Mexican and Latino media outlets were outraged over Donald Trump’s Wednesday visit to Mexico, and some even charged that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto played a weak second fiddle to Trump on the key issue of immigration.
Those stories stood out in sharp contrast to many in the U.S., which were much more neutral in their coverage, and even gave Trump credit for trying out his diplomatic skills.
Jorge Ramos, the Fusion anchor who Trump kicked out of his press conference last year for interrupting other reporters asking questions, argued on Twitter that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto looked “weak and shy” next to Trump. Ramos also said he was upset that that Trump didn’t offer an apology to the Mexican people, but instead stood by most aspects of his controversial immigration plan.
Trump supporters piled on Ramos, taking aim at his ties to Clinton and claiming that his boss donated more than $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, that his boss’s wife sits on the group’s board of directors, and that Ramos’ own daughter works for the Clinton campaign.
The Hispanic news and satire channel, aimed at Latino millennials, also interviewed protesters outside the Mexican presidential palace during the meeting. The coverage featured one anti-Trump activist, Gonzalo Ibarra, arguing that Nieto’s meeting was an act of desperation to try to achieve a good diplomatic result for Mexico but one that Trump will only use as a photo-op to his advantage and continue to “keep making fun of Mexicans.”
Univision.com, meanwhile, carried separate stories of protesters in Mexico City, Los Angeles, as well as California’s capitol city of Sacramento, who expressed “outrage” over Trumps trip and carried banners with the words “Build Bridges, Not walls! Stop Donald Trump!”
Stories noting those protests were more muted in major papers in the United States. Top headlines on the New York Times about the trip were far more neutral as of Friday night, include one about Trump’s Phoenix speech that claimed, “Trump Doubles Down with Tough Speech on Immigration,” and another about Nieto’s dispute with Trump on whether they talked about how would pay for the wall.
Another New York Times piece appeared to give Trump credit for taking the initiative to meet with Nieto, “Trump Tries a Jarring New Style: Diplomacy.” The piece started out with what would amount to high praise in contrast to its overall coverage of the GOP nominee’s campaign and its liberal leanings.
“He did not mock. He did not scold. He did not blunder,” the piece by Michael Barbaro stated. “Instead… he managed to accomplish something that he had failed to do throughout the campaign: communicate his provocative political ideas with something resembling diplomacy.”
Underneath that headline in small print were links to stories and videos of Mexicans attacking Nieto for making a “historic error” in hosting Trump and expressing a sense of betrayal that Nieto would stoop that low.
“It’s a historic error,” the paper quoted Enrique Krauze, a well-known historian. “You confront tyrants. You don’t appease them.”
Earlier in the day, Krauze was far more pointed in his remarks on Mexico’s most popular television show, arguing that Nieto’s decision to meet with Trump to the meeting Neville Chamberlain, then the British prime minister, had with Hitler in Munich in 1938.
Even the Washington Post, which has taken some of the strongest stands against Trump of the mainstream media and whose reporters Trump kicked out of his events, was relatively neutral in its coverage at the end of Wednesday night.
“Trump, Mexican leader duck direct confrontation,” the site’s main headline stated.
Underneath that headline came another more critical take from the Latino perspective: “Mexicans express anger about Trump meeting.”
But other, more niche U.S. publications seemed to play up on the Latino outrage angle. Politico keeping a story high on its website throughout the day and into the evening, declaring that Nieto got “pummeled over the Trump trip.”
Meanwhile, liberal-leaning Vice News Wednesday night led with the headline “Donald Trump just owned Mexico’s president.”
