Thread: WH official: Peña Nieto calls off visit to White House after confrontational call wit

WH official: Peña Nieto calls off visit to White House after confrontational call with Trump

By Jeff Zeleny and Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 8:39 PM ET, Sat February 24, 2018

(CNN)Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has called off an official trip to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump after a tense phone call brought the two leaders to a policy-driven standstill.

Peña Nieto was planning the trip for either this month or early March, but a White House official confirmed to CNN on Saturday that the trip was put on hold following the phone call, which took place on February 20.

According to The Washington Post, which first reported the cancellation, officials from both countries told the paper that Peña Nieto "called off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico's position that it would not fund construction of a border wall."

A White House official told CNN that any meeting would be awkward and counterproductive given Trump's vow that Mexico would pay for the wall.

The official said the call was "less hostile" than the one that occurred between the two leaders a year ago, but "no more productive" than that call either.

At least one Mexican official, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity, said Trump "lost his temper." US officials described the President as being "frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall."

According to the Post's report, the two leaders "devoted a considerable portion" of this year's call to discussing the wall.
According to the paper, officials from both countries confirmed that Peña Nieto's "desire to avoid public embarrassment — and Trump's unwillingness to provide that assurance — that proved to be the dealbreaker."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/24/polit...rip/index.html

Good! The Mexicans just need to stay in Mexico. Americans want a wall because Mexicans have not respected our country, our borders or our sovereignty. You steal our trade and jobs and run harmful illegal drugs into our country to harm our people. You are not a friendly country, and we don't like you any more.

Trump Refuses to Back Down on Mexico Paying for Wall, Mexican President’s Trip to White House Called Off

by JOHN BINDER24 Feb 2018Washington, D.C.524

President Trump has refused to back down on his promise to make Mexico pay for a wall along the United States-Mexico border, prompting a White House trip by Mexican President Peña Nieto to be canceled.
Trump and Nieto decided to call off the planned visit in Washington, DC, after a phone conversation about the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall and how it would be paid for — in one way or another — by Mexico.

The Washington Post reports:

Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with President Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

Peña Nieto was eyeing an official trip to Washington this month or in early March, but both countries agreed to call off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico’s position that it would not fund construction of a border wall that the Mexican people widely consider offensive, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential conversation.

Since 2015, Trump has promised Americans that a border wall — currently held up in the prototype stage — would be built along the southern border to stop illegal immigration and cartel-driven drug flow into the country.

Mexico, Trump has committed, will somehow end up paying for the border wall, whether that comes in the form of taxing remittances to have illegal aliens from Mexico actually pay for the wall or tariffs on imported goods from Mexico.

Trump’s refusal to back down to Mexico on the border wall has been ongoing during his time as president. Last year, he told Nieto that he would be walking away from a deal with the country unless it included Mexico paying for the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The fact is, we are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall,” Trump told Peña Nieto, according to a transcript of the call. “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,” Trump continued.

Trump’s wall along the southern border is only expected to cost about $18 billion, a fraction of what American taxpayers have been paying for illegal immigration.

For example, American taxpayers are forced to pay about $116 billion annually for the cost of the estimated 12 to 30 million illegal aliens living across the U.S., as Breitbart News reported. The cost of illegal immigration to American taxpayers has risen by $3 billion since 2013.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...se-called-off/

Boy, this is going to be a crazy, SYMBOLIC fight. Why not just have helicopters with a pack of German Shepherds? Would cost a lot less, and they would probably be good with children. We already know the routes, and could extrapolate to new ones.

The way I see it, either Mexico pays for the wall, because they are the reason we need it, or we withdraw from NAFTA. The American People aren't responsible for any of this nonsense, but we're the ones who are going to fix it, and Trump is the leader who will. The sooner Mexico comes to terms with that fact, that it is not just Trump, it's the vast majority of the American People who want our borders secured, illegal immigration stopped, and our bad trade deals fixed.

Originally Posted by Judy

The way I see it, either Mexico pays for the wall, because they are the reason we need it, or we withdraw from NAFTA. The American People aren't responsible for any of this nonsense, but we're the ones who are going to fix it, and Trump is the leader who will. The sooner Mexico comes to terms with that fact, that it is not just Trump, it's the vast majority of the American People who want our borders secured, illegal immigration stopped, and our bad trade deals fixed.

Trump should have already shut down NAFTA! He's had 13 months to negotiate.

Why should he have already shut down NAFTA? It's a huge deal shutting down NAFTA, MW, a lot of people are impacted. He definitely couldn't shut it down before the tax cuts were passed. Trump's got this, he knows what he's doing on NAFTA.

GOOD...NOW STOP CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW US EMBASSY IN MEXICO CITY THAT IS COSTING US OVER 900 MILLION!

PUT THE 900 MILLION IN THE WALL!!!

AND START DUMPING THESE ILLEGALS RIGHT BACK OVER THE BORDER! AND THEIR UAC'S.

Whose stupid idea was it to waste money on these new embassies in places like Mexico anyway??!! Boondoggles!! We're trying to fix our country and we're wasting money on a new embassy in a supposedly friendly country? Yes, I wholeheartedly agree to stop the construction of the new embassy.

WH official: Peña Nieto calls off visit to White House after confrontational call with Trump

Good, we don't want him here anyway.

Any country's president who condones his/her citizens to come to the U.S. illegally and send back as much cash as possible is hostile to our country.