Mexico's President Just Responded to Donald Trump
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The president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, spoke out against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for the first time on Monday.
Peña Nieto said that Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric — which he compared to those of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini — has already hurt U.S.-Mexico relations, the Associated Press reports.
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"And there have been episodes in human history, unfortunately, where these expressions of this strident rhetoric have only led to very ominous situations in the history of humanity," Peña Nieto told the Excélsior newspaper. "That's how Mussolini got in, that's how Hitler got in. They took advantage of a situation — a problem perhaps, which humanity was going through at the time, after an economic crisis."
Trump's proposal to build a giant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and have the country foot the multi-billion dollar bill — in addition to the candidate's inflammatory language against illegal immigrants, has earned him the condemnation of several Mexican officials in recent months.
Former Mexican presidents Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox both rejected the idea that Mexico would pay for the wall, and Mexican Treasury Secretary Luis Videgaray became the first government official to shut down the proposal in an interview with Milenio TV last week.
Peña Nieto agreed. He said that there was "no scenario" in which he'd approve the plan and added that he "can't agree with this American politician's position."
