747 live Why Does Trump Want the Panama Canal? Here’s What to Know.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was returned by the U.S. to that country’s control decades ago.

Last month, Mr. Trump falsely accused Panama of allowing Chinese soldiers to control the vital shipping route, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and of overcharging American ships.

He has also claimed Panama charges U.S. vessels “exorbitant prices,” and warned that if they are not reduced after he takes office next month, he will demand that the United States be granted control of the canal “in full, quickly and without question.”

While it is unclear what prompted Mr. Trump’s recent obsession with the Panama Canal,megapanalo casino some Republicans have long objected to a decades-old treaty that turned the shipping lane over to Panamanian control. When Ronald Reagan ran for president, he said the people of the United States were the canal’s “rightful owners” and brought audiences to their feet with the line: “We bought it; we paid for it; we built it.”

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But many of their smiles shrank when they were asked about the embattled Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has been under fire since CNN reported this week on the lewd comments he made on a pornography website several years ago. According to CNN, Mr. Robinson wrote on the site that he was a “black NAZI,” that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and that slavery was not bad. He also recounted on the site how he went “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a teenager.

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