(IntegrityPress.org) – Donald Trump, who looks set to face Joe Biden once more in the November 2024 presidential elections, claimed that Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has shown a “lack of respect” for Biden and his administration by requesting money from the US to tackle the US-Mexico border crisis. The U.S. has seen more than 10 million illegal immigrants entering the south of the US since Biden took office, a record high for the nation.
Speaking on Fox News about Obrador’s recent demands made of the White House, Trump was adamant that not only would he refuse to concede such requests, Obrador would not have dared make them in the first place. Mexico’s left-leaning president used his recent interview on CBS News to publicly reiterate the demands he made of Biden in January, which include the US sending various Caribbean and Latin American countries $20 billion in aid on a yearly basis and the lifting of sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba. Both of these are socialist countries currently suffering with hyperinflation and food shortages.
Obrador also insisted that the US administration should automatically grant citizenship to all Mexicans living illegally in the US. Obrador said that unless his demands were met, he would do nothing to help stop the high volume of migrants travelling through his country in order to cross the border with the US.
Trump responded with incredulity to such demands, adding that Obrador had asked for $10 billion “just to talk”. Trump was firm in his disapproval of Obrador’s demands, saying that the Mexican leader would not receive any kind of payout from a Trump administration.
Trump’s interlocutor Brian Kilmeade likened Obrador’s stance to an attempt to dictate American policy, while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La), ridiculed it and accused him of “coddling cartels” and ignoring a humanitarian disaster on his doorstep. He added that President Biden ought to use all leverage available to force Obrador’s hand in the issue, rather than relying on “empty rhetoric”. Biden has positioned himself in opposition to much of Trump’s former administration and has repealed dozens of Trump’s executive orders relating to border control since assuming office.
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