President Donald Trump “helped” Mexico during his four-year term in office, Mexican President Andrés López Obrador said as he bade farewell to the outgoing U.S. head of state.
“Mexico’s leftist president on Wednesday said U.S. President Donald Trump was beneficial to Mexico thanks to a good relationship between the two men,” Reuters news agency reported.
President Trump enjoyed a great working relationship with Mexican President Andrés López Obrador, who took office two years ago. He once described the Mexican leader as a “cherished friend.”
The U.S. president had been appreciative of Mexico’s measures to step the inflow of illegal immigrants from south of the U.S. border.
“Mexico is doing more to help us than the Democrats, who are doing nothing,” he said in June 2019 while talking about illegal immigration.
In November, President López Obrador praised his U.S. counterpart, saying: “President Trump has been very respectful of us, and we have reached very good agreements.”
The LA Times on Wednesday reported the Mexican president’s remarks lauding the outgoing U.S. president:
“We had a good relationship,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters Wednesday morning. He thanked Trump for respecting Mexico’s sovereignty.It was an unlikely about-face for López Obrador, a left-wing nationalist who as a candidate for president criticized Trump for his derisive comments about Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and who wrote a book demanding respect for Mexico called, “Listen, Trump.”But the world leaders became improbably close allies. López Obrador waited six weeks to congratulate Biden on his victory and defended Trump when he was booted from Twitter after the attack on the U.S. Capitol.Many analysts see conflict ahead for the U.S. and Mexico, in part because López Obrador and Biden have very different opinions on climate change, renewable energy and security cooperation.
In early November, President López Obrador took flak from the U.S. Democrats and the mainstream media for refusing to congratulate “President-Elect” Joe Biden amid charges of voting irregularities made by President Trump and his legal team.
Democrat Congressman from Illinois, Jesús García, told President López Obrador in early November that “President-Elect” Biden “won fair and square. Don’t miss the boat.” Another Democrat politician, Congressman Joaquin Castro for Texas, criticized the “diplomatic failure on the part of Andrés Manuel López Obrador” to not recognize Biden as U.S. president-elect around that time.
With President Trump out of office, one can expect a more vindictive tone from the Democrats and the mainstream media against the Mexican government for working with the previous administration, particularly on illegal immigration.
Putting an end to illegal border crossings south of the border has been on top of the Trump administration’s plan. With his first term in the White House coming to a close, President Trump visited Texas to inspect a wall section along the U.S.-Mexican border. He cautioned the incoming Biden administration against undoing his legacy on the border wall and immigration.
“We can’t let the next administration even think about taking (the border wall) down, if you can believe that,” President Trump said. “I don’t think that will happen. I think when you see what it does and how it’s so important to our country nobody’s going to be touching it.”
President Trump: ‘Mexico doing more to help than Democrats.’ (June 2019)
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