Trump Revives His Claim That Mexico Will Pay For His Wall, Mexico Still Says No
Donald Trump continues to claim that Mexico will pay for his still non-existent border wall. Mexico says otherwise.
President Trump is back to insisting that Mexico will pay for his border wall:
President Trump said at a campaign rally Tuesday night that Mexico will pay for his long-promised border wall “in the end.”
“In the end, Mexico is going to pay for the wall,” Trump said at the rally in Nashville, Tenn.
“They make all of this money, and they do absolutely nothing to stop people from going through Mexico, from Honduras and all these other countries, the caravan, all of this stuff,” the president said. “They do nothing to help us, nothing.”
“They’re going to pay for the wall, and they’re going to enjoy it,” Trump added.
Trump has promised since the early days of his campaign that he would build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and that Mexico would pay for it.
Mexico has said that it would not pay for a border wall.
Needless to say, the Mexican President disagrees:
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Tuesday fired back at President Trump for renewing his claim that Mexico would pay for Trump’s proposed border wall “in the end.”
“NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever,” Peña Nieto wrote on Twitter. “Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”
At a campaign rally in Tennessee earlier on Tuesday, Trump said that “in the end, Mexico is going to pay for the wall.”
“They make all of this money, and they do absolutely nothing to stop people from going through Mexico, from Honduras and all these other countries, the caravan, all of this stuff,” the president said. “They do nothing to help us, nothing.”
“They’re going to pay for the wall, and they’re going to enjoy it,” Trump added.
Trump has promised that Mexico would pay for a wall along the southern border since the early days of his campaign.
Mexico has repeatedly responded by saying they would not pay for the wall.
Here’s the Mexican President’s response on Twitter, which he sent in both English and Spanish:
President @realDonaldTrump: NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever.
Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).
— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) May 30, 2018
Presidente @realDonaldTrump: NO. México NUNCA pagará por un muro. Ni ahora, ni nunca.
Atentamente, México (todos nosotros).
— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) May 30, 2018
As noted, this is an issue that President Trump has been pushing since the early days of his campaign, so it’s no surprise that he would keep bringing it up at his campaign-style rallies now that he’s President. As he’s found, though, it’s been far harder to either get the wall built or get Mexico to pay for it, than a campaign speech would make it seem to be. On the first part, Trump has repeatedly failed to get anything beyond paltry funding for his border wall, and most of that has actually ended up going toward repairing areas of the existing border fencing that has been in place for years now. While Trump made a grand production earlier this year of traveling to San Diego to view mock-ups of proposals for the wall, the reality of the situation is that there currently is no plan to begin construction of the law, and no indication that this funding will come any time soon. On at least two occasions last year, the President threatened to veto the entire Federal Budget unless it included what he considered adequate funding for the wall, but he never following through on those threats. More recently, he’s talked about using funds allocated to the Department of Defense to pay for at least part of the wall. It’s not clear, though, how he could do this legally without running afoul of the Constitution and Federal budget laws. In any case, despite Trump’s promises, and no doubt much to his frustration, there has been no movement whatsoever on the border wall and it’s unlikely there will be at any point before the midterms in November.
As for the issue of Mexico paying for the wall, it’s rather obvious that this is not going to happen. President Nieto made this clear from the first time he met with Trump when he visited Mexico City as a candidate for President, and he has not wavered from that position in the intervening time. Not surprisingly, his position is shared by every prominent Mexican politician regardless of political party and, of course, by the vast majority of the Mexican people. In the time since then, Trump has managed to sour the American relationship with its neighbor to the south thanks in no small part to a phone call in the days after he took office in 2017.
More recently, President Nieto canceled a planned visit to the United States back in February after yet another testy phone call between the two leaders that returned to the subject of the border wall. Added into all of this, of course, is the President’s approach to trade, including both the ongoing effort to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and the decision to expand the tariffs on aluminum and steel to include imports from Mexico, Canada, and Europe. Suffice it to say that between these trade policies and the border wall issue, our relationship with Mexico is probably in the worst shape its been in decades. If Trump continues with his insane insistence that Mexico pay for his border wall, a wall that may never be built, that relationship is only going to get worse.
“They’re going to pay for the wall, and they’re going to enjoy it,” -Trumpism
“Mexico will pay for the wall”
“Largest inauguration crowd in history”
It says a lot about Trumpoids that they consider these two statements as proof that their hero won’t take any guff from anyone and won’t ever back down in a fight, rather than the pathetic boastings of of someone with a nine year old mentality.
Which is a goal in and of itself.
@Mark Ivey:
Trump sounds like a rapist: “Mexico is going to pay for the wall, and they’ll lie back and enjoy it.”
Perhaps he could put Mexico on retainer, have them pay for the wall, and then pay them back.
It worked with Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for Mexico and the Wall.
