Forget Russia, Mexico Tried Hard to Undermine the US Election Against Trump

Mexican Standoff

The master dealmaker outfoxes his Mexican counterpart.

January 27, 2017  Matthew Vadum

  Blasting President Donald Trump for his Twitter-based demands that Mexico free up the pesos needed to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, President Enrique Peña Nieto abruptly pulled out of a planned summit with Trump.
Answering Trump in kind, the Mexican head of state tweeted midday Thursday in Spanish, "We have informed the White House that I will not attend the working meeting planned for next Tuesday with @POTUS[.]"
The previous night Peña Nieto had reiterated his government’s opposition both to the wall and to his country paying for it. "I regret and reject the decision of the United States to continue building a wall that, far from uniting, divides us," he tweeted according to an apparently reliable English translation.
In an unprecedented round of refreshingly transparent social media diplomacy, Trump, the master negotiator, published two tweets baiting his Mexican counterpart:

The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.

Peña Nieto, who is deeply unpopular in his homeland, accepted Trump’s invitation to withdraw from the Jan. 31 summit. He had come under intense pressure in his country to cancel the meeting.

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