Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: an armed invasion a few hundred miles off Florida’s coast that corporate media somehow can’t find on a map; how a 2024 tweet from El Salvador’s president became the blueprint for Salvadoran special forces landing in Haiti aboard an American C-130; why Royal Caribbean’s “Adrenaline Beach” won’t see a cruise ship until 2027; how the Donroe Doctrine is shaping up with a franchise model; and James Comey’s third criminal case, an Espionage Act charge about a spam filter that beat a ten-year deadline by zero days.
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An armed invasion is underway a few hundred miles off Florida’s coast— right on the cruise ship itinerary. Corporate media is reporting this astonishing story with the same delicate enthusiasm they normally reserve for illegal alien rapists and transgender shooters. Their problem is that a lot of dramatic stuff is happening, but the rules require them to avoid reporting anything that even hints Haiti is an “s-hole country,” because that might make people think the Orange Man was right, and of course, because racism. Yesterday, the Miami Herald reported, “El Salvador continues to deploy soldiers, equipment to Haiti as gangs threaten violence.”
It’s fair to be mystified by that Miami Herald headline, since it tells us nothing and you probably haven’t heard much about this amazing tale. The Times has sprinkled a few Haiti stories deep in its interior, a region seen only by retired New Yorkers in Boca condos who masochistically read the awful rag cover to cover.
This underreporting is not because Haiti and El Salvador are distant lands with which scrolling-addicted Americans can’t be bothered. Contrast this tepid reporting with the Grey Lady’s enthralled Brazil election coverage, for one recent example.
Alert readers may recall how progressives lost their minds when, in January 2018, President Trump reportedly asked, in a private, closed-door immigration meeting, why America takes so many people from “sh-thole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations. It was a perfectly reasonable question, even if unsuitable for the Cartoon Network. (Oh, wait. Never mind.)
Though Trump and two GOP senators didn’t recall his saying it, Dick Durbin swore he heard it (and was happy to repeat it), and that was good enough for corporate media to run months of overheated stories about the president’s dangerous xenophobia.
Predictably, Hollywood horned in. Celebrities like Susan Sarandon and Bill Maher rushed to social media sporting their supportive T-shirts that bragged, “Haiti is Great Already.” Conan O’Brien packed a camera crew and flew to Port-au-Prince to film a one-hour TBS special. Arcade Fire’s Win Butler assured Rolling Stone that Haiti was “one of the most special and amazing places I’ve been on this earth.” Ben Stiller praised the “dignified, resilient and wonderful Haitian people.”
Eight years later, Conan hasn’t booked the sequel.
The UN says violent gangs now control about 70% of the capital city, Port-au-Prince. Some 1.5 million Haitians have fled their homes, and nearly six million don’t have reliable food. Between July and October of this year, gangs murdered 1,123 people. In July and August, 689 women and girls reported being raped by gangs, most of them by groups of men. (That’s just the reported figures. But the Times has been obsessed with one quasi-consensual drug-fueled frat party encounter. Whatever. Thanks, Times, for keeping us informed.)
On a single day in August, in the hillside town of Kenscoff, gangs slew at least 47 people and dragged off 52 more as hostages. In December 2024, a gang boss who human rights groups call “a devout Voodoo practitioner” decided his son’s illness was caused by sorcerers and witches. So, understandably, his men executed at least 207 people in the Wharf Jérémie slum, mostly elderly Haitians accused of practicing Voodoo, then burned or dismembered the bodies and dumped them into the sea. (The ghastly details were clinically recorded in a UN report.)
The gang boss might actually have been right to worry about the voodoo. Actual headline from the LA Times, May, 2024— seven months before the atrocity:
Media fact-checkers insist that widespread rumors of gang-initiated cannibalism were “without evidence.” (Who’s volunteering to go get it?) Then again, the country’s most infamous gang leader goes by the nom de guerre, “Barbecue.” (He swears it’s because his mother sold fried chicken. I am not making that up.)
