Former Trump National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said during an interview over the weekend that President-elect Donald Trump was serious about taking back the Panama Canal from Panama because the country has effectively given up control of the canal to communist China.
O’Brien made the remarks during a Sunday interview on Fox News when asked about the matter after Trump seemingly brought it up out of nowhere.
“The Panama Canal is one of the engineering achievements of the last millennia, and we built it, we paid for it, and we operated it for many years, and then in a tremendous act of generosity, it was probably foolish, Jimmy Carter gave the canal back to the Panamanians,” O’Brien said. “But it wasn’t just a free gift, there are conditions that the canal remain neutral.”
“The Panamanians … gave the ports on both ends of the canal to the Chinese,” he said. “And even the New York Times is saying — which has been an apologist for China for years — is saying that the Chinese are committing espionage, or they could shut down the canal without military efforts just using these Hong Kong companies that control the canal.”