Just a week after Donald Trump’s last-minute visit to Mexico, Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray announced that he was resigning from his post, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Videgaray, a close ally of President Enrique Peña Nieto, was reportedly behind the push to invite the GOP nominee, who has insisted that Mexico will pay for a “beautiful” wall to be built on the United States’ southern border and disparaged Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists.”
Videgaray was selected by Peña Nieto to serve as a “behind-the-scenes liaison” to Trump’s campaign, according to the Washington Post, and pushed Peña Nieto to invite him to Mexico in order to quash financial-market fears that a Trump victory could damage his country’s economy.
Trump’s relatively quiet visit, in which he praised Peña Nieto as a “friend,” was seen as a PR coup for the real estate mogul and a public humiliation for the Mexican president. The two politicians have since sparred over whether they discussed who would pay for the proposed border wall, with Trump insisting it was never mentioned and Peña Nieto claiming he told Trump Mexico would never fund it.