Haiti may or may not be an s-hole country, but it is undoubtedly a failed state. It has no elected president, no parliament, and indefinitely postponed elections. Its economy has shrunk seven years in a row. Even Royal Caribbean has given up. For years it docked megaships at Labadee, its private beach on Haiti’s north coast, behind walls topped with razor wire, guarded by men with shotguns, and laughably described it in excursion offers as “Hispaniola” so nobody would notice which half of the island they’d landed on.
Now the cruiser has suspended calls through at least June 2027, “out of an abundance of caution,” which is cruise-line patois for “the guests kept asking what those popping sounds were.” When a company that will happily sail you into a Norovirus outbreak won’t stop at your country, you have a branding problem.
Royal’s marketing brochure for its Haitian private retreat excursion included —how could I make this up— visits to “Adrenaline Beach.” It featured the “Dragon’s Breath” zipline, which lets you fly over Haiti at 50 miles an hour. That’s still the recommended best way to see the country, except now the State Department recommends traveling faster and a lot higher up.
Which brings us to this week’s dramatic news. The official story goes that last week, four Salvadoran aviation techs ran out for groceries and disappeared into a gang ambush. El Salvador’s gang-fighting president Nayib Bukele allegedly said no mas. US C-130s landed 450 Salvadoran special forces on Conan’s beach. Some X reports suggest they are engaged in fierce firefights with technically advanced weapons against thousands of gang members. A UN “gang suppression” force of 5,500 more is en route.
But this wild story started the moment President Trump returned to office last year. The payoff is incredible.
🔥 President Trump never forgets. With apologies to Hollywood celebrities and voodoo witches, s-hole countries are no longer allowed in the Western Hemisphere. (Reader quiz! Who would you prefer babysit your kids: Hollywood celebrities or voodoo sorcerers?)
Sure, it didn’t look like much at first. On May 2, 2025, the State Department unceremoniously designated Haiti’s two biggest gangs, Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif, as foreign terrorist organizations. That’s the same legal category as ISIS, which is a big promotion for guys who, according to the media, mostly specialize in blocking roads and setting them on fire. A month later, Haiti landed on Trump’s travel-ban list.
This time, bewitched Hollywood celebrities did not organize any protests. No “Haiti is Great Already” T-shirts.
Then, on September 30, 2025, the United States co-wrote a UN Security Council resolution creating something called the “Gang Suppression Force,” a name that sounds like an OG Saturday-morning cartoon but is in fact an international army. The Security Council’s vote was basically unanimous, 12 to 0, with China, Russia and Pakistan abstaining, which is diplomatic code for “we’d love to say no but can’t think of a reason.”
Washington then became chair of the group steering the GSF force and, per a State Department report to Congress, raised $100 million in “voluntary contributions” to pay for it. Other people’s money. The stated goal, in writing, was “to prevent the establishment of a narco-state and illegal mass migration to the United States.” So nobody was hiding the ball. They just didn’t draw reporters a picture with crayons, which is pretty much the same thing as making it invisible.
The stackes grew more serious as we approached 2026. In December, the White House had already added its “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which is like the original Monroe Doctrine except that this time we really mean it. On January 3rd, US forces snatched Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and Trump announced that “ Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
On January 25th, State slapped visa bans on members of Haiti’s unelected ruling council “for supporting gangs and other criminal organizations,” which is a sentence you would not expect to read about a sovereign government. On February 3rd, a US Navy destroyer and two Coast Guard cutters parked in Port-au-Prince Bay, “at the direction of the Secretary of War,” which in hemispheric etiquette is the equivalent of pulling into someone’s driveway, leaving the engine running, and watching them from the car.
Four days later, the unelected council’s mandate suddenly “expired,” and the US immediately backed Prime Minister Fils-Aimé as Haiti’s sole leader.
🔥 In March, the pieces started snapping together. At Trump’s Doral resort, a dozen Latin American leaders signed up for the “Shield of the Americas,” a counter-cartel coalition. (Also a good name for a cartoon hero squad.) Trump said, “Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate ISIS in the Middle East, we now need a coalition to eradicate the cartels at home.” Ironically, one of the Shield’s founding members was El Salvador, the very same country Trump had reportedly once lumped in with Haiti in 2018. (Haiti wasn’t invited.)
