00:11:31.140And the prisoners, 23 hours a day, they're in those cells.
00:11:37.540And in front of the cells are prison guards.
00:11:42.940And the prison guards are standing there holding machine guns, watching them through the front of the bars.
00:11:50.260Above the prison cell, there's a whole level above the prison cell.
00:11:57.440And it's basically bars on top as well.
00:12:00.760And so there are prison guards on top of the prison cell looking down on them.
00:12:05.560So, unlike, you know, you and I have both seen a lot of prison movies where people are off in dark corners and doing things in their cells where they can't be seen.
00:13:45.540Look, tragically, in virtually every prison on Earth, rape is a significant risk.
00:13:53.000It happens with far too common frequency.
00:13:56.380They said it didn't happen there, that they did not deal with prison rape.
00:14:03.500And I don't know that I entirely believe that, but I got to say I mostly believe that because prison rape normally occurs where you have prisoners that are out of view of anyone and able to be somewhere where someone can be the victim of sexual assault.
00:14:20.240In this instance, when you have prison guards with machine guns watching you at every moment, there's not a lot of capacity to engage in an act of violence.
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00:15:02.380I want to go back to what you were talking about, the conditions there, and also the rules, and how they're running their prisons down there in a way that I'm kind of jealous that we're not doing it here.
00:15:12.520Well, you mentioned that it is designed to make life unpleasant.
00:15:18.680And I will say, look, it's clearly designed to incapacitate, and it's doing that incredibly effectively.
00:15:25.880They've taken the murderers off the streets.
00:15:29.020But it is also designed – listen, I've been to prisons before in Texas.
00:15:33.820I've been to the prison in Huntsville.
00:15:47.960I was defending that in federal court.
00:15:49.440So I felt an obligation that I needed to go and personally observe an execution, that I couldn't do my job effectively and litigate defending the method that Texas used for capital punishment unless I observed it myself.
00:16:04.700I was behind the scenes and saw how capital punishment was executed.
00:16:09.320And I will tell you, look, being in a Texas prison is no walk in a park, to put it mildly.
00:16:16.960But it pales in comparison to what I observed there.
00:16:21.560I have to say, I cannot imagine life – it is hell on earth.
00:16:28.680It is – you are locked up every minute of the day.
00:16:34.300Now, you're not subjected – assuming the reports from the head of the prison is accurate, you're not subjected to violence and threats.
00:16:41.480And by the way, one of the things they do – so previously prisons had separated each gang, so they'd send MS-13 to one and 18th Street Barrio to another.
00:16:59.700And part of the reason for that is they said, look, if you put all the MS-13 gang members in one prison, they end up operating the gang out of there, and it becomes a safe haven.
00:17:09.900And in this case – and by the way, these gangs, they're not just sort of rivals.
00:17:14.800It's not like, you know, the Yankees and the Mets.
00:17:17.260I mean, they are actively murdering each other.
00:17:20.840Yeah, like if they see each other in the street, they open fire, and they're suddenly locked together in a cell.
00:17:26.580So of the hundred prisoners in a cell – and I saw them, like, lined up, you would see them.
00:17:31.580The main ones were MS-13 and 18th Street Barrio, and you would see the tats, and they're all together, and they had to learn to, like, they're going to be locked up in the same cage together for a long time.
00:17:43.280And I saw several prisoners – and I'm going to tell you in a minute about an extended conversation I had with an MS-13 gang member, which was chilling.
00:17:52.540But I will say I saw several prisoners – there was one they showed me that had a prison sentence of over 1,000 years.
00:18:01.400So he had been convicted of over six homicides, at least six.
00:18:06.980And one of the things the justice minister said to me about MS-13, he said, in the United States, to become an MS-13 member, you have to murder someone.
00:18:50.460And gang activity is essentially nonexistent.
00:18:53.440And so, like, I had dinner in downtown San Salvador in a very nice restaurant, a steak restaurant there.
00:19:00.580And the folks I was having dinner with, it was a cabinet member I was having dinner with, and she said, look, it used to be a few years ago nobody would come here at night because you would be robbed, you would be kidnapped, you'd be murdered.
00:19:15.960And I'll tell you, when I came to downtown, downtown was beautiful.
00:24:49.800And, and, and there's, there may be some virtue to that, but I got to say any gang members, gang activity has disappeared in El Salvador.
00:25:02.520And if you knew what life was like for these guys, there's no way on earth you'd be willing to join a gang because their life is effectively over.
00:25:10.040One of the other parts of your trip involved going to the Panama Canal, uh, and seeing some different things, including, uh, a lot that deals with China.
00:25:22.760So I spent a day and a half in Panama, uh, I flew from El Salvador to Panama and, and met with, with, with multiple cabinet members, uh, the finance minister, the, the, the, the public safety minister, uh, and, and, and the head of the Panama Canal.
00:25:41.360Now, and, and, and, and, and, and I will say, number one, Panama is a beautiful country.
00:25:46.320Uh, uh, it, it is, it is a gorgeous place.
