Trump is also bringing no members of his traveling press corps – a major reversal of tradition for presidential candidates holding global meetings.
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Amid the growing uproar in Mexico over the meeting, Pena Nieto told Televisa’s Denise Maerker that he’d invited Trump because his policies are a threat to Mexico – precisely the reason why most Mexicans think he shouldn’t have met with him. Trump’s campaign reportedly spent a total of 7,868 on hats and $120,174 on ads in June, according to CNN Money. [Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP Images] During the event in Phoenix, the Republican Nominee delivered a much-awaited speech on his immigration policy; all this only hours after his diplomatic visit to Mexico City earlier in the day.
Trump also repeated his vow to make Mexico pay for a wall on the border, although the Mexican president stated that issue of the wall was addressed during the meeting and that he was very clear and emphatic that Mexico would not pay for such a wall.
Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto still insisted after his meeting with the presidential candidate that his country will not pay for the wall.
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.
Pena Nieto “did not even take a really strong stand and talk to Mr. Trump directly to his face and tell him exactly why his stances are not acceptable to Mexicans”, said Tony Payan, director of the Mexico Center at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
A Mexican government spokesperson then released a statement arguing that both men were technically correct: President Nieto did make a declarative statement about Mexico not paying for the wall, but the two never discussed the payment together. “They don’t know it yet but they’re going to pay for it”.
“Day one, my first hour in office, those people are gone”, Trump said in Phoenix.
There had been several implications that Trump might have been going soft on his earlier views on immigration.
But as night fell in Phoenix, back in the U.S.A., Trump mounted the stage in prime time and quickly caught fire. Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation.
“I hear Churchill had a nice turn of phrase, but Trump’s immigration speech is the most magnificent speech ever given”, tweeted conservative author Ann Coulter after it was over. “Maybe they’ll be able to deport her”.
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“Trump didn’t say it, but most Republican immigration hawks would interpret that to mean that some sort of legal status would lie in the future for those illegal immigrants who wait for years until enforcement is fully enacted”, writes the right-leaning columnist Byron York of the Washington Examiner. By making the case in a nationally televised address that immigration overall has to be limited, Trump has embraced the ideals of a small group of activists who, for decades, have sought to sharply reduce all forms of migration to the United States.
