Trump visit

Mexico rages against Trump visit

Reaction from Mexico against the Republican nominee's visit is swift and brutal. 

By Nick Gass

Donald Trump may have accepted the invitation of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto for a Wednesday meeting in Mexico City, but the Republican presidential nominee is getting the cold shoulder in a country where public views of its own president are already abysmally low.

Reaction was fast and furious among those in the Mexican political cognoscenti.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox apologized on behalf of the country during an interview on CNN, accusing both Trump and Peña Nieto for using the occasion to exploit their own political opportunities.

"It's a very opportunistic move, and I hope U.S. public opinion, U.S. citizens can see this and finally, and finally see what is behind Trump, this false prophet that is just cheating everybody," Fox said during the Skype chat on "New Day" on Wednesday, adding that it is "a desperate move and I don't see how it can work at all."

The only way that inviting Trump makes sense for Mexico would be if Peña Nieto gets the Republican nominee to apologize for his past statements about Mexicans, Fox said, admitting that he did not understand the thinking of the current Mexican president while pronouncing Trump's decision to visit "very smart."

Fox had also reacted fiercely to the news Tuesday night, telling Trump that "[t]here is no turning back" from his offensive remarks about Mexicans, Muslims and others that he said "have led you to the pit where you are today."

Added Fox, who previously apologized to the candidate after declaring that Mexico was not going to pay for "that f----ing wall": "¡Adiós, Trump!"

Trump responded to the CNN interview with a tweet, reminding Fox that he had extended an invitation to visit Mexico along with his apology for using the "f-bomb."

Trump is "not welcome" in her country, former Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala de Calderón tweeted Wednesday morning, as news broke of the Republican nominee's impending visit and meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto.

"Mexicans have dignity and repudiate his hate speech," she wrote.

Sr. @realDonaldTrump aunque lo hayan invitado, sepa que no es bienvenido. Los mexicanos tenemos dignidad y repudiamos su discurso de odio

Zavala, who has previously expressed a desire to run for the presidency in 2018, previously served in the Mexican Congress in the 1990s.

Her husband, former President Felipe Calderón, has previously vowed that Mexico would not "pay a single cent for such a stupid wall," telling CNBC in February that Trump is a "not very well-informed man."

"The first loser of such a policy would be the United States," Calderón said at the time. "If this guy pretends that closing the borders to anywhere either for trade (or) for people is going to provide prosperity to the United States, he is completely crazy."

Calderón retweeted the message from his wife, as well as the Clinton campaign's statement denouncing Trump anew in light of his meeting with the current Mexican president.

Mexican Senate President Roberto Gil Zuarth tweeted that the invitation to Trump only served to legitimize his "proposal of demagogy and hate."

"We are threatened with war and walls, but we open the National Palace," he wrote, referring to the building housing the country's executive branch.

Former Mexican diplomat Jorge Guajardo, who served as the Mexican consul in Austin and later as the Mexican ambassador to China, also slammed Peña Nieto for Trump's visit.

"I am taking suggestions on the best place to hide in Washington. I feel embarrassed as a Mexican thanks to my president. I want to hide," he tweeted.

Public approval of Peña Nieto fell to 23 percent in the latest public poll released earlier in August, with approximately three-quarters of Mexicans holding an unfavorable view of the job he is doing as the country's president.

But in another poll conducted in June, Trump's approval rating in the country he has used as a political punching bag was far lower: 2 percent.

Peter Schechter, director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council, said it's clear that the Mexico meeting helps Trump appeal to a broader base. But what it means to Peña Nieto isn't as certain.

"Why Pena Nieto wants this meeting is a total mystery. No matter how it is spun, it raises candidate Donald Trump’s profile and legitimacy," he writes. "It will be unpopular with Mexicans, with the Hillary campaign, with all Americans who are worried about attempts to mainstream Trump."

And on Tuesday, a delegation of top Mexican officials, including Foreign Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu, were in Wisconsin, where they met with Republican Gov. Scott Walker — a Trump supporter — and marked the opening of a new consulate in Milwaukee.

Mexico is America's third-largest trading partner, and analysts say at least 6 million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico. So many U.S. governors, including Republicans, have tried to keep relations warm, despite the tirades of their party's presidential nominee.

During Tuesday's ceremony in Wisconsin, Walker avoided questions about immigration policies and Trump's call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. "One of the things we've stressed is as long as our governor is still coming to Mexico to talk about commerce and trade opportunities, it doesn't matter what the president is doing," Walker said. "We're still going to have a strong relationship."