More criticism for Mexico's president after Trump visit
MEXICO CITY — Unpopular President Enrique Peña Nieto endured a second day of withering attacks Thursday from critics who complained he failed to stand up to Donald Trump during their controversial get-together.
Thursday's newspaper headlines were unkind. “Trump uses EPN,” the Mexico City daily Reforma said, using the president's initials. El Universal ran a softer headline: “After the visit, Peña sees the threat in Trump.”
During their meeting Wednesday, Peña Nieto didn't demand that Trump apologize for calling Mexican migrants rapists and criminals. He also stood silently at their joint news conference while the Republican presidential candidate repeated his promise to build a wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
Peña Nieto "had the last word,” Arturo Franco, senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Thursday. “There was every opportunity to correct Trump.”
Franco said the meeting made the GOP candidate appear presidential, which has implications beyond Mexico. “A single decision in Mexico has so many potentially negative repercussions, not only in Mexico, but internationally as well,” he said.
Jesús Silva-Herzog, a Mexican academic, was more blunt, calling the encounter the "biggest stupidity in the history of the Mexican presidency."
Here's what Mexican leaders have said about Donald Trump
Mexican president: I told Trump we wouldn't pay for wall
Peña Nieto sent out a series of tweets after the meeting, saying he told Trump at the start that Mexico would not pay for wall, and the men proceeded to talk about other topics.
That didn't appear to help Peña Nieto, who was already suffering from historically low popularity ratings — less than 25% — after a series of corruption scandals and revelations that he plagiarized parts of a thesis he wrote for his law degree.
Hashtags calling on Peña Nieto to resign trended on Twitter after he met with Trump. “The humiliation is now complete,” tweeted Carlos Loret de Mola, a news anchor for broadcaster Televisa.
“Peña ended up pardoning Trump when no apology was asked for. The lowest point of the most painful day in the history of the Mexican presidency,” tweeted Esteban Illades, editor of the public affairs magazine Nexos.
Gerardo Rodríguez, a professor of security studies, tweeted that he won't be able to explain to his students why Peña Nieto even agreed to the meeting.
Trump holds firm on immigration in Phoenix speech
After Trump's short visit to Mexico, the candidate re-affirmed his hard-line immigration policy during a fiery speech Wednesday night in Phoenix. That address only deepened the resentment by many in Mexico — especially when he tweeted later that Mexico would pay for a wall.
“After the Trump discourse in Arizona, is there someone that would want to continue defending the decision to invite him to Mexico?” tweeted Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico City.
"Trump achieved his purpose: He can claim he was taken seriously by a foreign government," said Carlos Bravo Regidor, professor in the journalism department of the Center for Investigation and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City. "He softens his image regarding Mexico without actually changing his stance."
As for Peña Nieto, Regidor said the president "offered a platform for a candidate who has been openly hostile to Mexico and Mexicans, who has portrayed us as dangerous, criminals, rapists. And for what?"