Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
President-elect Trump said Tuesday that negotiating the Panama Canal was a “very big mistake” by former President Jimmy Carter, ahead of Carter’s state funeral later this week.
Trump said in a press conference that he believes in the channel, that he would like it the US to recoverthis is why Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, who also opposed the treaty Carter negotiated to hand over the canal.
“It’s a bad part of Carter’s legacy,” Trump said.
“He was a good man. I knew him a little and he was a very good person. But it was a big mistake.”
LIVE UPDATES: JIMMY CARTER REMEMBERS, FUNERAL SERVICES
President Jimmy Carter and then-Sen. Joe Biden at a fundraiser during the 1980 campaign. (Getty Images)
“Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake. We lost 38,000 people. It cost us the equivalent of a trillion dollars, maybe more… They say it was the most expensive structure… ever built. And giving it away was a horrible thing. And I think that’s why Jimmy Carter lost the election, even more so than the hostages,” he said.
talking inside Palm Beach, Florida, Trump bemoaned the fact that Carter allegedly “gave back” the canal lands to the Panamanians “for $1.” No part of the treaty reportedly mentioned a sale of $1.
“I thought (bringing the channel back) was a terrible thing,” Trump said.
When reporters pressed Trump to criticize Carter on the day of his wake in Washington, the president-elect said he was a “very good person” but that his policies left something to be desired.
Trump has also spoken verbally with Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino about his plans for the canal.
Yet more than a century ago, another Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, celebrated the way the United States spearheaded the canal project in part through some diplomatic maneuvering.
HOW CARTER TRANSFORMED THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino (Daniel Gonzalez/Anadolu via Getty)
In the early 1900s, when the Colombian Senate resisted a treaty favoring US control, Panama was in the process of declaring its independence from Bogotá, and America quickly recognized the new nation and bypassed the Colombians.
In 1903, President Roosevelt boasted of the achievement.
“Fortunately, the crisis came at a time when I could act without hindrance (from Congress). Accordingly, I took the isthmus, started the canal, and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate “m,” he said.
Trump’s plans to bring back the canal have earned him praise from regular critics.
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late senator John McCain – with whom Trump often clashed – supported the man who otherwise tends to criticize.
“Trump is right about the Panama Canal. This is very personal: My father was born in the Panama Canal Zone.”
The great McCain was born in 1936 to the then Coco Solo US Navy Installation – as an American citizen since the canal zone was controlled by the Americans.
The late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina also expressed reservations about the canal negotiations in the 1970s.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
In a letter to then-President Ford, Thurmond warned that the Panamanians were cozying up to him Cuban communist governmentand that “any action on the part of the United States indicating the slightest position of weakness or willingness to accommodate anti-American sentiment in Panama would result in many other Latin American countries moving in the same direction to the left” .
Thurmond led 35 senators in drafting a resolution opposing what he called the surrender of American sovereignty to the PCZ.
“Any loss of control of the Canal would be extremely damaging to our vital interests, particularly in Latin America. We must make it clear that vital US interests there are non-negotiable.”
Carter’s negotiations led to Panama taking full control of the canal in 1999. His other major diplomatic negotiation, the peace accords between Egypt and Israel, also remains intact today.
