretty soon a big portion of the Haitian population will be living in Florida. Haiti’s former prime minister explains.
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tucker carlson
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donald j trump
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tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
The nation of Haiti has been in trouble, more or less, for quite some time now, at least 100 years, depending on how you count.
It's been the poorest nation in the hemisphere.
But there have been periods of relative brightness in Haiti.
Today is not one of them.
That country is in what appears to be total collapse, with no governing authority apart from roving bands of armed young men.
Gangs have seized the country effectively.
The prime minister has resigned.
It's hard to know exactly what's going on in Haiti because you really can't go there right now.
But the man who seems to be at least near the center of all of this is called Barbecue.
And he's been giving speeches like this to huge crowds in Port-au-Prince.
unidentified
watch.
So there's clearly a lot going on here.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
It's hard to understand exactly what all of it means, but one thing Americans should keep in mind is there could be a massive, what we refer to as a refugee crisis very soon, where a lot of people you just saw in that video wind up in boats headed for Florida.
So this does affect us, and of course, this is our hemisphere, which we supposedly oversee, make calmer, more prosperous, and stable.
So why haven't the people in charge done that after all these years and a number of military interventions into Haiti by the U.S. government?
And where are the billions of dollars we were told the Clinton family, through the Clinton Foundation, was sending to Haiti?
Others have asked this question, Donald Trump, for example, back in 2016 at a presidential debate.
Watch.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
And you take a look at the people of Haiti.
I was at a little Haiti the other day in Florida.
And I want to tell you, they hate the Clintons because what's happened in Haiti with the Clinton Foundation is a disgrace.
And you know it, and they know it, and everybody knows it.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
So what is the answer to that question?
Where did all that money go?
And why isn't the Biden administration helping in any way?
And what are they doing to prepare for what will quite obviously be a mass emigration of people from Haiti to the state of Florida?
So to answer these and maybe some other questions, we go now to Laurent Lamothe, who is the former prime minister of Haiti, and we're honored to have him now.
Mr. Prime Minister, thank you so much for coming on.
unidentified
Thank you.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
This is hard for people who don't speak Creole or who follow Haiti to really understand, but can you give us just a quick overview?
For Americans, of what you think is happening in Haiti right now.
unidentified
Well, thank you for having me, Tucker.
It's a great pleasure to be here and to give my take as to what's happening in my beloved Haiti.
Haiti was not always under the rule of gangs.
If you go back a few years under the dictatorship of Duvalier, there was, you know...
Haiti had other problems, but not gang-related problems.
Then at the fall of Duvalier, and for you to understand, under the Duvalier government, the security forces had about 320,000 security officials.
You had paramilitary, and then you had military, and then you had police.
When they fell, the military took over in 1986, from 1986 to 1990. They had four different military governments and there was absolutely no gangs.
But there was, you know, military rule.
In 1991, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide came to power in an election and he had a deep distrust for the military and also for private sector, for investors.
So basically, he started introducing a culture of what was called at the time, popular bases.
And after seven months, he was toppled by the military.
There was three years of military rule.
And then in 1994, Aristide was restored to Haiti by the Clinton administration at the time.
And Haiti...
Basically went from the 320,000 security officials to basically zero.
And the army at the time was disbended.
The police was inexistent.
So the international forces had to come in through.
The Marines came in for a short period of time.
And then the UN came in thereafter.
And that lasted up until...
You know, right before 2000. And Aristide left, and Preval came in, and Aristide came back from 2000 to 2004. And when he was ousted for a second time in 2004, then there was complete breakdown of law and order, because at the time, the gangs, what was called at the time Chimirs, were very strong.
And then they launched what's called Operation Baghdad.
And basically what that operation was, it was basically gang warfare, gang attacking institutions, attacking the remnants of the police, etc.
But the police was was inexistent and it was very weak.
So basically, and that was the case in 2004. In 2004, that triggered what we all knew as the UN forces MINUSTA came into Haiti from 2004 to 2017 and spent $13 billion at $1 billion a year for that force, which was about 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 police.
But, you know, and during that time, essentially, there was relative calm.
There was, you know, very little gang activity because they were scared of the international force.
But that force had a lot of issues.
They never really trained the after UN. So there was no army trained.
I mean, the police that was trained was still very weak because it's a civilian force.
Haiti today is the only country in the Western Hemisphere outside of Costa Rica that has no military and that has the biggest gang activity after El Salvador.
And this is because...
A lot of international community, friends of Haiti, or so-called friends of Haiti, say that Haiti does not need a military, does not need a strong police force.
And this is what happens today.
So that created a void, and that created the situation where we have today, where that void is filled by gangs, armed groups all over.
You know, the popular neighborhoods, huge neighborhoods of 500,000 people, 200,000 people, and they're ruled by gangs.
So it complicates the situation tremendously.
