Mexico rages against Trump visit Reaction from Mexico against the Republican nominee's visit is swift and brutal.

Donald Trump may have accepted the invitation of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto for a Wednesday meeting in Mexico City, but the Republican presidential nominee is getting the cold shoulder in a country where public views of its own president are already abysmally low.

Reaction was fast and furious among those in the Mexican political cognoscenti.


Former Mexican President Vicente Fox apologized on behalf of the country during an interview Wednesday on CNN, accusing both Trump and Peña Nieto for using the occasion to exploit their own political opportunities.

"It's a very opportunistic move, and I hope U.S. public opinion, U.S. citizens can see this and finally, and finally see what is behind Trump, this false prophet that is just cheating everybody," Fox said during a Skype chat on "New Day," adding that it is "a desperate move, and I don't see how it can work at all."

The only way that inviting Trump makes sense for Mexico would be if Peña Nieto gets the Republican nominee to apologize for his past statements about Mexicans, Fox said, saying he did not understand the thinking of the Mexican president, while pronouncing Trump's decision to visit "very smart."

Fox had reacted fiercely to the news Tuesday night, telling Trump that "[t]here is no turning back" from his offensive remarks about Mexicans, Muslims and others that, he said, "have led you to the pit where you are today."

Added Fox, who previously apologized to the candidate after declaring that Mexico was not going to pay for "that f---ing wall": "¡Adiós, Trump!"

Trump responded to Wednesday's CNN interview with a tweet, reminding the former president that he had extended an invitation to visit Mexico along with his apology for using the "f-bomb."

Trump is "not welcome" in her country, former Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala de Calderón tweeted Wednesday morning, after news broke of the Republican nominee's impending visit and meeting with Nieto.

"Mexicans have dignity and repudiate his hate speech," she wrote.

Sr. @realDonaldTrump aunque lo hayan invitado, sepa que no es bienvenido. Los mexicanos tenemos dignidad y repudiamos su discurso de odio. — Margarita Zavala (@Mzavalagc) August 31, 2016





Zavala, who has previously expressed a desire to run for the presidency in 2018, served in the Mexican Congress in the 1990s.

Her husband, former President Felipe Calderón, has vowed that Mexico would not "pay a single cent for such a stupid wall," telling CNBC in February that Trump is a "not a very well-informed man."

"The first loser of such a policy would be the United States," Calderón said at the time. "If this guy pretends that closing the borders to anywhere, either for trade [or] for people, is going to provide prosperity to the United States, he is completely crazy."

Calderón retweeted the message from his wife, as well as the Hillary Clinton campaign's statement denouncing Trump anew in light of his meeting with the current Mexican president.

Mexican-born Univision broadcaster Jorge Ramos, who notably clashed with Trump at an Iowa news conference last year, unloaded on both Trump and Peña Nieto in a multi-part tweetstorm of his own. "In simple terms, today's meeting is between 2 of the most despised and hated people by millions of Mexicans on both sides of the border," Ramos opined.

Mexican Senate President Roberto Gil Zuarth tweeted that the invitation to Trump only served to legitimize his "proposal of demagogy and hate."

"We are threatened with war and walls, but we open the National Palace," he wrote, referring to the building housing the country's executive branch.

Guadalajara Mayor Enrique Alfaro Ramirez also railed against Trump, saying he should not have even received an invitation.

"A person who openly incites hatred, racism, violence and even war, should not be invited into our country. After treating Mexicans like he has, his visit offends our dignity," the mayor of the country's third-most populous city wrote in a Facebook post. "That man should leave knowing that we do NOT want a wall, that we will NOT pay for it. He must leave knowing that Mexicans are people of goodwill. In Mexico we do not share his xenophobic and racist ideas."

Miguel Basáñez, who served as the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. from September 2015 until April, tweeted his condemnation, too. "Nobody in the last 50 years has put in such level of danger the relationship between Mexico and the US as #Trump. I deeply regret the invitation," he wrote in Spanish.

Arturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013, wrote on Twitter that the trip legitimizes "Trump & his xenophobia & sends the message that there is no cost bashing Mexico & Mexican migrants."

Former Mexican diplomat Jorge Guajardo, who served as the Mexican consul in Austin and later as the Mexican ambassador to China, also slammed Peña Nieto for Trump's visit.

"I am taking suggestions on the best place to hide in Washington. I feel embarrassed as a Mexican thanks to my president. I want to hide," he tweeted.

Public approval of Peña Nieto fell to 23 percent in the latest public poll, released earlier in August, with approximately three-quarters of Mexicans holding an unfavorable view of the job he is doing as president.

In another poll, conducted in June, Trump's approval rating in the country he has used as a political punching bag was far lower: 2 percent.

Peter Schechter, director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council, said in an email that it's clear that the Mexico meeting helps Trump appeal to a broader base. But what it means to Peña Nieto isn't as certain.

"Why Peña Nieto wants this meeting is a total mystery. No matter how it is spun, it raises candidate Donald Trump’s profile and legitimacy," he wrote. "It will be unpopular with Mexicans, with the Hillary campaign, with all Americans who are worried about attempts to mainstream Trump."

Representatives of the U.S. Republican Party in Mexico put a positive spin on the visit, declaring Trump’s message as “one of building, from now on, a healthy bilateral relationship that considers the interests and security of both countries," the group said in a release, which included a GOP logo and was put out by the American Society of Mexico, a group for U.S. ex-pats.

The group’s president, Larry Rubin, told Excélsior Televisión that the purpose of Trump’s visit is to ensure there are no “exaggerations” or “myths” about his conception of the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

Trump's visit follows a meeting in Wisconsin on Tuesday between a delegation of top Mexican officials, including Foreign Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu, and Republican Gov. Scott Walker — a Trump supporter — as they marked the opening of a new consulate in Milwaukee.

Mexico is America's third-largest trading partner, and analysts say at least 6 million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico. So, many U.S. governors, including Republicans, have tried to keep relations warm, despite the tirades of their party's presidential nominee.

During Tuesday's ceremony in Wisconsin, Walker avoided questions about immigration policies and Trump's call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. "One of the things we've stressed is as long as our governor is still coming to Mexico to talk about commerce and trade opportunities, it doesn't matter what the president is doing," Walker said. "We're still going to have a strong relationship."

Gabriel Debenedetti, Bianca Padró Ocasio and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.