After a testy exchange this past week over a proposed U.S. border wall, Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled plans to visit the White House, according to a report Saturday by The Washington Post.
Pena Nieto and Trump spoke Tuesday, spending a considerable amount of their nearly hourlong call on discussions of the border wall, according to sources who spoke with the Post.
During his run for president, Trump made it a campaign promise that he would have a wall built along the U.S.-Mexico border to help reduce illegal immigration. He told his enthusiastic crowds that Mexico would pay for it.
In the phone call Tuesday, however, the two men argued over that issue. Pena Nieto wanted the U.S. leader to say publicly that Mexico would not pay for the building of the wall, but Trump refused.
One Mexican official said Trump “lost his temper” during the phone call, but U.S. officials countered that he was instead “frustrated and exasperated,” the newspaper reported.
There had been plans for the Mexican leader to make an official visit to the White House in the coming weeks. A planned visit in 2017 was scrapped after the two men disagreed over the proposed wall and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
