Days after President Trump’s budget included a line item for $2.6 billion in U.S. tax dollars to build a wall across the Mexican border, the head of the National Conference of Governors of Mexico on Saturday declared a "first victory" in his country’s opposition to the wall long promised by Trump.
That "first victory" is Trump now asking American taxpayers to fund the wall and not offering any plan to make good on his signature campaign promise to "make Mexico pay for it," Graco Ramírez, governor of the Mexican state of Morelos, told Newsmax.
"He’s asking your citizens to pay for the wall," said Governor Ramírez, "and that provided our first victory."
Ramírez, a member of the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), is head of the association representing 31 federated states of Mexico as well as Mexico City, its capital.
He was in Washington Saturday to voice complaints about certain U.S. policies by the Trump Administration toward Mexico: the attempt to "undermine" sanctuary cities, the expansion of jails along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the ever-controversial wall.
During his last visit to Washington for the National Governors Association meeting, Ramírez warned that Trump’s rhetoric about building the wall could lead to the election as Mexican president of leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The former mayor of Mexico City known widely as "AMLO" has been likened to Venezuela’s late Marxist President Hugo Chávez and is now considered the front-runner to succeed termed-out President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2018.
Ramírez went on to compare some of what he called López Obrador’s "exaggerated" claims to controversial statements by Trump.
"Trump and López Obrador are the perfect storm," he told us.
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