Pummeled

Mexico's president pummeled over Trump trip

'Peña Nieto was not ready for Trump,' declared Jorge Ramos.

By Nahal Toosi

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto shared a stage Wednesday with Donald Trump, a man even more reviled than he is in the Latin American country.

But it was Peña Nieto who wound up the public punching bag.

“’There will not be a wall, sir. And you must apologize.’ It was that easy,” tweeted Leon Krauze, a Mexican journalist and author, about what Peña Nieto should have told Trump. “But I said this from the beginning. Confrontation is not in his DNA.”

“Peña Nieto was not ready for Trump,” declared Jorge Ramos, the Univision anchor who has famously tangled with the Republican presidential candidate.

Peña Nieto didn’t simply let Trump have his time in the southern spotlight. He offered a point-by-point rebuttal to Trump’s claims that NAFTA is a sop for Mexico, that an unprecedented flood of undocumented immigrants are flowing into the U.S., and that Mexico is blindly exporting its criminals.

But publicly, at least, he didn’t slam Trump’s demand that Mexico pay for a border wall — he didn’t even really bring it up.

(Trump said the question of who would pay didn’t come up in private, either, but Peña Nieto later disputed that on Twitter, writing, "At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump I made it clear Mexico will not pay for the wall.")

Peña Nieto, who was elected in 2012 to a six-year term, has seen his standing in the polls sink to record lows in Mexico, thanks to corruption scandals, a struggling economy and continued problems with crime.

Earlier this year, he said Trump’s incendiary rhetoric toward Mexicans, whom the Republican has called criminals and the “enemy,” was reminiscent of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But in recent months, the Mexican president has kept quieter, saying he doesn’t want to get involved in U.S. domestic politics.

So observers were shocked to learn this week that he’d invited Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to visit Mexico. While it’s possible the Mexican president never expected either to accept the invite, Trump decided to show up anyway.

“The notion that the president of Mexico would give Donald Trump the podium in the presidential palace was the last thing I could imagine," said Peter Schechter, director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council, ahead of the meeting.

Regardless of such criticisms, Trump’s decision to visit Mexico City also gave Peña Nieto an opportunity to upbraid the real estate mogul and publicly defend his country. Trump's approval rating in Mexico, according to a June poll, was 2 percent. Peña Nieto is hovering around 23 percent, other surveys show.

Peña Nieto wasn’t a total shrinking violet. During a brief press conference held after he and Trump met privately, the telegenic Mexican president called for “mutual respect” between the U.S. and Mexico. He also stressed that Mexico, too, suffers from problems related to border security, including the flow of illegal weapons from the U.S.

“Every year millions of weapons and millions of dollars cross illegally into Mexico from the north that strengthen cartels and other criminal organizations that generate violence in Mexico and receives earnings from drug sales in the United States,” the 50-year-old said. “This flow has to be stopped. What we need is an integral focus toward the border that addresses the traffic of undocumented people and the illegal flow of drugs, weapons and cash at the same time.”

Peña Nieto also stressed how critical trade between Mexico and the U.S. is to both countries, an implicit knock on Trump’s constant bashing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the Republican says has led Mexico to fleece the U.S.

“I don’t think trade should be considered a zero-sum game, that for one to win, the other must lose,” Peña Nieto said.

Trump, on the other hand, firmly insisted on America's right to build a wall along its border. He said, however, that the two men did not discuss who would pay for the barrier, suggesting that would be a topic for a later meeting.

“A lot of the things I said are very strong, but we have to be strong and say what is happening,” Trump said. “There is crime, as you know, there is a lot of crime and problems, but I think together we will solve those problems. I believe the president and I will solve those problems.”

Some critics of Trump now say that by not insisting that Mexico pay for the wall in this talks with Peña Nieto, he’s the one who’s backing down. Others, however, just don’t trust anything Trump says.

“I don't believe him. He is lying. He doesn't mean what he says,” said Felipe Calderon, a former Mexican president who has vociferously opposed Pena Nieto’s decision to invite Trump. “He says we're rapists and tomorrow he says we're wonderful, smart, hard-working people. He is lying. And for that reason, I think I’m ... very, very sorry, I'm very sorry he came to Mexico."

The problem for Peña Nieto, some say, is that he actually holds elected office and has to act diplomatic no matter what.

"The United States, which is the top buyer of Mexico’s exports, is of vital importance to Mexico, and the Mexican president needs to ensure that he has clear channels of communication open with whomever the next U.S. president may be,” said Christopher Wilson, an expert on Mexico at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Trump on the other hand, despite his attempts to boost his appeal among broader segment of the U.S. voting population, is still unpredictable. The real estate mogul is due to make a major speech about immigration policy in Arizona later Wednesday.

"God only knows what Trump is going to say in Arizona — he could boast and tell people about how he told off the Mexican president," Schechter said.

“Nobody can control what he’s going to say the next morning or what he’s going to tweet or how he’s going to tweet. That is his personality,” added a Latin American official familiar with the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

Peña Nieto won the presidency after campaigning heavily on improving the economy in a country that is making dramatic strides on business, trade and other fronts, but still grappling with security issues.

But he has struggled in recent years, especially in the wake of a corruption scandal involving his wife's purchase of a $7 million mansion through a favored government contractor; the disappearance and presumed murders of 43 students, allegedly by drug gangs; as well as the prison escapes of the drug lord known as El Chapo. The Mexican economy also recently shrank for the first time in three years.

An investigation by a Mexican news outlet earlier this summer alleged that Peña Nieto had plagiarized significant portions of his law thesis. The president’s office has downplayed the findings, but it has further weakened his standing. People in Mexico already are discussing the next presidential election, set for 2018, and analysts say an unusually large number of candidates may run.

Trump has repeatedly vilified Mexico throughout his extraordinary run for the presidency, which has revolved heavily around demonizing undocumented immigrants. In particular, he has repeatedly promised to build a “beautiful” wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and to have Mexico pay for it.

But on Wednesday, the closest Peña Nieto came to a public condemnation of Trump’s wall plan came off more like a gentle diplomatic rebuke of a close ally.

“Even though I understand every country’s fundamental desire to protect their borders, I also believe that a real collaborative effort among neighbors and allies is the most effective way of doing it,” he said.