The new envoy for the Shield was Kristi Noem, freshly relocated from running Homeland Security, who in April met Haiti’s prime minister to discuss “security and credible elections.” As DHS secretary, Noem had signed the order ending Haiti’s protected immigration status. Talk about range.
In August, Southern Command stood up a joint task force to “synchronize U.S. military operations with allies and partners” across the Western Hemisphere. And on September 22nd, fifteen governments signed a joint statement listing 24 “narco-terrorist” groups for asset freezes and visa bans— numbers 9 and 10 on the list were Gran Grif and Viv Ansanm, the same Haitian gangs Trump had declared as foreign terrorist organizations.
🔥 So when four Salvadoran airmen vanished on a grocery run on October 18, the machinery was already oiled. The day after the incident, Trump’s UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, told the Security Council that “America stands shoulder to shoulder” with El Salvador. “We will bring you home,” Waltz added. Within a week, a Pentagon C-130 was flying Salvadoran troops into Port-au-Prince “at the request of the U.S. State Department.” Did Washington order the surge? Nobody on the record says so.
The Miami Herald’s sources say US officials spent the week negotiating with Bukele over his insistence on sending special forces, which raises the delightful question of who’s walking whom. But you don’t need a secret memo to see the outline. You just need a calendar.
On October 21st, El Salvador dispatched 450 special forces to Haiti to fight gangs. They were delivered in an American C-130 transport plane.
The conflict could be framed as biblical. “Haiti’s gangs are satanic, and it’s common knowledge they perform human sacrifices,” President Bukele tweeted four days ago. “God will grant us victory,” he promised.
That should have been the headline.
🔥 Regardless of whether the four Salvadoran technicians were a pretext or not, one thing is clear: President Bukele is not going into Haiti alone. Not even close. UN Ambassador Mike Waltz said El Salvador has “the full support of the U.S. government,” including the US military and Foggy Bottom. This is what, in the latest wild display of journalistic malpractice, the corporate media is studiously ignoring.
Here’s the dot that nobody in media is connecting. In March 2024, long before any technicians were kidnapped, President Bukele offered to solve Haiti, with conditions. “We can fix it,” he said. “But we’ll need a UNSC resolution, the consent of the host country, and all the mission expenses to be covered.” Got that? Now check the list.
A UN Security Council resolution: done, co-written by the United States in September 2025. Consent of the host country: Haiti’s sole remaining leader is a prime minister Washington backed when his council’s mandate ran out. All expenses covered: the State Department lined up about $100 million in other people’s money. Bukele submitted a bid two years ago, and the US found the cash. Think this is a coincidence? Maybe. But it’s the kind of coincidence that comes with a C-130 and warships parked off Port-au-Prince.
Look at what the money bought. The last Haiti mission, a limp Kenyan-led one, staggered along underfunded and undermanned, and the gangs just got stronger. State’s own report said the new force “was intentionally designed to fix each of these flaws while substantially decreasing the financial burden on the United States.”
Translation: America draws the plans, chairs the meetings, flies the planes and passes the hat, and somebody else’s soldiers kick in the doors. It’s the hemisphere’s first franchise model of foreign policy. Washington owns the brand, and the local operators supply the muscle.
That’s the Donroe Doctrine in one picture. In the old Monroe Doctrine, America told Europe to keep out of the neighborhood. In the new one, America organizes the neighborhood watch, and the neighbors walk the beat.
🔥 Speaking of neighbors, the Dominican Republic already had about 11,000 troops on its Haitian border, and on Sunday President Luis Abinader sent two more battalions, plus heavy equipment and artillery. He says he’s in “permanent session,” talking with Bukele and with the Gang Suppression Force.
Consider this: the Dominican Republic is a founding member of Trump’s Shield of the Americas group. Kristi Noem met with Dominican President Abinader on March 22nd, shortly after meeting with President Bukele on March 5th. Just saying.
