It seemed on Monday that every Mexican was going to vote in the U.S. election. Never mind the result, as here in the land of the cheap taco and tequila Donald Trump would lose by a landslide.
But since that’s not the case, and the opinion of citizens of other nations doesn’t count, then whatever people in Mexico or the rest of the world think or say does not matter.
But, there is one exception and that is Mexico’s wealthiest tycoon Carlos Slim.
Without ever having met each other, Trump and Slim have had several rough distant encounters that seemingly are forever irreparable.
The first clash came after Trump launched his first onslaught against Mexicans who go to seek a better future in the United States and said that Mexico sends America its worst people such as drug dealers, criminals and rapists.
Carlos Slim immediately reacted to that statement made in June 2015 by cancelling several television projects they were negotiating for a company called OraTv, operated by Slim and TV personality Larry King. Other U.S. stations, such as Univision, also cancelled productions they had programmed with Trump.
Slim’s spokesman Arturo Elías said then that what Trump had said “is a statement totally out of place” and working in productions with Trump “we don’t think is going to work out for us.”
But that was the first clash.
The second one came last February when Trump hinted in a radio program called The Patriot that the Mexican mogul was influencing The New York Times against his candidacy.
Trump said that “certainly a very rich Mexican owns a great deal of the newspaper and has great power over its opinions.”
Indeed Carlos Slim pumped $250 million a few years back when The New York Times fell into a financial slump and sought financing and found it in Slim.
The article Trump was referring to was an exposé made by two ladies who claimed that The Donald had improperly sexually approached them and hinted that he may have forced them to subdue.
Trump demanded an apology from the New York Times, but Editor Arthur Ochs Sulzberger publicly said that indeed Slim was an important investor in the publication, but it had nothing to do with his opinions. There were no apologies and the article was not withdrawn.
(A dark humorist from La Jornada newspaper caricaturized Trump as saying, “I don’t want Mexican rapists here, because I don’t want any competition.”)
The latest non-encounter-clash between Slim and Trump came up recently during the influential Montevideo Circle held in Mexico City last week.
During a conversation Carlos Slim disqualified Trump as a good public administrator and national leader cracking up the audience of noteworthy personalities — including several former presidents of different nations — by saying that Trump was unfit to be president because “it’s not the same to be the drunk than to be the bartender.”
Slim blasted Trump’s Fortress America economic ideology, which — under an idealistic slogan of tagging a 35 percent heavy tariff on imports — would immediately bankrupt the United States and said that it would be difficult to create new jobs under a different economic policy than the one that’s been standing for the past 22 years under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
“He would destroy the U.S. economy,” Slim, known as a brilliant entrepreneur, stated.
He denied ever having met with the presidential candidate.
“I don’t know Trump and the U.S. elections will have to be decided by their people and to tell you the truth, I’m not interested in Trump’s personal life.”
And of course, even though he has an opinion on the U.S. election, Carlos Slim will not vote, because he’s a Mexican citizen. And as such, he knows best that he and the rest of us should stay interested but aloof from whatever is going on politically north of the border.