President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed today had ample coverage of his meeting July 8 with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), especially featuring a video clip of what the Mexican head of state said as part of his prepared remarks in the Rose Garden: “I’m here to express to the people of the United States that their President has behaved with us with kindness and respect. You have treated us just as what we are: a country and a dignified people; a free, democratic, and sovereign people. Long live the friendship of our two nations.”
It is highly unusual for a Mexican President to address the American people directly about their sitting President, all the more so in the middle of a heated election campaign — a point not lost on the Biden campaign and its Establishment sponsors.
This, like all of the major features of the meeting, had clearly been agreed to and carefully prepared in advance. On July 7, the day before the summit, an unnamed White House official told a small group of reporters the following, as reported by EFE, the Spanish news agency:
“President Donald Trump wants to ‘imitate’ with his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the good relationship that the former presidents Abraham Lincoln and Benito Juárez had, and that’s why he has prepared a meeting as close as possible to a state visit in times of a pandemic. That is what was stated by a high-level U.S. official, who requested anonymity, in reporting on what is expected out of the first meeting between Trump and López Obrador, which is scheduled for this Wednesday at the White House.
