Retired Col. Rob Maness joins me in the Stone Zone to discuss the importance of the Panama Canal, the need for free flow of goods and services through the canal, and the impact of China's trade policies.
00:01:21.340So in our earlier segment, we focused on the strategic and commercial importance of the Panama Canal.
00:01:28.560Now, I worked in three presidential campaigns on the staff of Ronald Reagan in 1976 when he challenged
00:01:37.920Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. I was the national director of youth for Reagan,
00:01:45.840working directly for Senator Paul Laxalt, the national chairman of our campaign.
00:01:51.520In 1980, when I was the Northeastern regional director for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign,
00:01:57.680handling New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. And then in 1984, when I handled those three states,
00:02:06.720plus all the states in New England all the way to the Canadian border, plus at the recommendation of
00:02:13.200President Nixon, the Reagan campaign also assigned me Ohio on the theory that if you took one large state
00:02:22.480and you kept it out of Walter Mondale's clutches, that he could not possibly win. Remember it very well.
00:02:31.040Nixon told Reagan, assign Ohio to Stone, he said. Stone's an animal. I always considered that a compliment.
00:02:39.520But Ronald Reagan was right when he warned us that this day would come. Tell us what's going on today in Panama
00:02:48.000and about the strategic importance of the Canal and the Canal Zone.
00:02:51.680Well, from a national security perspective, you know, I think most people know, but especially
00:02:59.920those of us that practice that as a profession, that it's the largest choke point for Navy traffic,
00:03:06.160U.S. Navy and international Navy traffic in the world. You know, and we're risking lives to protect the
00:03:14.560international traffic in the Red Sea, because this is a critically important shipping lane. The Panama Canal
00:03:22.800is probably to the United States a hundred times more important than that. But it goes way beyond just
00:03:31.200Navy traffic. You know, China controls the companies at each end of the canal, the port companies at this
00:03:38.720point. And every company that's Chinese has a part of it, if not wholly owned by the Communist Chinese
00:03:45.280Party or the People's Liberation Army and Navy. So it's extremely important that we get control of that
00:03:53.600back. And I think the president had lined up, President Trump had lined up to have a company
00:03:59.840buy those ports. But China's obviously pushing back against that deal. But you know what else is going on?
00:04:07.280Economically, I don't know if you guys talked about this in your last segment, but
00:04:12.560we're trying to expand our liquefied natural gas LNG marketing out to new markets. And the Panama Canal
00:04:21.280is crucial to that because the LNG exporter capability in the United States, it's on the Gulf Coast and
00:04:29.360Louisiana and places like that. So that canal has to be able to carry that type of energy type product
00:04:38.560for us so that we can easily get through there, get to the Pacific theater of operations and deliver
00:04:45.600that to potentially new customers. So it's very much tied together from a national security and an
00:04:53.600economic security perspective. And obviously, with everything that's going on in the world,
00:04:59.440the more that we can have direct control over from a trade perspective,
00:05:04.240the better off our country is going to be. And I think the president's done the exact right thing
00:05:08.480with the tariff issue. I was pleased to see the liberation day yesterday. I still have a smile on
00:05:14.720my face with that because because it puts the manufacturing capability is going to come back
00:05:21.200to the United States that we have been offshoring for decades now. And it's made us weak. You know,
00:05:28.320China controls 90% of the precursor materials for antibiotics. We can't make antibiotics on our own
00:05:35.600without the Chinese Communist Party. So we have to bring that type of manufacturing back. But we also
00:05:40.720need the canal for free flow of our goods, especially with this LNG exporting effort to expand that going on.
