Mexico’s government has announced that Presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Donald J. Trump spent Friday morning on the phone and agreed to not discuss wall payments in public.
In a prepared statement issued by Mexico’s federal government, Peña Nieto’s team claimed that both heads of state understood their shared public differences and agreed to discuss the heated issue as part of an “integral discussion” in relation to their bilateral partnership.
The telephone conversation dealt with the issues of trade deficit, international friendship, and both nations working together to stem the flow of drugs and weapons, the Mexican government revealed in their statement. Both presidents told their staff to continue discussing bilateral issues.
Mexico’s about-face comes one day after Peña Nieto had cancelled his trip to Washington after claiming that his country would not pay for a border wall. One of the first actions that President Trump took upon taking office was to sign an executive order ordering construction and the toughening of border security and enforcement measures.
The White House issued a similar readout Friday afternoon:
United States President Donald J. Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto spoke by phone this morning for an hour. The call was mutually arranged by their teams.
The two had a productive and constructive call regarding the bilateral relationship between the two countries, the current trade deficit the United States has with Mexico, the importance of the friendship between the two nations, and the need for the two nations to work together to stop drug cartels, drug trafficking and illegal guns and arms sales.
With respect to payment for the border wall, both presidents recognize their clear and very public differences of positions on this issue but have agreed to work these differences out as part of a comprehensive discussion on all aspects of the bilateral relationship.
Both presidents have instructed their teams to continue the dialogue to strengthen this important strategic and economic relationship in a constructive way.
The measures ordered by Trump would make drug trafficking and human smuggling activities exponentially difficult for Mexican drug cartels. As Breitbart Texas as reported, Peña Nieto has been accused of receiving campaign funds from operatives with Mexico’s Juarez Cartel. Peña Nieto’s close associate, Humberto Moreira, who was the governor of the border state of Coahuila and the president of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) during Peña Nieto’s 2012 campaign, has been implicated in international courts as having been a surrogate of the Los Zetas cartel.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Tony Aranda contributed to this report.
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