The Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States believes that the Mexican president does not respect Biden
Donald Trump continues to engage in his incendiary rhetoric, going from one bold statement to another without interruption. Whether through his social network, interviews, or appearances, Trump seems willing to always provide a headline to keep people talking about him. He is capable of saying that he will be a “dictator” for a day if he wins, that there will be a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win, or referring to Latin American immigrants as warriors, criminals, and “vermin” who invade the country and “poison the blood” of Americans. With the presidential election on the horizon of November 5, immigration is one of his favorite campaign topics. In his latest interview, he responded to the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had asked Washington for financial aid to curb migration. “I wouldn’t give him even 10 cents,” Trump replied.
The former President of the United States and Republican presidential candidate gave another interview to Fox News, the conservative channel he often frequents and where he finds a sympathetic tone among the presenters. The journalist, Brian Kilmeade, mentioned that in the interview recently granted to the CBS program 60 minutes, López Obrador asked the United States to change its policy on Cuba and Venezuela. “We want the root causes to be addressed,” he insisted on migration, otherwise “the flows of migrants will continue.”
The Fox News host asked, “Is it okay for the Mexican president to dictate U.S. policy?” Trump answered, “Well, he said much more than that. He said he wants $10 billion essentially just to talk, $10 billion to talk, and that has come out since then, and no, that wouldn’t have happened with me, with the wall.”
“What has changed?” the journalist played along. And Trump added, “It’s very simple: lack of respect for the president. They would never tell me that. They wouldn’t even say it before speaking. They want $10 billion a year, Mexico just asked for $10 billion a year. They would never ask for it. I wouldn’t give them even 10 cents,” he said.
During the interview with López Obrador on the 60 minutes program, the journalist focused several of her questions on the contrast between Trump and Biden, who will compete in a few months for a second term in the White House. “Biden is respectful of our sovereignty as President Trump was,” said López Obrador, in a Solomonic tone. Despite ideological differences, the Mexican president defended his good relationship with both. “We have had differences, but we have put the general interest of the peoples of Mexico and the United States first,” he commented. “We need each other,” he added. Even so, López Obrador will no longer be in power when the new U.S. presidential term takes place.
Obrador has repeatedly called on the United States in recent months to inject $20 billion in funds as part of a cooperation plan to help other Latin American countries at a time when a record number of migrants are crossing Central America and Mexico to enter the United States.
For several months, the Joe Biden administration has been negotiating with a group of senators from both parties to present a bill that would include reforms and funding to address the border problem. The text allocated $20 billion to strengthen the means of border patrols, immigration services, asylum agents, and judges in charge of immigration matters.
When the agreement was reached, however, Trump pressured Republican senators to vote against it for purely electoral calculations. The approval of that law did not suit his message. If it had results when applied, he could not ride on the back of that problem. And even if it did not bear much fruit, it allowed Biden to argue that he was taking measures agreed upon by both parties. Trump prefers to keep fueling the fire rather than extinguishing it.
On March 1st, while Biden extended his hand to try to support those new measures together, Trump once again resorted to his most incendiary rhetoric with a speech full of lies and xenophobic messages, with far-right echoes, as usual. “These are the people who are entering our country, and they come from jails and prisons and mental institutions and asylums and they are terrorists. They are being introduced into our country. And it’s horrible,” said Trump.
“The United States is being invaded by Biden’s migrant crime. It’s a new form of vicious violation of our country. It’s migrant crime. We call it Biden’s migrant crime, but that’s a bit long,” he also said. He spoke of the arrival of immigrants as an “invasion,” a “Joe Biden invasion,” referring to them as “fighting-age men” who look like “warriors.” “This is like a war,” he concluded.
Source: El Pais