00:05:50.000As someone who served his country at the highest levels of our military, I have to ask you about
00:05:56.560what has become known as signal gate. Now, I'm amused to see senators like Mark Warner of Virginia,
00:06:07.280who I went back and looked, he had no problem whatsoever. When Robert Malley, a high level
00:06:15.120Biden State Department official was sharing classified documents with the Iranians. He actually
00:06:21.440never even got fired. They just, they just suspended his security clearance. They also left, let his
00:06:27.920Confederates who were involved in the, in the transfer of these classified documents to Iran
00:06:34.960continue in their positions at state. He never said a word. When Hillary Clinton got caught sending 30
00:06:43.680plus thousand classified documents over an illegal computer server located in her bathroom. Once again,
00:06:51.280not a peep from Mark Warner, but now he's in a lather about a signal exchange in which,
00:07:02.320based on what I've seen, no classified information was exposed. Give us your take on, on signal gate,
00:07:10.880if you will. Let's talk about the information itself. There's been a lot of, uh, uh, uh, angst about
00:07:18.640that and lathering up, as you said, uh, with Senator Warner, uh, and his ilk over that information. None of that
00:07:26.240information was classified, not one iota of it. Uh, there were not enough specifics in that thread,
00:07:34.800uh, for anything to be classified, but, but even if secretary Hegg said, uh, and that's the information
00:07:40.400that most people are talking about is what he put into the chat or his phone did, uh, is, uh, put in,
00:07:46.720he is the original classifying authority on there. Just like president Trump is the overall original
00:07:52.080classifying authority for every single piece of classified, uh, uh, secretary Hegg said,
00:07:56.800the defense secretary is the OCA for that information. And even if it had been classified,
00:08:02.800if he chose to put that in there, it's declassified, uh, from that perspective. So now let's talk about
00:08:08.800signal, uh, itself. It's an end to end to end encrypted chat. And this is one of the areas that
00:08:13.920I'm concerned about is that the national security team and national security council team, especially
00:08:18.240under Mike Waltz, they got to get that, that stuff together. They have to investigate the,
00:08:22.960how that reporter Goldberg, uh, from the Atlantic. I mean, the worst, uh, fake news guy, Russia gate,
00:08:30.960all of it, the suckers and losers lie, all of that, that they tried to use to hurt president Trump and
00:08:36.640the team, uh, was due to that one guy. So that's a major issue. And I'm not seeing anything yet that
00:08:42.800makes me satisfied that that team is cleaned up, uh, uh, internally and that they don't have people
00:08:48.160that have access to their information threads, like the signal chat, uh, that shouldn't have
00:08:53.200access to it. So Waltz has got to get that fixed. Now let's talk about the senators because you didn't
00:08:58.000mention the Republican Senator that has also joined in with Warner and is demanding a DOD inspector
00:09:03.760general investigation of Hegseth, uh, over the signal thing. Uh, you know, my Senator Roger Wicker,
00:09:09.280I agree with him on a lot of things like increasing ship building and, uh, get returning
00:09:14.080to peace through strength instead of being in endless war policies when it comes to China.
00:09:18.320But I disagree with him on a lot too on this. I disagree with him. It's absolutely unnecessary.
00:09:24.240Number one, because the national security council is the team that set that chat up. It wasn't the
00:09:29.840department of defense, uh, so there's no reason whatsoever to investigate secretary Hegseth or
00:09:36.400the department of defense over that particular issue. Look, I'm all for investigating the
00:09:41.200government. I don't trust hardly anybody in the government, but I do trust president Trump's
00:09:45.440appointees, uh, uh, and that they need the maximum flexibility, uh, possible so we can move forward
00:09:52.080and get the president's policies that we all voted for in place and throttled up so that we're,
00:09:58.320they're running, uh, uh, appropriately and calling for investigations when it's not
00:10:03.680necessary. It's just the wrong thing to do. This shrimp and coconut sauce is divine. What's your
00:10:08.080secret? Goya coconut milk. How does it taste so good? It's all in that real coconut flavor and
00:10:13.360that rich creamy texture. What about thickeners and added sugars? None, just smooth coconutty goodness.
00:10:20.640What can I make with it from curries to sweet treats like coconut flan? The possibilities are endless.
00:10:26.480Goya coconut milk. Take your cooking to the next level. No question about it. Find it in the
00:10:31.440Goya section of your local grocery store. If it's Goya, it has to be good. Yeah, I agree with that.
00:10:36.800This is beginning to look to me like an effort to get, uh, Hegseth, to oust Hegseth. Yeah. Uh,
00:10:45.120that's because he, he was an outside the box, anti-establishment choice. Uh, he's the right choice.
00:10:51.600I strongly supported the president's nominee. Uh, when I defended this, uh, uh, in, uh, on a show with
00:10:58.880Chris Cuomo, uh, it was amazing the way they twisted what I said. See, I don't trust any online,
00:11:06.240uh, service encrypted or unencrypted. I frankly think they're all vulnerable to being, uh, hacked.
00:11:13.520They're all vulnerable to being monitored. So I always operate on the assumption that anything
00:11:18.240you put in writing online, you should have seen that someone else is going to have the ability
00:11:23.360to see it. So don't say stupid things online. That's kind of my attitude. Uh, I was defending
00:11:28.800these people, but if you read their story, it makes it appear like that I was criticizing them,
00:11:33.360which I was not. Uh, but the Democrats have spun this up because frankly, they don't have anything
00:11:41.440else to talk about. It was interesting to see Cory Booker, the Senator from New Jersey,
00:11:46.640breaking the previously held, uh, filibuster record held by, uh, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina,
00:11:55.200who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes, uh, without a bathroom break, I might add, uh, uh, back in 1957.
