Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has warned there’s so much communism in the air at the Panama Canal you can “feel it.”
“I want to thank President Molina, a pro-Trump, pro-America president of Panama who’s sticking his neck out against communists, whose influence was real there,” he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday after returning from a recent trip to the small Central American nation.
“Maria, you could see it; you could feel it,” he added.
Since assuming office this year, President Donald Trump has consistently (and falsely) claimed that the Chinese government currently operates the Panama Canal, and that with roughly 40% of all U.S. container shipping passing through the waterway, bringing the passage under control remains vital to U.S. economic interests.
The crucial maritime passage, which facilitates hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trade each year, has been solely and wholly operated by the Republic of Panama since it was transferred from US control almost three decades ago, though two of its ports have been under management of a Hong Kong-based firm since 1997.
Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino has consistently rebuked Trump’s claims of rightful U.S. control over the waterway, insisting “there’s no possibility of opening any kind of conversation” about transferring ownership to the new administration, and denying any Chinese involvement whatsoever in the actual operation of the canal.
Hegseth nevertheless repeated Trump’s baseless claims during his appearance at a security conference in Panama earlier this week, warning that “the era of capitulating to coercion by the Communist Chinese is over,” and that “their growing and adversarial control of strategic land and critical infrastructure in this hemisphere cannot and will not stand.”
“China has too much influence over the Panama Canal and America is gonna take it back,” as Hegseth reiterated during his Fox interview on Sunday. “That’s exactly what I was charged to do, [and] what we’re continuing to do.”
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