Former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Donald Trump: 'I'm not going to pay for that f------ wall'

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Donald Trump: ‘I’m not going to pay for that f------ wall’

Feb. 25, 2016 6:38 PM PT

The former president of Mexico Vicente Fox has a blunt rebuttal to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plans to build an enormous wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I’m not going to pay for that f------ wall,” Fox said in an interview with Univision’s “Al Punto” set to air Sunday, in which he called Trump a “crazy guy” who resembled neither Republican nor Democrat. “He’s just himself. He’s egocentric.”

“He should pay for it. He’s got the money.”

Trump took notice of the rebuke and gave his own response on Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

“He must apologize!” he declared.

Trump went even further when Fox’s remarks came up during Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate. “The wall just got 10 feet taller!” Trump said.

Mexico’s current officeholders have been more tempered on Trump’s grand claims, while still dismissing them.

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President Enrique Peña Nieto has said Trump’s comments about Mexico were “very unfortunate,” but added, “I don’t want to contribute to or make the fat broth for someone who is just vying to become a candidate,” according to the Atlantic.

“He knows very well that what he is saying is false,” Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Miguel Basanez, said during a confirmation hearing before the Mexican Senate in August. “He knows very well he will apologize to Mexicans.”

But Fox’s successor, Felipe Calderon, who is also out of office, was similarly emphatic on the subject last week.

“Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall!” Calderon told CNBC on Feb. 8. calling Trump a “not very well-informed man.”

“The first loser of such a policy would be the United States,” Calderon said. “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.”

In Fox’s interview with Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, Fox said “I’d like to know” who the Latinos were who voted for Trump in the Nevada caucuses.

“They’re followers of a false prophet and he’s going to take them to the desert,” Fox said of Latinos who voted for Trump. “And if they think that they will benefit with an administration led by Donald Trump, they’re wrong. They must open their eyes.... This nation is going to fail if it goes into the hands of a crazy guy.”

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Matt Pearce

Matt Pearce was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times from 2012 to 2024. He previously covered the covering internet culture and podcasting, the 2020 presidential election and spent six years on The Times’ national desk, where he wrote stories about violence, disasters, social movements and civil liberties. Pearce was one of the first national reporters to arrive in Ferguson, Mo., during the uprising in 2014, and he chased Hurricane Harvey across Texas as the storm ravaged the Lone Star State in 2017. A University of Missouri graduate, he hails from a small town outside Kansas City, Mo.

Alexandra Zavis

Alexandra Zavis is a former writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times’ Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. After joining The Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME’s International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Donald Trump: ‘I’m not going to pay for that f------ wall’

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