AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka said Donald Trump “acted like Winnie the Pooh” during his visit to Mexico on Wednesday, after which the Republican presidential nominee said he had avoided speaking with the country’s president about paying for his border wall.
“He talked like John Wayne last night, but he acted like Winnie the Pooh when he was in Mexico,” Trumka told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Thursday.
Trump met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto hours before he delivered an impassioned speech about immigration reform in Phoenix on Wednesday. During his policy speech, Trump vowed to “build a great wall along the southern border.”
“And Mexico will pay for the wall,” he said. “They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for the wall.”
But earlier in the day, Trump told reporters at a joint news conference with Pena Nieto that discussions about payment of the wall “will be for a later time.”
“He never even raised who’s going to pay for the wall itself, which shows he’s not really serious about it [and] it’s not a serious proposal,” Trumka said.
The labor chief later added that Trump’s immigration speech was “pretty mean-spirited” and nothing more than a reaffirmation of “all the policies that he’s talked about in the past.”
Trumka has been leading an aggressive campaign against Trump, whose staunch opposition to free trade deals has afforded him some appeal among working-class voters and union members.
The AFL-CIO president said he continues to see Trump “as a fraud,” but would nevertheless accept his support for fighting against trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“Any time a politician is on the same side of an issue as us it’s a positive,” Trumka conceded.
