The Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols suggested President-elect Donald Trump is obsessed with seizing the Panama Canal because he has business interests in the region.
Recently, Trump has threatened multiple times throughout the week to seize the canal from Panama’s government because of the fees on American ships moving through the route. Trump claimed American workers already paid for the waterway system when thousands died during its construction from 1904 to 1914
During a Christmas day interview on MSNBC with anchor Yamiche Alcindor, Nichols claimed that Trump’s out-of-left-field tirades” on Panama are probably related to his personal interests in the region.
ALCINDOR: Tom, how serious do you think President elect Trump is this time?
NICHOLS: He’s probably got some pebble an issue about something that’s happened in Panama that relates to his interests. That’s usually what provokes one of these kind of out-of-left-field tirades from Donald Trump. It’s important for people to remember that this wasn’t simply a gift put under a Christmas tree 45 years ago, that this is actually the relationship with Panama.
And the Panama Canal is governed by a Senate ratified treaty that already lays out the relationship between the United States and Panama. And when Donald Trump says, well, we’ll just take it back, you know, just as in his first term, I think in his second term, we’re going to be saying something using a phrase that we used a lot during his first four years, which is things don’t work that way.
That’s not how any of that works. So, you know, he can say it and he can complain about it and he can get big cheers about it at conservative meetings. But that’s that’s not going to happen.
