A flabbergasted nation watched Wednesday how President Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) rolled out the red carpet to Donald Trump just the day before he is to deliver the State of the Nation report to Congress and the contry.
From whatever angle you want to look at it, EPN comes out smeared as if he’d been mud wrestling in a hogs’ pen.
On the one hand, Trump went back to the United States to say how, if elected president, his immigration reform would work and reaffirm his delirious dream of building up “a beautiful wall” to protect his fascist idea of a Fortress America from — in that order — Mexico and then the rest of the world.
“And Mexico will pay for it. Read my words,” he said.
This theme was not discussed at the press conference between Peña Nieto and the candidate but later EPN would twit that he told Trump Mexico would not pay for the wall.
But forget the still imaginary wall and its cost.
The invitation to both U.S. presidential candidates came as a surprise to both contenders, but Trump, in dire straits of unpopularity, accepted it immediately. It was a publicity stunt he couldn’t afford to miss as visiting Mexico would only paint him as the daredevil who valiantly confronted a possibility of physical attacks, as he was warned by his followers.
But, as Mexicans are claiming on Thursday morning, the problem for Mexico is not Donald Trump and his anti-Mexican tirades, but EPN, for “inviting the enemy” for a cup of coffee.
To make things worse for EPN, Hillary Clinton did not immediately respond to the invitation leaving him, at least for the moment, “hanging from the brush” as Mexicans say when the ladder is removed from under someone painting a wall.
EPN also afforded his numerous political critics to come out and blast the heck out of him for being careless and breaching the international policy protocol of not interfering in the internal affairs — particularly not at elections time — of Mexico’s dearest neighbor, the United States.
Defenders of EPN — that is, all the people in his payroll — claim that the only thing he did by inviting the candidates to Mexico to talk was to open up “dialogue” opportunities and that the EPN-Trump meet was not an official event, there were no negotiations and in fact, at the press conference, the Star Spangled banner was not displayed.
Another ominous ghost for EPN is that Foreign Relations Secretary (SRE) Claudia Ruiz Massieu did not issue a single twit as mediator of the one-hour reunion. In fact, it’s likely all contacts were made through the presidents, leaving Secretary Ruiz Massiew aside in this deal.
Another thing that President EPN forgot is that he is still a minority president and that opposition to his rule, even in democratic acceptance, is enormous.
Immediately after learning of Trump’s visit, the leaders of all political parties bombarded the President with criticism, seeing his “dialogue with the enemy” bid as just another “ocurrencia” or off-the-top-of-the-head idea by now gone awry. In short, EPN, claim critics, doesn’t know what to do to upgrade his low popularity in the recent polls.
It will be interesting to see EPN’s town-hall-type of meeting with students tonight Sept. 1 to discuss his State of the Nation report.
The one thing that is certain about it is that it will be done under the shadow of the Donald Trump visit to Mexico.
But what was the need of doing that?