What Trump has said about Mexico

Protesters face off with a supporter of U.S. Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump outside the Phoenix Convention Center.

While he insisted, as he regularly does on the campaign trail, that Mexico will pay for the wall, Trump said in Mexico that he and Pena Nieto did not discuss who would fund the construction. In a surprise move, Donald Trump will travel to Mexico on Wednesday, Aug. 31, to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, just hours before the Republican delivers a highly anticipated speech on immigration.

Trump’s visit to Mexico City takes place hours before he is due to deliver a highly anticipated speech in the border state of Arizona on how he would tackle illegal immigration if he wins the November 8 election.

Building a massive wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and forcing the neighbouring country to pay for it has been a frequent promise during Trump’s divisive election campaign. The following day, Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who was promoted specifically to help stabilize and manage Trump, said on CNN that his support for forced deportations was “to be determined“.

One such ally anxious about Mr. Trump’s potential softening, author Ann Coulter, tweeted that “I hear Churchill had a nice turn of phrase, but Trump’s immigration speech is the most magnificent speech ever given”.

Mexicans aren’t happy that president Enrique Pena Nieto has chose to meet up with Trump, in Mexico. Trump said the United States’ weak borders and an immigration policy that can be easily overrun threatens its very existence as a nation. After spending the month of August publicly pondering a shift on immigration, Trump outlined a 10-point plan Wednesday evening that was a greatest-hits compilation of his most polarizing and by his own admission “extreme” statements, including creating a deportation task force, suspending immigration from certain countries and creating an ideological test for potential immigrants.

Trump’s views rocketed him to the top of the GOP field and propelled him to the Republican nomination, but the issue has bedeviled him in the general election campaign.

Trump stayed on script after the meeting, reading a statement from notes and politely answering shouted questions from reporters about his promise to force Mexico to pay for a wall along the border between the two countries. “In the end, we’re all going to win”.

“From there, the conversation addressed other issues, and developed in a respectful manner”, he added. We don’t like him, We don’t want him. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox bluntly told the celebrity businessman that, despite Pena Nieto’s hospitality, he was not welcome.

The aggressive tone during his speech in Phoenix marked a shift from the NY billionaire’s demeanor earlier in the day, when a much more measured Trump described Mexicans as “amazing people” as he appeared alongside Pena Nieto in Mexico’s capital city.

Pena Nieto had likened Trump to dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini earlier this year.

Clinton’s campaign was unshaken by Trump’s attempt. He went on to announce a detailed plan to deal with illegal immigration, which was heavy on removing criminals and gang members from the U.S. But it is his beloved border wall that’s still the highlight of his immigration policy. The National Review recently suggested rebranding this approach as “enforcement first”, doubling down on the enforcement-only approach with the goal of having as many people as possible self-deport before discussing any path to legal status for those who remain.

To be sure, Trump’s daylong foray across the border and back was a bold gamble, reflecting his urgent need to shake up his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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“People will know that you can’t just smuggle in, hunker down and wait to be legalised – it’s not going to work that way”. But it also takes him to a country where he is widely disliked because of harsh comments he has made during his White House campaign.