Pena Nieto said. “My position has been and will continue to be very firm saying that Mexico cannot pay for that wall." Trump responded, “But you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances.” He went on, “But the fact is we are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall – I have to.” He suggested that both he and Pena Nieto publicly say they're still determining who will pay for the wall. He then threatened, "If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that."
Translation: "Listen, Pedro, I said a lot of very stupid things during the campaign, but play along with me so that I don't look dumb."
The idea that Mr Pena-Nieto owes Trump any favors after all the crap Trump said about Mexicans during the past 2 years is laughable. So Trump-like.
Trump, master deal negotiator.
"I'm gonna tear up NAFTA! ... ... well, maybe I won't tear it up if you guys make bigly bigly concessions."
The Trumpcare negotiations were especially masterful. I liked the part where he said he'd punish Alaska if Lisa Murkowski voted against the bill in the senate. Murkowski just won reelection for 6 more years. The election before, the Tea Party Republicans "primaried" Murkowski and she still won the senate seat... as a write-in candidate. That's crazy! Trump will be in jail before Murkowski has to run for election again. I doubt she's scared of him. Trump mocked Obama for not being able to "make bigly bigly deals" to get bills through the House of Representatives and the Senate. Trump has a majority in both and he can't get bigly bigly deals done either. At least Obama got his healthcare bill through the House and the Senate when the Democrats had both.
And now these new transcripts... hanging up on the PM of Australia, pleading with the President of Mexico to play along... threatening to stop taking his calls if he doesn't play along... it's SAD and PATHETIC. And also hilarious.
I assume he also has other tremendous high-energy negotiating tools in his arsenal, like threatening to block people on Twitter or Unfriend them on Facebook.
The one negotiating tool he has that we know works is to threaten to declare bankruptcy to strong-arm contractors into accepting partial payment for work they did on his shitty projects. Except everybody knows the US isn't going to declare bankruptcy to welsh on its debts so that's not going to be a super-strong tactic in the international arena.
But the real comedy from the leaked transcripts was his comments to Malcolm Turnbull that the refugees are bad people and they're in prison and that they're not going to get jobs and work for the "local milk people". Senile.
This guy is such a joke.
-k