Off-topic, the Melania Trump thing has become pretty creepy, right? I wasn’t paying attention, but the fake tweets and her disappearance is weird. If she had work done, tell people. It’s otherwise very troubling.
“Trump said he would build a wall and he hasn’t” is probably going to have more sting than “Trump sounds like a rapist.”
@Modulo Myself:
She and Barron apparently declined to join Donald, Donald Jr, Ivanka, and Jared at Camp David this weekend.
@CSK: To be fair to Melania, I wouldn’t want to spend any time with those people either. I don’t see what is so creepy about any of this.
I don’t think she is being held somewhere against her will, and I don’t think she should be required to be arm candy for various events if she doesn’t want to. It was clear she appeared at the Republican Convention under duress, and she’s been uncomfortable with the public appearances since, especially after the Stormy Daniels stuff came out.
Every time we saw her for the past year, she was swatting away her husband’s hand… I wouldn’t want to pressure anyone to touch that loathesome man.
@Gustopher:
I don’t dispute what you’re saying, but…Melania was hired to be the third Mrs. Trump for pretty much the sole purpose of being arm candy, and she knows it, as was clear when she responded to someone who asked her if she’d have married Trump if he weren’t rich by asking: “Would he have married me if I weren’t beautiful?”
I do think it’s possible that being Mrs. Trump V.3 might have been just bearable when she was a private citizen, but has become markedly less so since that descent down the escalator in June 2015.
The best solution would be electronic walls that would instantly detect any crossing in advance. Then nets, strong sounds, blinding lights, or disorientating energy waves could be set off and anyone trying to enter will very quickly have a change of heart and high tail it in reverse!
Having a huge physical wall is no guarantee. See “The Great Wall
” There are lots of new walls.
They were built to keep you in” (“The Magnificent Seven” – original version)
Trump sounds like a rapist
“grab them by the pussy!”
He’s not?
@Tyrell: And how many illegal immigrants are here because of overstayed visas?
“Trump’s Wall” is like its proposer’s claims of business success–over the top, bankrupt, and non-working.
If the Cheeto wants a sovereign country to pay for his vanity wall, he should at least conquer that country first.
But then there’d be no reason to build the wall, would it?
@Kathy:
No, but neither he nor his drooling acolytes ever reached that conclusion.
I’ve mentioned this before, but Trump has said that whenever he feels the audience attention flagging at one of his rallies, he says “Lock her up!” or something about building the wall, and that brings the crowd roaring back to him. It’s like a button he pokes to get the response he wants.
This is, as the saying says, an unforced error. No one except his most deluded backers ever believed Mexico was going to pay for it (even completely conservative sites like National Review, while definitely for Trump over Clinton, said Mexico paying for it was nonsense). And most of his backers had long since forgotten about that promise, or rationalized it away.
Why bother reminding people about it? Unless he owes Nieto a favor – definitely good for the Mexican President to be given an easy chance to stand strong.
@grumpy realist:
They had a bunch of Special Forces types, or somebody like that, test the prototype wall samples in Doug’s photo. They failed to break through them or climb them. But apparently they weren’t allowed to drive to Tijuana and book a flight to San Diego,
Re: Melania…I don’t think it’s creepy at all. I think she had “work” done on her face. Arm candy and wrinkles just don’t go together.
That, of course, applies to his entire presidency…
Tards will believe him. They’ll cheer.
@An Interested Party:
Good point. Actually, I suppose a whole series of them. First of all, the GOP choosing him as their candidate. Then people voting for him. And then of course all of his tweets. And finally, most of his policies. Lot’s of errors.
Perhaps Trump will announce that all tariffs on Mexican imports will go toward wall construction.
TrumpTards like the lies he tells. Creationism, Supply-Side economics, they seem to like dumb lies.
@george:..And finally, most of his policies. Lot’s of errors.
Errors?
It is no secret (to me at least) that Make America White Again is a deliberate strategy. It is not an error or a policy mistake that REPUBLICAN President Pud is appealing to his White Racist base, see Ku Klux Klan and American Nazis and their sympathizers, when his Reichsführer-SS (protection squad) Jeff Heinrich Himmler Sessions executes a policy of ripping apart families at the border.
Trump is just testing exactly how spineless and craven the REPUBLICANS in Congress are.
He is turning them into roadkill.
They all smell like dead skunks in the middle of the road.
@James Pearce:
You flounced during the Roseann Barr thread. Do you routinely not honor your own words?
@Chattycathy:
I have no interest in trolling Melania, even though she knowingly signed up for this, But there is a known recovery time from such work, and yet the original cover story was basically an out patient procedure. I know there’s a growing pattern of not thinking through their initial reactions, but . . . even these guys could have put a better cover on a longer recovery period.
@James Pearce:
From the Broidy/Bechard affair we’re likely to very soon have “Trump paid for an abortion.” Which still won’t make any difference to his Evangelical base.