Thread: Mexicans react to transcript of Trump call with their president

Mexicans react to transcript of Trump call with their president

By David Agren and A. Odysseus Patrick August 3 at 9:08 PM

MEXICO CITY — The leaked transcript of a phone call between President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto published Thursday by The Washington Post left some Mexicans flabbergasted, even in a country where politics is commonly called surreal and where embarrassing phone calls by politicians are often filtered to the media.

One popular Mexican radio host compared the January phone call to a “Saturday Night Live” skit. Others complained that Trump was using tough talk to threaten the Mexican leader as if he were a Trump employee.

Peña Nieto appeared patient throughout the call, winning some rare praise from a population unhappy with his presidency. He politely told Trump — again — that Mexico would not pay to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

“My position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall,” Peña Nieto told Trump.

Trump replied: “You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that.” Later in the call Trump said, “If you’re not going to say that Mexico is going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”Trump also boasted that he could make Peña Nieto so popular that he could get lawmakers to change the Mexican constitution so that he could seek reelection.

The Post obtained the transcripts of phone calls Trump made a week after his inauguration to Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Of the call to the Mexican president, Fernando Dworak, an independent political analyst in Mexico City, said: “It’s one thing to negotiate as a businessman and another as a president. Giving instructions to leaders of other countries is following this script, which is not only imperial but completely useless for diplomacy.”

Others, however, criticized Peña Nieto’s posture during the call and said the Mexican leader needed to be more assertive in sticking up for Mexican interests.

“If the Mexican president had taken a clearer and stronger stand, he could have been able to improve his position internally — politically and public-opinion wise,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, professor at the Center for Teaching and Research in Economics in Mexico City. “The position he assumed from the beginning was weak. Maybe because he is weak.”

Bravo conceded, however, that Peña Nieto “is trying to navigate a very difficult situation. The leaking of the conversation portrays him generally in a good light. He is making an effort. He is being reasonable.”

Parts of the transcript were especially eye-popping, such as when Trump appeared to be offering political assistance to Peña Nieto. “I want you to be so popular that your people will call for a constitutional amendment in Mexico so that you can run again for another six years,” Trump said. Mexico’s constitution prohibits presidential reelection, and Peña Nieto is scheduled to leave office in December 2018.

According to some, Peña Nieto at first appeared to be adopting a “son-in-law strategy.” Peña Nieto appointed Luis Videgaray — who proposed the Trump trip to Mexico last summer — as his foreign minister, perhaps hoping to leverage Videgaray’s apparent relationship with Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.

“I did not want to meet with anybody,” Trump said in the phone call, referring to the August meeting. “It was only because of a very good relationship that Jared Kushner has with Luis that these two decided to meet and discuss, but I was not really in favor of the meeting.”

The transcript leaked as Mexico prepares for renegotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement. Analysts say the Peña Nieto administration appears to be trying to keep some version of the pact intact, as 80 percent of Mexican exports head to the United States, and does not want to antagonize Trump.

Some in Mexico saw the phone call as part of a pattern of missed opportunities to raise issues of importance to Mexico while leaving clear that the country is trying to save NAFTA at all costs.

“Yet another episode . . . where the renegotiation of NAFTA takes priority, and Mexico’s diplomacy is reduced to submission and irrelevance,” said José Merino, political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

But others see little upside in engaging Trump in a verbal battle, especially for Peña Nieto, who has a preference for protocol and doesn’t handle hecklers or off-the-cuff comments very smoothly. Provoking the U.S. president would risk a rerun of Trump’s ill-fated trip to Mexico City last August, where he appeared alongside Peña Nieto and talked about Mexico paying for the wall as his Mexican counterpart stood by.

“It’s a chance to think that Peña Nieto hasn’t acted so badly by avoiding useless confrontations with a bully,” Dworak said. “There’s nothing to be gained, and it only risks strengthening Trump.”

A Jan. 27 statement from Los Pinos, the Mexican president’s office, said that during their conversation the leaders had broached the border wall payment issue and that “both presidents recognized their clear and very public differences . . . and agreed to resolve these differences as part of an integral discussion on all aspects of the bilateral relationship.”

The call came after Peña Nieto canceled a Jan. 31 trip to Washington, responding to a Trump tweet that it would be best not to visit if the border wall wasn’t part of the agenda. The two presidents finally met at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg last month, where again Trump spoke of having Mexico pay for a border wall and Peña Nieto sat silent, though Videgaray said they didn’t hear what Trump said.

In Australia, Turnbull won kudos for his straight-forward negotiating style and willingness to push a new president to accept a politically unpalatable deal cut by his Democrat predecessor.

But refugee advocates were horrified by what they saw as the prime minster’s indifference to refugees under Australian care in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Turnbull’s remark that a “Nobel prize winning genius” who arrived by boat wouldn’t be allowed entry to Australia was seen by some Australians as exposing the government’s cynicism toward its own tough immigration policy, which is designed to deter refugees and economic migrants arriving by boat from Indonesia.

The conversation with Trump shows “Malcolm Turnbull is not at all interested in the suffering, treatment and indeed torture inflicted on innocent people,” the leader of the Greens Party, Richard Di Natale, said in a phone interview. “He’s more interested in his own political survival.”

Speaking before the transcript of the conversation was published, the top public servant at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Trump-Turnbull phone call hadn’t hurt relations, a position both men had stated publicly.

“Neither of them think it’s a big deal,” Frances Adamson said Thursday in Sydney. “You’ve heard them talk about it.”