00:12:06.640Cory Booker has now broken that record. He spoke for slightly longer, but strangely enough,
00:12:13.040with all that time, he never explained why when he was the mayor of Newark, New Jersey,
00:12:20.000he authorized the New York city, the New York, Newark city water authority known as watershed
00:12:26.000to pay $200,000 to his law firm, which he then put in his pocket. And when confronted by reporters,
00:12:34.880he said, uh, that he didn't vote for that yet. Uh, if you, and they're hard to find, but when I found
00:12:40.160the actual formal minutes of the meeting, he was not only in the chair, but he also voted for the
00:12:46.640disbursement. Then he came up with three different explanations as to why he got that money. Once he
00:12:53.600said it had no connection, uh, to watershed, that it was the buyout of his, uh, uh, his, uh, uh, portion
00:13:02.640of the law firm. Another point, he said it was deferred compensation. I'll tell you what it was.
00:13:08.240It was graft. That's what it was. And he's never been, never answered that question. I actually
00:13:14.320wrote a biography on him. It's called Spartacus, the real Cory Booker story. It's now out of print,
00:13:20.080but I might bring it back to tell you the truth. Uh, it may be time to put it back in truth. By the
00:13:26.160way, what you saw there was the launch of Cory Booker's presidential campaign, uh, because he sees
00:13:33.360himself as a presidential candidate. By the way, he is the senator from Greenwich Village. He doesn't
00:13:39.040even live in New Jersey. Uh, good. Sorry. I hope to get a copy of that book, sir. Uh, I'm going to,
00:13:47.600I got to pull it out of mothballs. I, I published it when he was running for president, but his campaign
00:13:52.640was such a flop. Didn't sell many copies, but if he's going to run again, I may have to republish it
00:13:58.320again. When we come back, I'm going to ask Colonel Manus about, uh, Cuba and the fact that, um, the
00:14:05.680Chinese have a very sophisticated spy station set up in Cuba. But I also want to know, do they have
00:14:13.520missiles? And if they have missiles, are they offensive missiles or defensive missiles? And do they pose the
00:14:20.640same danger that Russian missiles, uh, pose to this nation in 1962 when the Russians put them in Cuba?
00:14:29.360We'll be right back with Colonel Rob Manus right here in the Stone Zone. So don't go away.
00:14:35.200This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone. The Stone Zone.
00:14:41.040Neither sizione, nor do they choke the shit I would say before.
00:14:42.240No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, so.
00:14:45.840Back with Colonel Rob Manus retired. Colonel Manus led numerous combat operations during
00:14:52.680his military service, including as a bomb squadron commander in Operation Enduring Freedom and
00:14:59.280Operation Iraqi Freedom. Colonel Manus also served as an enlisted bomb disposal technician in three assignments,
00:15:06.280countering terrorism before being commissioned and selected for flight training.
00:15:12.780He is a man who has put his life on the line for his country, and we are honored to have him with us today.
00:15:19.020I want to focus on that question regarding Cuba that I raised before the break.
00:17:04.260As you reminded us, it's 90 miles away.
00:17:07.320So electronic surveillance capability that we have today is much more effective than it would have been even 10 years ago.
00:17:17.580Not just that, but there are cable lines that give them access to the digital networks inside the United States
00:17:27.020that they are able to get access to being in such close proximity and uncontrolled.
00:17:32.780And I think, and I hope that we're going to see the national security team start putting pressure on the Cuban government again to get those forces removed.
00:17:44.540But, you know, one of the conflicting issues, though, is the Russia-Ukraine war, Roger,
00:17:51.740as the president tries to stop the killing over there.
00:17:54.900And I wish it could happen tomorrow, because that's going to be a conflicting issue when every time we talk about China being 90 miles away,
00:18:07.400the other side gets to talk about what we're letting, you know, Russia, expecting Russia to allow NATO to be right up against its border.
00:18:17.540So that kind of debate will get generated out of that.
00:18:21.940But knowing President Trump, he'll ignore that and push through to take care of the interests of the United States of America in both of those situations.
00:18:30.360And I'm so glad that he's in office, because we're going to get the killing stopped in Europe and get that situation resolved.
00:18:38.640Yeah, I don't think it's an illegitimate argument, by the way.
00:18:41.340We signed the Budapest Memorandum, in which we promised when the Russians united East and West Germany,
00:18:47.940or they allowed us to have it reunited, we agreed not to push Ukraine into NATO,
00:18:53.440which means not to mount NATO missiles on the ground in NATO aimed at Russia.
00:18:57.820We reaffirmed that in the Minsk Accords.
00:19:34.080I want to thank my special guest, retired Colonel Rob Manis.
00:19:37.600He has a killer substack that you might want to check out.
00:19:42.420But I appreciate your being with us, Colonel, and I appreciate your bringing your real-world defense and national security expertise to my listeners here in the Stone Zone.
00:19:54.160So, my friend, thank you for being with us, and God bless you.
00:19:58.880And I hope to get you on the show and spend an hour with me talking about who killed John F. Kennedy now that all these documents have been released.