Mexican president rails against Trump’s ‘huge threat’, after countrymen see visit as humiliation
Just hours after meeting President Pena Nieto, Trump vows in immigration speech that Mexico will pay for border wall, they just ‘don’t know it yet’
Mexico’s president rebuked Donald Trump as a threat to his country just hours after painting a positive picture of talks the two held on Wednesday to try to defuse tensions over the US presidential hopeful’s anti-Mexican campaign rhetoric.
President Enrique Pena Nieto had on Wednesday afternoon hailed as “open and constructive” the impromptu meeting he held with Trump, who later referred to the Mexican leader as his friend and a “wonderful” president.
But in a late evening television interview, an angry-looking Pena Nieto sought to defend himself against a broad swathe of criticism for his decision to invite the Republican candidate despite his repeated verbal attacks on Mexico.
“His policy stances could represent a huge threat to Mexico, and I am not prepared to keep my arms crossed and do nothing,” Pena Nieto said. “That risk, that threat, must be confronted. I told him that is not the way to build a mutually beneficial relationship for both nations.”
Piling tinder onto the aftermath of the meeting was Trump himself, who doubled down on his vow to build a border wall between the two nations. After the meeting he had said it wasn’t discussed who would pay for the wall - even though Pena-Nieto told him Mexico would not pay.
“At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” Pena Nieto said in a tweet.
Trump used the Phoenix speech to clarify his stance on illegal immigration after prevaricating on the issue last week. He returned to the hardline rhetoric that powered him to the Republican presidential nomination over 16 rivals, heartening those conservatives drawn to Trump by the issue.
He said all people in the United States illegally would have “only one route” to gain legal status if Trump were to win the November 8 presidential election: “To return home and apply for re-entry.”
“Our message to the world will be this: You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country,” Trump said.
Trump’s quick acceptance of an invitation to visit Mexico, sent last Friday, took Mexico’s government by surprise.
The real estate mogul’s accusations that Mexico sends rapists and drug runners to the United States, and his threats to build a wall and tear up trade deals, have angered the government but his meeting with Pena Nieto on Wednesday gave him a chance to present himself in a more moderate light.
He spoke of Mexican-Americans in glowing terms and stressed the areas of common interest between the two countries even as he stuck to his message that he would put up the wall.
Pena Nieto had likened Trump to dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini earlier this year. But his government said Trump understood its concerns at the meeting, making Pena Nieto’s tense appearance on television the more surprising.
“What we saw was a respectful attitude and discourse from Donald Trump,” presidential spokesman Eduardo Sanchez had said, arguing that progress was made on the issue of trade after prior threats by Trump to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
“I think there was an advance in general,” he added.
But opposition politicians in Mexico rounded on Pena Nieto for hosting Trump.
“Instead of making him apologise, the government allowed [Trump] to complete the humiliation of the Mexicans,” Ricardo Anaya, leader of the centre-right opposition National Action Party, said on Twitter.
Some Mexican officials also privately expressed reservations about the meeting with one former diplomat saying Pena Nieto had done Trump’s campaign a favour.
