Mexican officials lobbed insults back at billionaire presidential candidate Donald Trump, after he said during his campaign announcement that the America’s southern neighbor wasn’t sending the US their best, but rather drug dealers and rapists.
Mexico’s interior minister said Trump was seeking to
“generate controversy” when he referred to Mexicans as
rapists and drug dealers.
“The remarks by Donald Trump seem prejudicial and
absurd,” interior minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong
told reporters at an anti-discrimination
event in Mexico City.
“He surely doesn’t know the contributions made by migrants
from practically every nation in the world, who have supported
the development of the United States.”
Mexican Foreign Secretary Jose Antonio Meade also called Trump
ignorant and prejudiced.
Trump has “a profound ignorance of the reality in Mexico and
the migrant contribution to [US] society,” Meade said.
Trump’s comments “reflect prejudices … a politician that does
not know reality does not have good prospects.”
Speaking from Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday against a
backdrop of rocking guitar music, the property tycoon announced
his candidacy, insulted his opponents, said America didn’t have
victories anymore, and launched a tirade against Mexico.
“They are not our friends, believe me…When Mexico sends its
people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said.
“They’re sending people that have lots of problems. And
they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs.
They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Donald Trump Presidential Announcement Full Speech, insults about Mexico begins 07:26
He also promised to build a huge wall spanning the 2,000-mile
US-Mexico border to keep the migrants out.
“I will build a great, great wall on our southern
border,” Trump said in his speech, “and I will have
Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
Afterwards, the largest Latino organization in the United States
said Trump “is an exceedingly silly man, who has no idea what
he’s talking about.”
“This is a man who has a pathological need for
attention,” Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for the National
Council of La Raza, told the Guardian. “I look at him as a
two-year-old who will say a naughty word to get their parents’
attention.”
Those on social media couldn’t resist another chance to parody the presidential candidate, whose flop of hair became a Twitter sensation when it was first hinted that he would announce his candidacy.
READ MORE: Trump trumped by Twitter trolls
The website El Deforma, the Mexican answer to The
Onion, according to the Global Post, ran a cartoon titled
“Jurassic Trump,” showing the billionaire with a whale’s body,
trying to eat a little Mexican fish.
More than 11 million Mexican citizens live in the US, along with
millions of other Americans with Mexican roots. Latinos are the
US’ largest ethnic group, according to the US Census Bureau, with
54 million who identify as Latino.
Mexico is also the US’ second-largest trading partner after
Canada. In 2014, the US exported $240 billion worth of goods to
Mexico and imported $294 billion from it, according to government
data.