00:25:50.540And, and, and the people of Panama have a deep affinity for America.
00:25:55.980I, you know, that they repeatedly, the government officials, the, the Panamanians that I visited with, there's a long history and a close, close affinity for the United States.
00:26:11.000So, so I went out on a boat and, and, and, and went, went to, to the outer parts of the Panama Canal.
00:26:16.880And then I went to one of the locks and I saw, I, I saw one of the Panama max, like the, the, the super tankers coming through and, and then also saw a little sailboat coming through.
00:26:28.960And then a kind of medium sized container ship coming through.
00:26:37.840Number one, just how the Panama Canal operates.
00:26:40.400Like you see the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the super tanker, the container ship is the largest size possible to fit through the Panama Canal.
00:27:08.660And, and what happens, so, so we were on the Pacific end of the canal and, and a ship comes in and each of the locks has to lower the ship 27 feet.
00:27:21.280And it's interesting for the big tanker, they connect steel cables to the tanker and they have locomotives on both sides to help keep, keep the ship right in the center.
00:27:31.140You've got only two feet of clearance on both sides.
00:27:33.140So it'd be really easy for it to smack into the side of the canal and, and it is in the lock and then it takes about eight to 10 minutes for the water to drain and for it to lower 27 feet.
00:27:47.560And it's lowering 27 feet and it goes to the next lock and it lowers another, I believe it's 27 feet.
00:27:53.000We all told it's about eight, I think it's 81 feet that it has to rise to get to the height of the lake in the interior.
00:28:01.080And then it has to lower it to get to the Atlantic ocean, the Pacific ocean, and both the Atlantic and Pacific are about the same distance to, to lower the water.
00:28:56.000Now, now it's all computerized and high tech.
00:28:57.920So the, the old brass controls of each lock that gives you the, the water height.
00:29:03.380And it was literally, it, it, it, it almost looked like something Captain Nemo would have in terms of the 1914, uh, levers and, and switches to operate the canal.
00:29:16.140When I went out on the boat, one of the things I saw, Ben, is right at the entrance, the Pacific entrance of the canal, there is a gigantic porch that is owned and controlled by communist China.
00:29:44.900They're in the, they were awarded the contract to build the bridge.
00:29:48.660China is also, there's a Chinese company that is digging a tunnel under the canal for a metro train.
00:29:56.140And so I saw, I saw where the metro was going to go.
00:29:59.940I saw the bridge being built and it's all right there at the mouth of the canal.
00:30:04.480And, and, and, and I went, the purpose of my visit was, was to meet with the Panamanian government and say, look, China cannot have control of this canal.
00:30:14.980It is too important to the United States, to our national security, to our economic security.
00:30:21.460As you know, I'm the chairman of the Senate commerce committee.
00:30:24.100The commerce committee has jurisdiction over the Panama canal.
00:30:27.920And so earlier this year, I chaired a hearing on the Panama canal in the commerce committee.
00:30:34.160And, and we laid out the concerns in particular, the concerns of China.
00:30:39.620And, and what I laid out to the Panamanian officials, I said, look, if God forbid, we, we find ourselves in a military conflict with China.
00:30:48.220Let's say next year, China invades Taiwan and, and, and president, she has repeatedly said he wants to invade Taiwan.
00:30:58.360So there's a very real possibility that escalates into a military conflict with the United States.
00:31:04.340If China is in an active military conflict with the United States, I think the risk is unacceptable that China would try to shut down the Panama canal.
00:31:17.900Because if they shut down the Panama canal, it massively delays our ability to move military ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific to engage with the Chinese in Taiwan.
00:31:29.400Because it forces our military ships instead to go around the southern tip of South America rather than cut through the canal.
00:31:35.940And so if you're president, she, look, you wouldn't do it in time of peace, but, but, but if they're at war, it becomes a, a really compelling situation to say, let's impose massive economic harm on the United States.
00:31:52.920And we get enormous benefits of, of, of, of, of, of revenue that comes from shipping, shipping, whether it is, is oil and gas through, through the Panama canal or goods and containers and, and shutting down the Panama canal would be a real blow to the United States economy.
00:32:10.820But it would also be a real blow to our military because it would limit our ability to move naval ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
00:32:17.820It would massively delay moving that, the, the, the, those ships.
00:32:22.840And, and so I, what I'm pressing Panama, I will say when I chaired the hearing on the Panama canal, within a week, they announced the deal to sell those two Chinese ports to, to an American business consortium.
00:32:40.080And that deal has not gone through yet.
00:32:44.340And part of the purpose of my trip was, was to press the, the Panamanian government and say, look, you need to get the Chinese the hell out of here.
00:32:51.900Do not leave them in a position where they can shut down this canal because shutting down this canal would be an enormous economic and national security blow to the United States, but it would also be an enormous blow to Panama.
00:33:03.160And so part of the case I was making them is their interests and our interests are aligned.
00:33:09.220They don't want China to be in a position to shut down the canal.