Here are President Bukele and President Abinader standing together beside President Trump at the signing of the Shield of the Americas agreement earlier this year:
Venezuela got the hard version. Haiti is getting the outsourced version, run by a president who made his name emptying El Salvador’s streets of MS-13 and who now promises Haiti’s gangs, in Creole, “We already finished the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish you too.”
The same policy also explains the part progressives find so confusing. The administration that ended Haitians’ protected status and put Haiti on the travel-ban list is the same one organizing an army to rescue Haiti. It’s not a contradiction; it’s a strategy. The State Department summarized the goal in a single sentence that even a Times reporter could have understood: prevent “a narco-state and illegal mass migration to the United States.”
In other words: fix Haiti so Haitians can stay in Haiti. You can call it xenophobia, but you can’t call it hidden. It’s right on the State Department’s website, and in its report to Congress.
So the real story —the story corporate media isn’t interested in— is not the four kidnapped Salvadoran techs, as sad as that is. It’s that a world-realigning doctrine that started in an unremarkable State Department Terrorist Designation in May 2025 now has a coalition, a task force, a target list, a UN force, a paymaster, and, as of this week, boots on the ground that aren’t American. No new wars.
Corporate media has every dot: the ambush, the C-130, the troops, the “Shield of the Americas,” the $100 million “voluntary” war chest, and all the official records. What it hasn’t done is connect them in the same article.
Either the zombified reporters can’t see the pattern or, more likely, they’d rather avoid explaining why the Donroe Doctrine looks like it’s working. Call it journalistic voodoo.
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And finally, more good news for the “when will anyone be arrested” people. Former FBI Director James Comey, the Russiagate mastermind who enjoyed leaking memos to the New York Times, has been charged with leaking to the New York Times. Again! It’s his third criminal prosecution, and the drip-drip-drip is starting to sound like Chinese water torture, except with extra-hot espresso drops.
Monday, a federal court unsealed a two-count charge under the Espionage Act accusing Comey of transmitting national defense information and conspiracy. The alleged secret was a 2016 Times story about Yahoo adapting its spam filter to help the government scan emails. So Comey’s legacy may come down to an Espionage Act case about a spam filter, which is like doing hard time over a junk-mail folder.
Even the timing is a drip. Prosecutors filed the charge under seal on October 5th, exactly ten years after the Times story ran, which is the last day before the statute of limitations ran out. Comey’s lawyers argued the ten-year deadline required a grand-jury indictment, not a prosecutor’s filing, and they’ve already moved to dismiss.
DOJ tweeted that filing a criminal information to stop the clock is “a widely recognized practice in federal court” that “has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals.” Comey’s lawyers say a prosecutor can’t beat a ten-year deadline just by slipping a document into a sealed envelope without a grand jury. Translation: the clock may have stopped, but the dripping hasn’t.
Here’s the scorecard. The first case, for obstruction and lying to Congress, was tossed last November because the prosecutor who brought it had been ‘improperly appointed.’ The second, in North Carolina, over his “86 47” seashell photo, is still pending. Now there’s a third. “Well, they’re back — again,” Comey complained in a social media video yesterday. “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse.”
He’s half right. It’s not almost funny. It’s too funny for words.
One more thing, in fairness: also yesterday, a federal judge ruled that DOJ had fired Comey’s federal prosecutor daughter, Maurene, unlawfully, since Congress protected assistant US attorneys. Judge Furman said DOJ’s theory of presidential power “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”
So the Comey crime family went one for two on Monday. But appeals will follow. Maurene’s problem is that this Supreme Court has spent the last two years explaining in multiple cases that the Constitution puts the executive branch under the President, not Congress, and an assistant U.S. attorney is about as executive branch as it gets.
Drip!
Have a terrific Tuesday! We’ll be back tomorrow with more weird, wild, essential news and a full serving of caffeinated commentary. See you then.
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When the righteous increase, the people rejoice,
But when a wicked man rules, people groan.
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Did the Clinton Foundation contribute to the cause to free Haiti? Where did all that money Bill and Bush the elder raised go?