Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was thoroughly dressed down online and in the Mexican press on Wednesday for hosting a genial meeting with Donald Trump despite the scathing criticism the Republican nominee has directed towards the United States’ southern neighbor. Yet Mexico’s foreign minister insisted that Trump’s barbs were addressed during his private meeting with Peña Nieto.
The president expressed Mexicans’ “grave indignation” for Trump’s “insults and offenses,” Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu wrote in a tweet on Wednesday night.
En reunión con @realDonaldTrump, el Presidente @EPN expresó el agravio e indignación de mexicanos por insultos y ofensas.
— Claudia Ruiz Massieu (@ruizmassieu) September 1, 2016
In comments responding to Massieu’s posts, Mexicans asked to hear the audio of their conversation and called it “humiliating” that their president did not publicly address the litany of insults Trump has used to describe immigrants from their country. The GOP nominee was back at it in his big speech on immigration in Phoenix, Arizona, delivered hours after his meeting with Peña Nieto, in which he again described immigrants as criminally-minded rapists and murderers.
Trump and Peña Nieto’s differing accounts on what happened behind closed doors extended to the funding of the real estate mogul’s signature border wall. While Trump told the press they discussed the wall itself but not payment, Peña Nieto insisted that he told Trump outright that Mexico would never bankroll it. On the stump in Phoenix, Trump said, “Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going pay.”
The GOP nominee’s visit came as a surprise to many in Mexico, including top-level officials like Massieu. Her staff told the Washington Post that they received no advance warning, and the foreign minister was in Milwaukee at the opening of a new Mexican embassy when the announcement of Trump’s visit came down.
During her speech at the embassy, Massieu made pointed reference to the GOP nominee without mentioning him by name.
“Facts speak against stereotypes. History against bigotry. Cooperation against xenophobia,” she told an audience that included Trump backers including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), according to Milwaukee’s Fox affiliate.
“Undocumented immigrants are oftentimes an easy target for intolerance and discrimination. But let me tell you, it has been documented that if this population left Wisconsin today, the state would lose over 14,500 jobs,” she added.
