During a 5-minute question-and-answer period with reporters after his much-vaunted meeting with Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto, Donald Trump admitted that he whiffed on the wall.
"And the wall? Is it a non-starter?," asked a reporter.
Trump answered, "We did discuss the wall. We didn't discuss payment of the wall. That will be for a later date."
BIG WHIFF THERE, Donald. BIG WHIFF.
Every rally, Trump goes out and says, "We're going to build the wall." The audience roars.
And then he asks them, "Who's going to pay for the wall?" They roar back. "MEXICO."
So there he is, after a 2-hour meeting with Mexico's President, and he admits to whiffing on the wall.
President Peña Nieto's statement had some interesting moments in it as well, such as when he suggested he and Trump are in agreement that NAFTA has been wonderful for both countries, or when he complained about the flow of weapons and drugs from the United States into Mexico.
Overall, though, this was much ado about absolutely nothing. Because Trump was not an official representative of the United States, there was no American flag behind him, which looked quite odd.
It was, just as Hillary Clinton and his own advisers said, a photo op and little more.
Except for the wall. And wimping out on it. His base should be furious, but no. Here's one of his biggest supporters.
Third is I think the big thing, what we'll remember about this in a week and a month: given the opportunity, Trump didn't even discuss who would pay for his border wall let alone demand that Mexico do so. I strongly suspect that will be the big takeaway for Trump and that it will not wear will. Trump's line throughout this campaign has been that he'll tell Mexico to pay for the wall and Mexico will. In a face to face meeting with the actual Mexican President, even one as pliant as this, he was unwilling to do so.
Trump's brand is "dominance politics." He's toured the country for a year telling crowds that Mexico will pay. He'll make them. And yet, when given the opportunity to sit down with the President of Mexico, he didn't bring it up? There are words for that kind of person, just not words that are any longer acceptable today. For the moment Trump is the paradoxical beneficiary of "political correctness."
Update:
Gosh, someone must be lying.
Hillary's campaign is all over it:
Trump statement:
Update:
Now the clarification is that the Mexican President said it and Trump didn't respond, so there was "no discussion." Are we at the WHAT-EVAH! stage of this event yet?
