Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Tuesday said that the recent killings of American citizens in Mexico should be a "wake up call" for the U.S. government.
Six children and three women, all members of the LeBaron family that has lived in a fundamentalist Mormon community in Mexico for decades, were shot to death on Monday, with five more children being injured and one child still missing.
Gingrich told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that America has been “hiding from reality” in regards to the freedom drug cartels have in Mexico.
"The cartels have grown richer, stronger, bigger. They are a direct threat to the Mexican government. Much more than the attention we've paid to Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan," he said.
"Mexico is a vital American interest. And, our desire to make sure the Mexican government defeats the cartels, should be enormous," Gingrich said, adding, "I hope this will be a wake-up call -- that we had better find a way to have a partnership with the Mexican government and help them with whatever intelligence training equipment they need to decisively defeat the cartels who are now, frankly, a state within a state."
"And, much bigger than we do in Syria or a lot of the places we pay attention to. Mexico's a much more important part of our future than those countries are,” because it’s the United States’ “next-door neighbor.”
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