US President Donald Trump warned in a telephone call with his Mexican counterpart that he was ready to send US troops to stop “bad hombres down there” unless the Mexican military does more to control them, according to an excerpt of a transcript of the conversation obtained by The Associated Press.
The excerpt of the call did not detail who exactly Trump considered “bad hombres,” nor did it make clear the tone and context of the remark, made in a morning telephone call between the leaders on Friday last week.
It also did not contain Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s response.
Mexico denies that Trump’s remarks were threatening.
Still, the excerpt offers a rare and striking look at how the new president is conducting diplomacy behind closed doors. Trump’s remarks suggest he is using the same tough and blunt talk with world leaders that he used to rally crowds on the campaign trail.
Eduardo Sanchez, spokesman for Mexico’s presidential office, denied the tone of the conversation was hostile or humiliating, saying that it was “respectful.”
“It is absolutely false that the president of the United States threatened to send troops to Mexico,” Sanchez said in an interview with Radio Formula on Wednesday night.
A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
“The negative statements you refer to did not occur during said telephone call. On the contrary, the tone was constructive,” the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs had earlier told reporters.
The telephone call between the leaders was intended to patch things up between the new president and his ally. The two have had a series of public spats over Trump’s determination to have Mexico pay for a planned border wall, something Mexico steadfastly refuses to agree to.
“You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,” Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt. “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”
A person with access to the official transcript of the telephone call provided only that portion of the conversation to The Associated Press. The person gave it on condition of anonymity, because the administration did not make the details of the call public.
Mexican Web site Aristegui Noticias on Tuesday published a similar account of the telephone call, based on the reporting of journalist Dolia Estevez. The report described Trump as humiliating Pena Nieto in a confrontational conversation.
The secretariat said the report was “based on absolute falsehoods.”
Americans might recognize Trump’s signature bombast in the comments, but the remarks may carry more weight in Mexico.
Political analyst and former presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Pena Nieto had enjoyed an apparent spike in his low approval levels, as Mexicans rallied around him for publicly challenging Trump in the border wall dispute.
The latest remarks could undercut that, if Pena Nieto is viewed as “weak,” he said.
Trump has used the phrase “bad hombres” before. In a presidential debate in October last year, he vowed to get rid the US of “drug lords” and “bad people.”
“We have some bad hombres here, and we’re going to get them out,” he said.
The phrase ricocheted on social media, with Trump opponents saying he was denigrating immigrants.
Trump’s comment was in line with the new administration’s bullish stance on foreign policy matters in general, and the president’s willingness to break long-standing norms around the globe.
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