USAID Corruption & Brazil’s Elections w/ Nikolas Ferreira & Mike Benz | PBD Podcast

If you’re reading this you’re probably aware that there’s an information war going on.  Not the battle between the corporate media vs the new independent journalists. That’s more of a technological and a new media story.  The real battle isn’t only between the players, it’s between the information each side is sharing with their audiences.

The corporate world looks down on independent media.  They use words like disinformation and misinformation and conspiracy.  What they don’t do very often is examine the information being shared and present their own take. In fact, often they don’t share the information at all.

This leaves corporate media faithful in a disadvantaged position.  They’re angry because they can’t understand why the world is changing (for the worse in their opinion).  They won’t give up their corporate addiction because they’ve become intrenched in the belief the independent start ups are sharing misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.  Because their corporate sources of information choose to ignore or criticize information without presenting a more informed and researched version themselves, their followers are completely missing out on many of the biggest stories that are shaping the century we’re struggling through.

This podcast is a perfect example.  Chances are those who ignore independent media have no idea who Patrick Bet David is. That means they’re very unlikely to know anything about Mike Benz.  Benz has been revealing secrets of the deep state for years.  Recently he’s picked up massive audiences as he makes sense of what’s happening in America and around the world. (Especially with USAID)  PBD also talks to Brazilian social media sensation Niklas Ferreira who has a perspective of politics in South America’s largest and most important nation unlike anything you’ll see in the corporate media.

This podcast is fascinating and it answers a lot of questions, not just about America and Brazil, but about the US deep state efforts to control political movements everywhere.

From the PBD Podcast

Patrick Bet-David sits down with Nikolas Ferreira and Mike Benz to dissect the deep connections between USAID, Brazilian corruption, and the political battle between Lula and Bolsonaro.

Ferreira, one of Brazil’s most outspoken conservative voices, exposes how foreign influence and NGOs may be shaping Brazil’s political landscape, while Benz, an expert in geopolitical strategy, unpacks the hidden power dynamics between Washington and Latin America.

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Multiple reports are proving that Donald Trump’s claims that Canada’s lax approach to fentanyl poses a grave threat is even worse than the U.S. president has stated.

(LifeSiteNews) — A report from the Dana Cambole Show gives a sensational explanation on why U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have Canada in his sights. Her guest on the ITM Trading Channel is the Canadian investigative journalist Samuel Cooper, who says: “Canada has become a node of Chinese infiltration and organized crime activity – especially in Vancouver.”

His bold claim buttresses the accusations made by Trump that the U.S. faces a crisis on its northern border. On February 1, Trump issued an executive order titled, “Imposing Duties to Arrest the Flow of Illicit Drugs Across Our Northern Border” 

In it, Trump said his measures to impose punishing trade tariffs were to address the “challenges” presented by the “Gang members, smugglers, human traffickers, and illicit drugs of all kinds [which] have poured across our borders and into our communities.” 

He said the Canadian government had failed in its duty to address these issues. 

“Canada has played a central role in these challenges, including by failing to devote sufficient attention and resources or meaningfully coordinate with United States law enforcement partners to effectively stem the tide of illicit drugs.” 

Is Trump ‘invading’ Canada?

These bold claims have been interpreted as a means of dictating to – or even “annexing” Canada. This has “soured relations” with Canadians, as the Chinese Toronto-based journalist Kevin Jiang reports. 

Some critics argue Trump is not serious about fentanyl or crime, and is simply undermining Canadian sovereignty and even threatening to “invade” Canada.   

So, is what Trump says about Canada’s crime and border problem true?

Canada has become a Chinese drug production hub

Cooper says it is. After “ten years researching” he has written a book arguing that Chinese Communist party officials, businessmen and drug traffickers have “established a production hub in Canada.”   

Called “Wilful blindness: how a network of narcos tycoons and CCP agents have infiltrated the West,” its cover illustrates what Cooper sees as the center of a network of Chinese corruption and crime.   

“The cover shows a graphic photo of Vancouver on a world map with fentanyl pills exploding out of Vancouver going around the world.”  

“Vancouver has become a production hub for China and a trans-shipment hub for fentanyl precursors.”

Cooper says that whilst he is “not pleased with Donald Trump’s rhetoric,” he maintains, “This gets to what Donald Trump is saying.”

“It’s hard for many people to believe that Canada could be put in the same category as Mexico in terms of endangering the United States with fentanyl, illegal immigration and human trafficking,” Cooper says, before adding “…but my research has showed that indeed this is the fear and concern of the U.S. intelligence Community, military and law enforcement.”

Decades of Canadian weakness

How has this happened? Cooper says the problem has been brewing for years.  

