Donald Trump’s acolytes in the House of Representatives are so jazzed about his forthcoming administration that they’re practically handing him the reins to resume manifest destiny.
In a since-deleted tweet posted on Wednesday, the official account for the House GOP challenged the patriotism of the president-elect’s foreign policy detractors, claiming that denying Trump’s “big dreams” for the country was “un-American.”
“Our country was built by warriors and explorers,” the official House GOP wrote in a since-deleted tweet. “We tamed the West, won two World Wars, and were the first to plant our flag on the moon.
“President Trump has the biggest dreams for America and it’s un-American to be afraid of big dreams,” they wrote.
The message was circulated alongside the New York Post’s front page, which featured a caricature of Trump standing in front of a map of the Western hemisphere with America’s geographical neighbors rebranded as part of America.
Trump has escalated a laughless joke in recent weeks that Canada and Greenland should be absorbed into the United States, making them states under the American banner. But the bully behavior ends where foreign countries begin to take the threat seriously: Trump has also advanced the idea that the U.S. should take the Panama Canal from Panama. That alone has prompted the leader of the Panama Canal Authority to warn that Trump’s rhetoric “will lead to chaos.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Ricaurte Vásquez Morales sternly rebutted Trump’s claim that China was getting preferential rates to use the vital trade route.
“Rules are rules and there are no exceptions,” Vásquez Morales said. “We cannot discriminate for the Chinese, or the Americans, or anyone else. This will violate the neutrality treaty, international law and it will lead to chaos.”
