Within hours of Trump’s visit, a controversy erupted after his claim of not having discussed who would pay for constructing the wall was disputed by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
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The potential visit follows months of warring words between Trump and Mexico’s leaders, including when Peña Nieto compared Trump to brutal dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
“While he talked like John Wayne last night, he acted like Winnie the Pooh when he was in Mexico”, Trumka said Thursday during a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. “We agreed on the importance of ending the illegal flow of drugs, cash, guns and people across our border and to put the cartels out of business”, he said.
There was obviously one question every reporter wanted to ask – they were literally jumping out of their seats – during the press conference following the pair’s meeting in Mexico City: what about the border wall that Trump has promised to make Mexico pay for?
In a lengthy and fiery address on immigration in Phoenix, the Republican nominee said in no uncertain terms that Mexico would indeed pay for his border wall.
That was not a minor point, but rather a sore one.
Trump, a real estate mogul making his first run for elected office, said after the Mexico City meeting that he and Pena Nieto discussed the plan, but not Trump’s assertion that Mexico will cover the cost.
The Mexican president however, tweeted afterwards: “At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall”.
However, Trump told a cheering crowd of supporters in Arizona later on Wednesday that Mexico would pay for the wall “100 percent”.
“There was nothing in that speech for them”, Sharry said.
Trump has been pilloried in Mexico since he launched his White House campaign previous year.
In his remarks, Trump said, “You can not obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country”.
But if this was the opportunity for a turnaround that changed the broad public perception of Trump, it was a moment not only missed but thrust away with both hands.
For as soon as that moderating narrative got airborne, Trump’s speech in Phoenix took off after it with the speed and fury of an anti-aircraft missile. The explosion as the two met in midair against the desert sky was spectacular indeed.
That intercept was launched, in all likelihood, from the campaign’s other new major domo, Steve Bannon, the former publisher of Breitbart.com, the self-styled voice of the alt-right movement.
Speaking at a rally in Wilmington, Ohio, Trump says that, as president, he would “treat everyone with dignity, respect and compassion”. And whether he or another wordsmith in the Trump camp wrote the script, it was the fuel for one of the candidate’s most incendiary performances. Those admitted to the US would have to pass ideological tests as well. “Especially, with the immigration problem”.
At some point, Trump allowed, “we will bring back the good ones”.
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After weeks of reports that Trump might be softening his immigration platform, he proposed hiring 5,000 new border patrol agents, tripling the number of immigration enforcement officers and immediately deporting anyone caught illegally entering the country.
