As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to assume later this month, he is ramping up his threats to take over a critical shipping artery and a strategic foreign land — suggesting he could even use military force to do so.
“I’m not going to commit to that,” Trump said on Tuesday when asked if he would rule out using the U.S. military to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.
“It might be that you’ll have to do something. Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country,” he continued, also saying, “we need Greenland for national security purposes.” He added, “We need them for economic security. The Panama Canal was built for our military.”
Trump also slammed former President Jimmy Carter for overseeing diplomatic negotiations to turn over the Panama Canal, which the U.S. finished constructing in 1914 and controlled until Jimmy Carter ceded authority in 1977 with the Panama Canal Treaty.
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