Mexican president: I told Trump we wouldn't pay for the wall

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto flatly contradicted Donald Trump’s statement that the two did not discuss who would pay for the GOP nominee’s proposed multibillion-dollar border wall, saying, “I made it clear Mexico will not pay.”

“Who pays for the wall? We didn’t discuss it,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question at a joint news conference after the closed-door meeting between the two in Mexico City.


But in a tweet from Peña Nieto's official Twitter account sent later on Wednesday, the president said, “At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear Mexico will not pay for the wall.”

Mexico’s foreign minister, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, tweeted that Peña Nieto had “expressed the grievance and outrage of Mexicans for insults and offenses” by Trump in their private meeting.

En reunión con @realDonaldTrump, el Presidente @EPN expresó el agravio e indignación de mexicanos por insultos y ofensas. — Claudia Ruiz Massieu (@ruizmassieu) September 1, 2016

Trump spokesman Jason Miller downplayed the conflicting accounts, though he did not refer to any specific disagreements.

“Today was the first part of the discussion and a relationship builder between Mr. Trump and President Peña Nieto,” Miller said in a statement. “It was not a negotiation, and that would have been inappropriate. It is unsurprising that they hold two different views on this issue, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.”

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, n a statement clearly written before the Mexican president’s tweet, mocked the GOP nominee for failing to press his case. “Donald Trump has made his outlandish policy of forcing Mexico to pay for his giant wall the centerpiece of his campaign,” Podesta said. “But at the first opportunity to make good on his offensive campaign promises, Trump choked.”

“What we saw today from a man who claims to be the ultimate deal maker is that he doesn’t have the courage to advocate for his campaign promises when he’s not in front of a friendly crowd,” Podesta added.

Peña Nieto received swift domestic blowback on Wednesday, not just for hosting Trump, a much-reviled figure in Mexico, but for then failing to publicly rebuke him from the podium in real time.

Following the meeting, Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer expanded on Trump’s answer in a CNN interview.

“He made it clear that the wall is going to be built. I think the financing of it ... will be further discussed tonight, but again I don’t think you solve everything in one conversation,” Spicer said. “This is probably an ongoing conversation that both he continues to have as a candidate, and then as president, he’ll continue to have with his counterpart down in Mexico.”

Tyler Pager contributed to this report.