President-elect Trump said on Tuesday that negotiating away the Panama Canal was a "very big mistake" by former President Jimmy Carter – ahead of Carter's state funeral later this week.
Trump said at a press conference that he believes the canal, which he would like the the U.S. to reclaim, is why Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, who also opposed the treaty Carter negotiated to hand over the canal.
"It's a bad part of the Carter legacy," Trump said.
"He was a good man. I knew him a little bit, and he was a very fine person. But that was a big mistake."
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"Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake. We lost 38,000 people. It cost us the equivalent of a trillion dollars, maybe more... They say it was the most expensive structure… ever built. And giving that away was a horrible thing. And I believe that's why Jimmy Carter lost the election, even more so than the hostages," he said.
Speaking in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump lamented the fact Carter purportedly "gave" the canal lands back to the Panamanians "for $1." According to reports, no part of the treaty mentioned a $1 sale.
"I thought [giving the canal back] was a terrible thing to do," Trump said.
When reporters pressed Trump on criticizing Carter on the day of his Washington wake, the president-elect said he was a "very fine person" but that his politics left something to be desired.
Trump has also sparred verbally with Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino about his plans for the canal.
However, more than a century ago, another Republican – Theodore Roosevelt – celebrated the way the United States spearheaded the canal project in part through some diplomatic maneuvering.
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In the early 1900s, as the Colombian Senate balked at a treaty favoring U.S. control, Panama was in the process of declaring its independence from Bogota – and America quickly recognized the new nation and effectively circumvented the Colombians.
In 1903, President Roosevelt boasted of the accomplishment.
"Fortunately, the crisis came at a period when I could act unhampered [by Congress]. Accordingly, I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me," he said.
Trump’s plans to retake the canal have earned him praise from otherwise regular critics.
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain – with whom Trump often sparred – backed the man she otherwise tends to critique.
"Trump is right about the Panama Canal. This is very personal – my dad was born in the Panama Canal Zone."
The elder McCain was born in 1936 at the then-Coco Solo U.S. Navy installation – as a U.S. citizen since the canal zone was controlled by Americans.
The late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina also expressed reservations about canal negotiations in the 1970s.
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In a letter to then-President Ford, Thurmond warned the Panamanians were cozying up to the Communist Cuban government, and that "any action on the part of the United States that indicates the slightest position of weakness or a willingness to accommodate anti-American sentiment in Panama, would result in many other Latin American countries moving in the same leftward direction."
Thurmond led 35 senators in crafting a resolution opposing what he called the surrender of U.S. sovereignty in the PCZ.
"Any loss of control of the Canal would be extremely detrimental to our vital interests, especially in Latin America. We should make it clear that U.S. vital interests there are not negotiable."
Carter's negotiations led to Panama taking full control of the canal by 1999. His other major diplomatic negotation – peace accords between Egypt and Israel – also remain intact today.