“For decades Canada’s weak enforcement against transnational crime weak, and control of borders has allowed international organized crime with linkages to hostile States – most specifically China but also Iran.”

His claims seem astonishing, and yet recent news reports all support his – and Trump’s – conclusions. 

The biggest fentanyl superlab in the world

The top story on the Vancouver Sun today is the discovery of the biggest fentanyl factory in Canadian history. The owner, who is Canadian, did not name the tenants who used his property to build “Canada’s largest ever fentanyl superlab.”

“The Abbotsford man who owns the Falkland property where Canada’s largest-ever fentanyl superlab was discovered in October says he was just the landlord and unaware of what was going on there.”  

David Asher, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said it was in fact the largest fentanyl production site in the world, and was certainly linked to “Chinese organized crime.”

Speaking to Rosemary Barton on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Asher explained on February 9, “I think they are sitting on a big scandal here. How many other labs do you think they have going?” 

Asher, who has advised the U.S. State department on countering money laundering and terrorism financing, claimed “there’s very little border enforcement going on” in Canada, dismissing claims by the Canadian media that Canada’s cross-border drug trafficking into the U.S. was insignificant compared to that of Mexican cartels on the U.S. southern border. 

Asher further claims that Mexican cartels are in fact transporting drugs by ship to Canada to be trafficked into the U.S., because “you have almost no port enforcement with police.”

In response to allegations made by the Trump administration that there is a security crisis on the northern border of the U.S., Canada has appointed a “fentanyl Czar,” promised to share more intelligence with the U.S., and said it is stepping up police checks and border controls.  

These measures led to the 30 day “pause” of the threatened tariffs on Canadian trade with the U.S. 

Canadian law is ‘crazy’

So what’s the U.S. government’s problem with Canada?  

Asher praises the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) but says the problem is Canadian law. Specifically, “The Stinchcombe Law” – a landmark ruling which Asher says means the Canadian police have to inform criminals they are watching them.  

“Basically every time we try to go up on a phone number in Canada almost all the money laundering network is tied to China – and 90% percent of all the money laundering in the United States is tied to Canada.”

“So when we try to go up on those numbers with your police they have to inform the person that we are targeting that we are targeting their number. That’s crazy. How can we run an undercover police operation with your country?”  

Asher explains why claims in the media that low seizure rates of fentanyl from Canada do not give the real story. 

“Which is why we don’t run them. Which is why the seizure statistics are so low. We don’t even try to work with Canada because your laws are distorted.” 

Asher recommends the passing of a RICO act – which he says “I think you’re going to do,” adding this will “solve these problems” in permitting law enforcement to correctly designate these networks as “criminal and racketeering operations” – and as a form of “terrorism.” Asher, together with Cooper, says Iran is also involved in drug trafficking in Canada. 

When asked whether fentanyl and money laundering are the “real reason” for Trump’s threats, Asher said, “yes,” concluding: “Our countries are getting killed by fentanyl. We gotta protect ourselves.”

The Supreme Court of Canada appears to agree, ruling last December that constitutional privacy can be violated to address the national “opioid crisis.”

Massive money laundering operation

Is there any basis in reality for Asher’s claims on the scale of money laundering from Canada? Reports on the actions of the second biggest bank in Canada would suggest there is.  

Last May Canada’s Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank was hit with the largest fine in history for money laundering, initially being ordered to pay around 9 million dollars. 

In October 2024, following an investigation of its U.S. operations, TD Bank agreed to pay 3 billion dollars in fines. It had been found in one case to have “…facilitated over $400 million in transactions to launder funds on behalf of people selling fentanyl and other deadly drugs.”

Reuters reported the bank had “…failed to monitor over $18 trillion in customer activity for about a decade, enabling three money laundering networks to transfer illicit funds through accounts at the bank.” Employees had “openly joked” about the “lack of compliance “on multiple occasions.” 

The Wall Street Journal reported on May 3, 2024 that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was conducting an “investigation into TD Bank’s internal controls” which “focuses on how Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers used the Canadian lender to launder money from U.S. fentanyl sales.”

Reuters added how TD Bank’s “internal controls” had came under investigation, “since agents discovered a Chinese criminal operation bribed employees and brought large bags of cash into branches to launder millions of dollars in fentanyl sales through TD branches in New York and New Jersey.”  

The charges against Canada are supported by facts presented by people who support and do not support Donald Trump, and the actions of Chinese billionaires and their comfortable relationship with Canadian law have been reported for years.   

Though Trump’s habit of making headline-grabbing threats to secure agreement may be shocking, what is perhaps most shocking of all is to find out the facts behind the headlines are more damning than his description of the problem. Trump’s solution, as Asher outlines, appears not to be “annexation” but the restoration of law and order and the exposure of corruption.