Donald Trump told
Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto on Wednesday that the US has
the right to build a border wall to halt illegal immigration, but did
not bring up his demand that Mexico pay for it. In an unexpected trip
to a country which he has frequently vilified for illegal immigration
and drug smuggling, Trump held talks with the Mexican leader at his
residence for about an hour
'Plastered
by the gringo': Trump meeting a public relations disaster for Peña
Nieto
Mexican
president gets into Twitter tit-for-tat with Republican nominee over
payment for border wall as citizens rail against acquiescent press
conference
David Agren in
Mexico City
Thursday 1 September
2016 13.19 BST
Enrique Peña Nieto
on Thursday used Twitter to tell Donald Trump what many Mexicans
wished he had told him in person on Wednesday.
“I repeat what I
said personally, Sr Trump,” the Mexican president tweeted. “Mexico
will never pay for a wall.”
The tweet was in
response to one in which the Republican presidential candidate
returned to his signature campaign promise on immigration and the US
southern border, writing: “Mexico will pay for the wall!”
Peña Nieto had
first tried to correct the record after his closed-door meeting with
Trump in Mexico City the day before, saying he told Trump paying for
the wall was a non-starter and the two men immediately moved on to
other issues. Trump, who claimed payment for his proposed wall was
not discussed, returned to the US to give a strikingly hardline
speech on immigration policy.
For many Mexicans,
Thursday’s presidential tweet was too little, too late. They railed
against an apparently acquiescent leader who had missed a golden
opportunity to berate a bully. Peña Nieto, they said, should have
told Trump publicly his border wall was a non-starter and responded
to Trump calling Mexicans “rapists” and criminals with something
stronger than labeling such insults “misunderstandings”.
“He appeared
submissive, docile and plastered by the gringo,” said Gerardo
Priego Tapía, a former member of Congress with the National Action
Party (PAN). “He was used and made to look ridiculous in front of
those he governs.”
Why Trump was
invited and then treated so softly left pundits stupefied, especially
since Peña Nieto, who is not known for verbal jousting or talking
without scripts, missed such a good chance to improve his poor
approval rating.
The Mexican
president entered the encounter with Trump as the country’s most
unpopular leader since approval polling started in the mid-1990s. It
was also the eve of his fourth informe – state of the nation
address – an act of political theatre in which the president
projects his power to the nation.
This year, Peña
Nieto planned instead to talk with a town hall of young people, a
move taken by many to show the administration has realised it has
fallen out of touch with the public mood.
“It seems as
though no one in the government actually thought Trump would show up
if invited,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the public affairs
magazine Nexos. “My guess is that jaws dropped at Los Pinos when
they not only realized that Trump was coming, but that he was showing
up on the eve of the Mexican state of the union address.”
Others saw a serious
strategic error, a move that might lend legitimacy to the Trump
campaign, casting him in a presidential light.
“It would have
been very different if he were [hosting] both [Trump and Hillary
Clinton], that’s a different game,” said Federico Estévez,
political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute
of Mexico. “With Trump, where was the win for Peña Nieto?
“Trump’s risk
was only that he would be insulted to his face, which didn’t
happen. He gambled and won.”
The meeting lit up
social media in Mexico, where the bellicose rhetoric of the
Republican candidate has been compared by historians to that of James
Polk, the US president during the Mexican American war of 1846-48.
Even an opposition that has been oddly silent on presidential
scandals involving conflicts of interest and alleged law-school
plagiarism could not hold back.
“We did a campaign
act for the candidate that most hates Mexicans,” PAN senator
Gabriel Cuevas said in comments published by the newspaper Reforma.
“[Trump] used us as a doormat.”
For most, the
meeting with Trump and failure to talk tough was simply another
example of their president’s inability to sense what was irritating
his people.
“There was never a
Peña Nieto so distanced from the people’s sentiments,” wrote
columnist Salvador Camarena in the newspaper El Financiero.
“Never has the
name of Mexico been exposed to such dishonour, never have we so
underestimated what Peña Nieto was capable of: covering those that
sow discord using the name of Mexico.”
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