Mexico still won't pay for Trump's wall; alliance threatened
- On This Day In The Trump Administration
- Feb 20, 2024
- 1 min read
Updated: Feb 21, 2024
February 20
On This Day In 2018
Apparently Mexico won’t pay for it after all: Eight days after taking office in 2017, Trump cancelled a planned meeting with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto because Peña Nieto wouldn’t agree that “Mexico will pay for the wall.”
According to the transcript, Trump pleaded to Peña Nieto:
“The fact is, we are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall. I have to. I have been talking about it for a two-year period.... If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”
The consequences: More than a year later, Trump still hadn’t come to terms with the collapse of his signature campaign promise. OTDI 2018, yet another planned meeting fell apart because Trump wouldn’t admit or affirm that Mexico refused to pay for his wall.
“(Donald Trump’s) relationship with Mexico isn’t strategically driven. It’s not even business; it’s personal, driven by motivations and triggers, and that’s a huge problem. It could end up with the U.S. asking itself, who lost Mexico?” noted Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador.
Sources/Links for further reading
@PhilipRucker, @partlowj, and @nickmiroff, with an assist from @carolleonnig, at The Washington Post have the details about this incident and the broader scope of Trump-Mexico relations
Photo credit: Flo Razowsky
Summary: Mexico still won't pay for Trump's wall