Leadership Quote by Kit Bond

The word "myth" is doing heavy political work here: it doesn’t just dispute a claim, it delegitimizes the people repeating it as credulous, panicked, or opportunistic. Kit Bond frames public concern as misinformation rather than a reasonable response to a post-9/11 security landscape where “ports” function as shorthand for national vulnerability. By calling it “one of the most widespread myths,” he also signals that he’s battling not a single argument but a contagious story - an allegation that spreads because it feels true.

The line is engineered to separate two ideas most listeners instinctively fuse: foreign ownership and operational control. “Outsourcing the security of our ports” conjures an image of armed authority being handed to a foreign firm. Bond’s phrasing pushes back by implying that the Administration isn’t exporting sovereign power; it’s making a commercial arrangement that critics are falsely translating into a security transfer. The subtext: opponents are weaponizing xenophobia, especially anxieties about the United Arab Emirates, by collapsing “company” into “country” and “management” into “security.”

Context matters: this reads like a defense of the Dubai Ports World deal, when a UAE-based company sought to manage operations at several U.S. ports and bipartisan outrage erupted. Bond’s intent is to cool the political temperature and provide rhetorical cover for the Administration, but the choice to label fear a “myth” also risks sounding dismissive - as if the problem is the public’s perception rather than the government’s duty to anticipate how privatized infrastructure and national security inevitably blur in the public mind.