On Christmas Day, former US War College professor Tom Nichols dismissed Donald Trump’s desire to control the Panama Canal as “out-of-left-field” rambling.
Nichols was asked by holiday host Yamiche Alcindor about Trump’s sudden interest in the canal, which was not mentioned during the 2024 presidential election.
After watching a video of the president-elect telling a crowd at a Turning Point USA event, “It was given to Panama and the people of Panama, but it has provisions—you have got to treat us fairly.
And they have not treated us fairly. We will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America completely, quickly, and without question. I will not stand for it. So, Panamanian officials, please be guided accordingly,” Nichols was asked what Trump thinks he is doing.
“He is probably got some pebble in his shoe about something that is happened in Panama that relates to his interests — that is usually what provokes sort of out-of-left-field tirades from Donald Trump,” said the politician.
“It is important for people to remember that this is not simply — this was not simply a gift put under a Christmas tree 45 years ago,” he told me. “This is actually the relationship with Panama and the Panama canal is governed by a Senate-ratified treaty that exists that already lays out the relationship between the United States and Panama.”
“When Donald Trump says ‘Well, we will just take it back,’ you know, just as in his first term we will be saying something using a phrase that we used a lot during those first four years, which is ‘Things do not work that way,” he continued. “That is 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 is not going to happen,” he had expected.
