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Floor Speech
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, this weekend, I was thinking about all of the criticism President Trump is receiving right now from some in the liberal media and from some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as they kind of look down their necks with: I am smarter than you. You are all wrong. You silly person. These sorts of narratives are going on all over the place. As I heard it this weekend, it reminded me of a book that I read back in the nineties about President Reagan. It was a biography--``Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.''
If you will remember back then--I was relatively young, but I remember people saying that Ronald Reagan has got this idea of Star Wars--they called it Star Wars--because he felt he had an obligation to protect the American people by having some sort of a shield against missiles. Now we call that HIMARS, and Israel calls it the Iron Dome. We have technologies deployed in space that are effectively a realization of that vision, but he was a silly actor from California who didn't know anything. What he did know was vision, what he did know were adversaries, and what he did know were other countries that were failing to do their part in defending and protecting democracy.
How does that relate to President Trump? President Trump, over the past couple of weeks, has said things--and you have to admit, when the President talks, he talks in big, beautiful words. He said something about Canada being the 51st State. He said something about Greenland maybe being a territory of the United States. He said he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the ``Gulf of America,'' which he did through an Executive order, because of his frustration with Mexico. He also talked about the Panama Canal.
Now, if you are a member of the liberal press, you are just going to look down your nose at him and say he is a silly guy and he is just saying dumb things. If you are somebody who lived through those criticisms of Ronald Reagan, I have a little bit different take on it.
Let's start with Canada. Why is President Trump frustrated with Canada?
If you were to total up the shortfall of the Canadian Government's contribution to NATO over the last 24 years, they have fallen short by a third of a trillion dollars. Almost $300 billion for our mutual defense they have decided not to pay into. Because why? Because they happen to have the world's strongest, greatest enduring democracy right to themselves. They know the United States would prevent anybody from invading Canada, and they are taking it for granted.
President Trump is tired of being taken for granted. I don't care if he uses language like ``Trudeau is the next Governor''--whatever gets the Canadian people's attention. It is to let them understand that we have a serious problem with our mutual defense in North America, and Canada needs to pay attention. Canada needs to end their unfair trading practices when it comes to beef, when it comes to milk, and when it comes to the way they benefit from value-added transfers in the automobile industry. All of those are legitimate criticisms by President Trump, and I am glad he has had the courage and the insight to call them to account.
Now let's move to Greenland.
I am going to go back--and by the way, I take this personally because I am the Republican leader of the Senate NATO Observer Group and have been since 2018. I have spent a lot of time with our allies, and I believe that the NATO alliance is the most important treaty that has ever existed, and it is why we have free democracies today in the Western World.
When he is talking about Greenland, he is also trying to say: Folks, wake up. Russia and China, for the first time in history, had joint military exercises in the Arctic. Many people may not know that. We do. China is flexing its muscles, and Russia is flexing their muscles. They are in our space in the Arctic. We should take that seriously.
He is sending a message to Europe to say: Take care of our mutual defense. Project power in the Arctic. Check up against what we have already seen over the last year between China and Russia.
So, yes, if he wants to use the language that he uses, he is communicating a very important point: We need to project power in the Arctic in a way that we haven't before.
So those are the crazy comments about Canada and Greenland. Now let's go to Mexico.
Mexico currently has, right now, an additional coequal branch of government. They call them the cartels. If you go to the southern border, you will see the cartels in action. They have these things called plazas. So the cartels have decided that they are going to break up the geography on the southern border. They are going to charge people a premium to come across the border illegally--anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000. In plain sight, they let China import precursors in their ports. They transport them to factories where cartels manufacture fentanyl that they carry across the border and kill over 100,000 people a year here. The vast majority of that comes from Mexico.
So of course the President should threaten tariffs, and of course the President should say: You should get organized crime out of the decision-making process in Mexico. And if it takes the United States referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the ``Gulf of America'' to get the Mexican Government and the Mexican people's attention, I am fine with that.
They need to work with us on sealing the border. They need to focus on the southern border. They need to wake up because we have a new administration that is going to treat them like adults and not like what arguably sometimes can be petulant children. They have safety and security because of where they are on the globe and in their close proximity to the United States.
We expect both Canada and Mexico to be good partners, and I thank President Trump for taking them to task.
Lastly is the Panama Canal.
When President Carter agreed to transfer ownership of the Panama Canal, we made a mistake--and rest President Carter's soul. But the mistake we made was in not making sure that the governance and the protection of the Panama Canal could never come under the control of a communist nation. Now we know that China has actually business contracts on either end of the Panama Canal with the ports. They basically control the ingress and the egress to the Panama Canal.
Now, people will say: Oh, he is so silly. He said they control the canal. That is just not right. I saw that on CNN.
Here is what they didn't tell you: They control--they have contracts at either end of the Panama Canal, folks. We have to wake up. The President gets it. It is the most strategically important waterway in the world.
So I am going to wind up my remarks so that the Senator from Florida can speak, but I believe that President Trump--you can criticize him for his rhetoric, but you can't criticize him for the truth when you tease through that rhetoric. Canada, Europe, Mexico, and Panama all owe in large part their independence and their ability to be democratic nations to the United States. I think it is fair to suggest that they act like partners and treat the United States with respect.
I, for one, appreciate--although I wouldn't necessarily always use the words that President Trump does, I don't disagree with his objective, and I hope he keeps his foot on the accelerator.
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