Donald Trump did not rule out using military force to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland and announced a bold plan to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’.
The president-elect, 78, announced his threat of coercion on the global stage and the name swap during a wild and wide-ranging press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday morning.
He laid out his vision for the world, took aim at Canada and tore into President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.
Trump also attacked his nemesis, Special Counsel Jack Smith, by calling him a ‘nutjob’ and demanding all his criminal cases be brought to an end.
‘He will execute everybody’,’ he raged before taking questions from the press.
Just 13 days before the inauguration, he said the United States was entering the ‘golden age’ and will ‘take off like a rocketship’ when he gets the keys back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He also slammed the crackdown on gas heaters by saying electric heaters ‘itch’ and said windmills are killing whales.
Donald Trump did not rule out using military force to take the Panama Canal and Greenland and announced a bold plan to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’
In a remarkable moment, a reporter asked Trump if could assure he would not use ‘military or economic coercion’ to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland.
‘I´m not going to commit to that,’ Trump said, when asked if he would rule out the use of the military. ‘It might be that you´ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country.’ He added, ‘We need Greenland for national security purposes.’
He has been ramping up threats to take over both in recent weeks as he prepares for his second term.
Trump repeated his complaints that the canal is ‘being operated by China. And we gave the Panama canal to Panama.
‘We didn’t give it to China and they’ve abused it. They’ve abused that gift. It should never have been made, by the way!’
The Panama Canal has been solely controlled by the eponymous country for more than 25 years. The U.S. returned the Panama Canal Zone to the country in 1979 and ended its joint partnership in controlling the strategic waterway in 1999.
Trump slammed Jimmy Carter, who was then president, for returning the canal to Panama.
‘It (the Panama Canal deal) should have never been made, by the way. Giving the Panama Canal is why Jimmy Carter lost the election, in my opinion. More so maybe than the hostages. ‘
He was referring to the Iran hostage crisis where 53 U.S. diplomats were held in the embassy in Tehran between 1979 and 1981.
‘The hostages were a big deal, But if you remember, and nobody wants to talk about the Panama Canal now because you know, it’s inappropriate, I guess, because it’s a bad part of of the Carter legacy.’
Trump also pushed back against a question of whether he should criticize Carter as the late president lay in state. Trump is scheduled to attend Carter’s funeral in Washington D.C. on Thursday.
He said Carter ‘was a good man. Look, he was a good man, I knew him a little bit and he was a very fine person. But that was a big mistake.
The president-elect, 78, announced the name swap during a wide-ranging press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday morning
Trump said the deal to hand the Panama Canal to Panama should have ‘never happened’ and said it was why the late President Jimmy Carter lost re-election
Trump ramped us his threats to take over Greenland as his son Don Jr. landed in the territory
Trump added he wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico (sea on the right) to the ‘Gulf of America’. He added it was a ‘beautiful name’
‘Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake. We lost 38,000 people, it cost us the equivalent of $1 trillion, maybe more than that, probably the most expensive, they say it was the most expensive structure, if we call it a structure, which I guess you can, ever built. And giving that away was a horrible thing.’
Later, he said that the United States needs Greenland for ‘national security’ and questioned whether Denmark has any legal right or ‘interest’ to the territory.
He made the comments as his son Donald Trump Jr. made a trip there to shoot social media content.
Trump Jr. took his father’s Trump Force One to Greenland. The president-elect called into his son’s phone to speak to locals when Jr. was in a cafe.
The president-elect, at his press conference, threatened Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally and founding member of NATO.
He said that if Denmark tried to hold onto Greenland, they would face heavy economic tariffs. He also argued the people of Greenland would vote to become a part of the United States.
Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark. The U.S. has a military base there given its strategic position in the Northern Atlantic. The island also has several valuable mineral deposits.
‘People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security,’ Trump argued.
Denmark, during Trump’s first term, rejected the then-president’s offer to buy the island. And the nation has made it clear that they intend to keep it.
One place Trump said he wouldn’t invade was Canada. But he did say he would use ‘economic force’ to try and make it the 51st state.
He repeated his argument that the country is economically dependent on the United States. The U.S. is Canada’s biggest trading partner.
Trump also revealed he’s spoken to retired hockey great Wayne Gretzky and encouraged him to run for prime minister now that Justin Trudeau is stepping down from the position.
‘I have so many great friends. One of them is the great one Wayne Gretzky. I said, run for Prime Minister. You’ll win it up. It’ll take two seconds,’ he said.
Trudeau later made it clear Canada was not joining the United States.
‘There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,’ the out-going prime minister wrote on X.
‘Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.’
Trump also dropped a bombshell at the start of his press conference when he announced plans to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
‘We are going be changing — the opposite of Biden closing everything up and getting rid of 50 to 60 trillion worth of assets — we’ll be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring,’ he noted.
‘That covers a lot of territory. The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name. It is appropriate. It’s appropriate.’
Trump also used his 72 minute press conference to slam Biden for banning off-shore drilling in most of the federal waters off the United States.
Biden, whose term expires in two weeks, used his authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska´s Northern Bering Sea from future oil and natural gas leasing.
All together 625 million acres of federal waters were withdrawn from energy exploration by Biden in a move that may require an act of Congress to undo.
‘I´m going to put it back on day one,’ Trump vowed. He pledged to take it to the courts ‘if we need to.’
He also accused Biden of trying to undermine his upcoming tenure in the White House.
‘You know, they told me that, we´re going to do everything possible to make this transition to the new administration very smooth,’ Trump said. ‘It´s not smooth.’
In his rambling news conference, Trump also vowed ‘all hell will break out in the Middle East’ if the hostages being held by Hamas are not released by Inauguration Day.
‘If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,’ he said. ‘And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is.’
From left, Eric Trump, Susie Wiles, Steve Witkoff and Meredith O’Rourke listen as President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago
President-elect Trump spoke to reporters for about 72 minutes
Before taking questions, Trump spoke for about 30 minutes on a variety of topics, including electric heaters, water pressure, windmills and whale.
He complained about Biden’s love of things electric – including cars and heaters, arguing electric heaters make a person itch.
‘This guy loves electric,’ he said of Biden.
‘Does anybody have a heater where you go and you scratch, and that’s what they want you to have. They don’t want you to have gas where you don’t have the problems of the electric and the source is plentiful,’ he noted.
Trump also complained about water pressure, saying there needs to be more of it.
‘It’s called rain, comes down from comes down from heaven. And they want to do, no water comes out of the shower,’ he said. ‘It goes drip, drip, drip. So what happens you’re in the shower 10 times as long, you know. No water comes out of the faucet.’
And, finally, he hit on one of his favorite topics: his hatred of windmills. He said they are driving whales ‘crazy.’
‘You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area where the whales, where they had two whales washing shore, I think, a 17 year period, and now they had 14 this season,’ he noted.
‘The windmills are driving the whales crazy.’
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