Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto extended invitations to both major party presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but where Trump took the meeting, Clinton is now refusing to accept the neighboring president’s invitation.
“No” said former Secretary of State Clinton, she will not accept Peña Nieto’s invitation to meet before November’s presidential election. Clinton made the statement during an interview with ABC’s David Muir as she attempted to devalue Trump’s meeting with Mexico’s President. She called the trip “unfortunate.”
Republican nominee Donald Trump met with Peña Nieto just last week. Following their meeting the two held a joint press conference where the two recounted and answered questions about their meeting. The two expressed agreement over a country’s right to protect its own borders. Trump has made a repeated pledge to secure the United States’ southern border with Mexico.
Peña Nieto said at the joint press conference, through a translator:
So I had a very open and constructive discussion with Mr. Donald Trump. The objective of this meeting was to meet each other and to know about the bilateral relations.
…
The border must transform itself in (ph) an asset for our region. We have great advances in the last few years, working very closely with the Obama administration. And with the next administration, we must accelerate these efforts so that the Mexican/United States border is more efficient and safe.
Trump sured up his border security pledge later that same day in his highly anticipated immigration speech given at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona.
Clinton further tried in the Muir interview to downplay Trump’s meeting with the Mexican President, claiming it created a “diplomatic incident.” Clinton’s running mate Sen. Tim Kaine tried to accuse Trump of caving to U.S. ally Peña Nieto.
During the joint Peña Nieto-Trump press conference, Trump stated, “We didn’t discuss who pays for the wall, we didn’t discuss.” Before Trump’s immigration speech that same day Peña Nieto took to Twitter to state that Mexico would not pay for the wall and that he had told Trump as much.
Trump continues to affirm however, as he did at the Wednesday evening rally in Phoenix, that “Mexico will pay for the wall. 100%. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for the wall.”
Former Secretary of State Clinton last met with Peña Nieto in 2014 according to Fox News Latino. Forbes made note of the meeting that Clinton took at an event Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helú invited Clinton, Peña Nieto, and a handful of others to speak at in Mexico City. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was also listed among those speaking. The annual event hosted about 10,000 Telmex scholarship recipients. Forbes reported that Telmex’s owner Slim was the world’s richest man and Telmex was Mexico’s “biggest Internet and mobile service provider” at that time.
The Forbes report went on to discuss the cozy relationship between the Clintons and Slim. Forbes reported, “Slim has made significant donnations (sic) to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. In 2012, when Clinton was Secretary of State, she invited Slim to the State Department to discuss his work on broadband and digital development. Also in 2012, the former President awarded Slim the Clinton Global Citizen Awards for his leadership in philanthropy during the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual conference in New York.”
Breitbart News previously reported of the relationship between Hillary Clinton, mega-billionaire Carlos Slim, Telmex and the Clinton Foundation, “The Telmex Foundation, founded by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, provided between $250,000 and $500,000 for a speech by Hillary Clinton.”