And law and order is very difficult if you don't have the police officers, if you don't have soldiers, if you don't have security personnel to keep the peace, essentially.
And that's why right now...
It takes us to today.
So during my time when I was prime minister from 2012 to 2014, basically saw the relative period of renewal.
You know, we had foreign direct investment come.
We had the economy was growing at 4.8%.
We had zero kidnappings.
We had a situation where there was absolutely no gangs.
I mean, I didn't have that gang problem.
But when the UN, because we took it very seriously, we really, you know, reinforced the police, we trained them, we worked very closely with the US in order to have a force that would keep the peace and keep the security.
And very soon after I left, I left in 2014, 2017 now, the UN mandate Expired.
There was a new government of President Jovenel Moïse and the UN left.
And then there was an activity, the gang activity, you know, slowly started because the opposition to President Moïse wanted to oust him.
And, you know, so basically that continued slowly and it became unmanageable.
To a point where, you know, the politicians at the time that wanted to oust President Moïse from power were using some of those gangs in order to do so.
And the gangs themselves, they say it openly.
You know, Haiti is probably the only country in the world where gangs are on Facebook every day doing Facebook Live.
They have press conference.
They have, you know, I mean, it becomes like a, it becomes like, you know, an everyday event.
So, law and order.
It needs to be restored in Haiti as there is a huge security void and breakdown.
But only Haitians can do it by having the tools and the means to do so, which is reinstalling the Haitian army, of course training them, having a professional army to avoid coups, etc.
But having a strong police is not enough, and that's what the international community has been pushing.
Only a police and no military.
Yet every time there is a problem, there is a foreign military that's called to come and help.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
Tell us about Barbecue, who's getting a lot of attention on social media.
Who is he?
Why is he called Barbecue?
What's his role in the country?
unidentified
So he was a former police officer for a long time.
And, you know, I've seen that myself on YouTube, why it was called barbecue, but he explained it in Creole.
It's because his mother had a barbecue shop and was selling barbecue chicken.
And then he was, you know, so he was helping to sell, and that's how he was, he got the, I mean, the name after the mom's business.
So that's why it's called Jimmy Barbecue Cherise.
And essentially...
To understand the situation in Haiti right now, you have to understand the misery and poverty level that are in some of the neighborhoods where you showed earlier that he was talking.
It's principally a neighborhood called Cité Soleil.
It's a slum of about three to four hundred thousand people that are living in very abject poverty that have no hope.
They are youths, you know, 15, 17 years old.
That cannot go to school, that cannot have a job because there is despair, because people are not thinking about job creation, they're thinking about holding on to power.
And that's what the Prime Minister, for example, you know, going back to Prime Minister Henry, rather than reinforcing the police and fighting off the gangs and creating an army.
He spent $500 million to pay off a debt to Venezuela, half a billion dollars, that would have happened three weeks ago, to pay off a debt to Venezuela, yet he couldn't come up with enough money to buy trucks for his police officers to go and fight the gangs.
So it's to show you the contradiction that happens into Haiti politics.
So what happens is, when the people saw that You know, they have no outs.
And then the gangs coming, they install themselves, right?
They take over neighborhoods, they have the weapons, they have the guns, they are strong.
And then they have a message.
So basically, it's a situation where you have a breakdown completely of security and a despair of the population.
So the solution is not only, you know, to come up with guns.
Or to start shooting.
The long-term solution is good old job creation.
Come in to invest.
Allow people to invest in Haiti to create jobs.
And we had started doing that.
There was $348 million foreign direct investment that came in.
Five new hotels after the earthquake.
So it is possible to do.
But you need to have the will to do so.
And then you need to have the understanding.
That in order to save Haiti, in order to help Haiti, you have to understand that you have to do it in an inclusive way.
Dictating, dictation, trying to impose things will not work in a country like Haiti.
So it is a very complex mentality and it comes from all the way to the French when they were colonizers, you know, when they came into Haiti.
We're the first black nation in the world.
The second independent country in the Americas after the US in 1804. And we are a very proud nation.
We're very proud people.
But the problem is we've been shortchanged by leaders like what we just saw with Prime Minister Henry.
That had all the opportunity to change things.
That had all the support of the U.S. I mean, Canada through Justin Trudeau supported this guy 100%.
So rather than using that to help the people and to get us out of the terrible security situation, he just used it to hold on to power.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
Of course.
unidentified
And for what?
Nothing.
So it was another missed opportunity.
And we hope that looking towards the future, that better decisions are taken.
Right now, they're thinking about putting a, you know, Ariel and Harry resign, as you know.
And now there is no, nobody's in power.
So they're coming up with different formulas, one of which creating a council, a presidential council of...
Five members to rule Haiti and taking inputs from different political parties and different politicians in order to rule Haiti until elections.
But elections have to be the first and foremost focus of what's going on now.
Free speech is bigger than any one person or any one organization.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
Societies are defined by what they will not commit.
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