Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Najib Bukele, 42, President of El Salvador, who was re-elected earlier this year with more than 83% of the vote. Interested in lessons for the United States, Carlson pressed Bukele about his success in transforming the Latin American nation from a bloody, gangster nation into the second-safest country in the Western Hemisphere.
While the two discussed replicable successes the U.S. could benefit from and God’s role in the defeat of MS-13, the Salvadoran president offered some advice at Carlson’s request in light of former Republican President Donald Trump’s recent conviction before a Democratic judge in a Democratic enclave on charges brought by Democratic prosecutors.
Self-congratulatory loser
“What advice would you give to a former democratically elected leader who is seeking public office but is facing the risk of going to prison?” Carlson asked.
After a significant pause, Mr. Carlson added, “Whoever that is, if there is such a person.”
“If there was a way to stop him from running, he’d probably be in trouble,” Bukele said, “but if there’s no way to stop him in the election, then everything they do to him is just going to give him more votes.”
“They are making a big mistake.”
“That appears to be happening,” Carlson responded.
“You can either drop your candidacy or stay on it,” Bukele said, “but just attack him and it will be the greatest campaign of all time.”
Asked whether he thought Democrats were aware that efforts to hog the Republican front-runner ahead of the general elections could backfire, Bukele suggested some lawmakers might be aware, but others were simply preoccupied with ostensibly chasing praise from their colleagues and congratulating themselves.
“They are making a big mistake. A huge mistake,” Bukele added.
The Salvadoran president suggested it might be best for Trump to submit to Democrats’ attacks as long as those attacks don’t deter him from participating in the election, but this was far from the only view he shared with Carlson.
Recreating the “miracle”
At the beginning of the interview, Carlson asked, “If we can rebuild El Salvador, what are the lessons for us as a people? What would you do first?”
“Once you achieve peace, you can struggle for everything else.”
“Without peace, nothing can be done. That’s true. By peace I mean war, civil war, aggression and crime,” the president said. “Once peace is achieved, then we can tackle everything else.”
The Blaze News previously reported that in 2018, before Bukele was elected president, there were 51 murders per 100,000 people. Under Bukele’s leadership, the murder rate fell to 7.8, and El Salvador had 495 murders that year, fewer than the number of murders reported in Democratic-run Chicago (695) during the same period. Reuters Shown Crime fell again last year by an estimated 70%, with the murder rate at 2.4 per 100,000 people.
Former “Murder Capital of the World”
He claimed earlier this month The homicide rate for 2024 is expected to be 2 per 100,000 people. Canada has long boasted the lowest murder rate in the Americas, Instead, it rose It has improved its ranking every year from 2018 to 2022, and is already on the verge of being overtaken by El Salvador in the top spot.
To achieve the peace he mentioned in his conversation with Carlson, Bukele’s government waged a war against terrorist organizations.
Check It has restricted some civil rights and sent 1% of the adult population to prison for proven or suspected gang ties.
“I will give you the official statement. [for busting the gangs] “And the real way it was done,” Bukele told Carlson, “is that the official way it was done was that they implemented a plan that was structured in phases. They deployed the first phase, then the next phase, and the next phase. And then the gangs started fighting back, so they had to deploy everything at once.”
Bukele said the crackdown, spurred by gang counterattacks, ultimately paid off.
“The country changed in a matter of weeks because the gangsters were still at large and hadn’t been arrested,” the president said. “We basically pacified the country in a matter of weeks.”
President Bukele said that to make each phase successful, he had doubled the size of the military and equipped it to effectively fight gangs.
While effective strategy and force seemed to be the official recipe for success, Bukele suggested the unofficial recipe was prayer.
“The victory is because we have won the spiritual battle.”
“It’s a miracle,” Bukele said. “When the gangs started fighting back, they basically killed 87 people in three days. It’s insane for a country of six million people.”
President Bukele said the bloodshed made it clear that defeating a 70,000-strong gang apparently intent on inflicting maximum harm on the country’s 6 million people was an “impossible task.”
The president told Carlson he met with his national security ministers at the time and told them, “We’re looking at what seems to be an impossible mission, so I’m going to pray.”
Sure enough, everyone there – all apparently believers – appeared to be praying to God for wisdom, for minimal civilian casualties and for help in the fight against MS-13, which Bukele described as a “satanic” gang.
“The victory is because we won the spiritual battle,” Bukele concluded. “Because [we] They had no competition. I mean, they were diabolical. I think that made it easier.”
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