Hi everybody. Cheryl Ackison here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours.

Today, a report from El Salvador on how the most popular president in the world, when measured by domestic approval, got a grip on crime in the murder capital of the world

and what we might learn from it. For about a decade on my TV program full measure,

I've been covering the global populist movement marked by the election of leaders who are

disdained by the political establishment on both the left

and the right. Nowhere perhaps has this movement had a more dramatic impact than in the small

Central American nation of El Salvador with the election of President Nayyb Buckele, then the youngest

elected president in the Western Hemisphere.

Bucali has led his country through a really stunning transformation under his popular

tough-on-crime policies, and other nations are definitely taking note.

As it happens, shortly after I returned from El Salvador, investigating their tough-on-crime approach and the results,

President Trump did something that felt very similar when he took control of Washington, D.C.

and put National Guard troops on the street. And like the example of Washington, El Salvador also

saw dramatic results, as you will hear.

This is my cover story on Full Measure as we debut our season 11, Sunday, September 7th, as I report from El Salvador.

And in today's podcast, you're going to hear my interview with El Salvador's defense minister,

the head of the military, Renee Marino-Munroy.

First, a little bit of important background. El Salvador historically has been plagued by

civil war, followed by brutal gang control by MS-13 and other gangs for decades. In 2019,

Salvadorans took the step to reclaim their country by electing 37-year-old Nyabukali as president. He took the lead in a movement that arrested

87,000 suspected gang members and other criminals. Now, this is a country about the size of Massachusetts,

arresting 87,000 people. And as part of this, soldiers deployed alongside police, and still they

...