Nonetheless, the revelations come at a politically awkward moment for Turnbull. A split in his center-right Liberal Party over same-sex marriage is undermining his leadership, which has been hurt by poor poll numbers over the past year.

A special meeting of federal Liberal parliamentarians on Monday to resolve the issue is shaping up as a test of Turnbull’s ability to lead a party split between conservatives and liberals.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.68bfc9c532b8

It seems to me that the only proper responses to this leak are these:

1. Withdraw immediately from NAFTA to pay for the wall
2. Decline all 1,250 Australian refugees to terminate Obama's Dumb Deal

I've been thinking about nntrixie's suggestion that the leak may not have come from the White House or even our government, it may have come from Mexico and/or Australia. Since we don't know, then there is no reason to assume it came from our government, it's just as sensible to assume it came from the other governments.

There's no reason to punish our country with a continuation of NAFTA to appease the Mexicans who flood our country with illegal aliens and killer narcotics. There's no reason to punish our citizenry with more refugees from Australia or anywhere else for that matter. We have our own problems to fix and we can't fix our own problems because we're buried in this flood of parasites feeding on our citizens, territory, money and trade. END IT ALL. If we don't want it, it ain't gonna happen. If it's not in our best interest, we aren't doing it. Tell all these stupid weak teat-sucking countries to grow up, take care of their own problems and leave US alone.

Trump's instincts are always right, and he needs to stick with them lock, stock and barrel. Don't let these whiners make you feel like you've got to honor some Former President's Idiot Deal. These are the dumb deals that have destroyed our country, so withdraw, reverse, terminate and get US out of ALL of these stupid destructive "deals."

Mr. President, trust yourself when all others doubt you. While many Presidents were elected for all types of either erroneous or irrelevant reasons, you were not. You were elected because of you, your judgment, your goals, your knowledge, your skills, your instincts. Don't second guess them, go with them, stick to them, execute them.

So stay the course, and always remember, you can never compromise with a parasite and win.

Judy wrote (excerpt):

Trump's instincts are always right, and he needs to stick with them lock, stock and barrel.

I would argue that no one, including their instincts, is always right. Well, I guess if you're a DACA supporter, Trump's instincts to keep the program active indefinitely was the right decision.

Considering everything that is going on with lawsuits, I think the decision to let it expire once the lawsuits are dismissed will prove to be the right decision. We'll see what happens with the lawsuits, that's what they're waiting on. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday in the White House Press Conference they have some legalities to get through first when asked about DACA.

Originally Posted by Judy

Considering everything that is going on with lawsuits, I think the decision to let it expire once the lawsuits are dismissed will prove to be the right decision. We'll see what happens with the lawsuits, that's what they're waiting on. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday in the White House Press Conference they have some legalities to get through first when asked about DACA.

Nothing changes the fact that President Trump could have, and should have, ended DACA as promised immediately after being elected.

That doesn't change the fact that such a quick action may not have been the right way to do it. Sure, we want it done yesterday, 7 months ago, last year, 2 years ago, we wish it had never happened and had been stopped in 2012 before it began. But now 5 years into it, with a federal court order that continues it during a lawsuit, another lawsuit that is now at the US Supreme Court with the US Supreme Court asking the Executive Branch for a legal opinion from DOJ ib DACA, waiting may have been the best decision to avoid riots in the street, violent and hateful back-lash and 800,000 DACA lawsuits against the federal government which means US taxpayers. I would like to end DACA, but don't want to be sued over it, lose and have to pay out settlements or awards to illegal aliens.

I don't understand why you think you want DACA ended more than Trump wants it ended. Trump put his name, face, business and career on it. He's risked his life, family, fortune, money and freedom to pursue our cause to end illegal immigration into the US once and for all. Why do you think you want DACA over more than he does? It's why he ran for President and laid it all on the line in his name and with his own money and did it for us.

To think any of us want DACA ended more than Trump wants it ended just doesn't make any sense to me. In other words: it's illogical.

I wanted it ended the right way...I am hoping that is what is being put in place.

And no way, no how, no path to stay.

We need to end this nightmare once and for all and these people need to go home and get on with their lives.

Stop kicking this can down the road.

PULL THE BANDAID OFF FAST!!!

They each one have to be ended individually with rights to respond and to have a reply. It's all a set-up for lawsuits, that sickening Obama did this. You can't just end teh program, it has to expire once the lawsuits are over and the court order is removed.

Originally Posted by Judy

They each one have to be ended individually with rights to respond and to have a reply. It's all a set-up for lawsuits, that sickening Obama did this. You can't just end teh program, it has to expire once the lawsuits are over and the court order is removed.

What are you even talking about? Everyone knows Trump or Secretary Kelly could have immediately ended DACA as was promised by President Trump.

Please quit attempting to confused the issue and facts. If Trump wanted to end DACA as you say, he would have already done so.

Oh?! You didn't know that in order to terminate DACA, you have to do it individually by law? Yes, there has to an individual notice sent to each DACA, each DACA has so many days to respond, and then DHS has to reply to their response. ENTER ALL THE LAWYERS. I'm sorry almost embarrassed that you didn't know this. These are laws about work permits handed out by the US government to any foreign national including illegal aliens, covered by separate US immigration law that governs how DACA or any other program of DHS is handled and any work permit revoked or canceled or renewal denied.

Trump is going to end DACA, but he's going to do it in a way that doesn't result in more work, more expense, more protests, more flap, or more lawsuits. He's going to end it quietly and legally.