Mexico’s president dismissed presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s call for a southern border wall to be paid for by Mexico.
“There is no way that Mexico can pay [for] a wall like that,” Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
Trump has made the border wall, and the insistence that Mexico pay for its construction, a central plank in his presidential campaign.
Pena Nieto also faulted Trump’s infamous statement that Mexico is “sending” drug dealers and rapists to the United States
“I cannot agree with such a generalization for Mexicans,” he said. “There is no way to agree with comments like these which describe all Mexicans in such a way.”
He also stressed the need for cooperation between the two countries.
Pena Nieto noted that one million people cross the southern border legally on a daily basis. “We have a relationship of coordination, of collaboration and of cooperation in the area of security, precisely in order to have security in Mexico, to have security in the U.S. and … we are journey companions,” the president said. “We are strategic partners working for security in North America.”
