Panamanian President Jose Mulino on Thursday denied the State Department’s claims that a deal allowing US warships to transit the Panama Canal for free had been reached, the AP reports, on Team Trump shooting their load early and declaring nonexistent victory in negotiations.
“I completely reject that statement yesterday,” Mulino told reporters. The State Department’s Twitter account on Wednesday had claimed, without evidence, that “US government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal without charge fees, saving the US government millions of dollars a year.”
Not to justify Trump’s batshittery but that specific concession might’ve been a good idea to secure when the treaty handing over the canal and the territory around it was worked out in the 1970s.