Donald Trump’s high-risk, low-reward trip to Mexico is sort of baffling
By Philip Bump August 31 at 8:58 AM
washingtonpost.com
It is barely worth pointing out that Donald Trump's surprise visit to Mexico on Wednesday won't do President Enrique Peña Nieto much good. Peña Nieto is deeply unpopular in his home country, with a quarterly survey from the newspaper Reforma putting his favorability at 23 percent — a figure so low that it makes Trump himself, at 35 percent, seems positively embraced.That 35 percent is in the United States, of course. In Mexico, Trump's a lot less popular. A June survey showed Trump at 75 percent unfavorability in the country — compared with Hillary Clinton's 6 percent. When Ipsos asked people around the world in June who they'd pick in the American presidential contest, no country saw a wider gap than Mexico. Mexico preferred Clinton to Trump by an 88-to-1 margin — an 87-point spread. (The only countries that preferred Trump were China and Russia.) The next-closest countries were Belgium and Sweden, where Clinton was preferred by 66 points. There's a correlation between Trump's poll numbers and the Mexican economy: When he does better, the value of the peso has dropped.
Less than 12 hours after the news of Trump's visit broke, other Mexican politicians had already weighed in to oppose welcoming Trump to the country. Politico collected some examples. "We are threatened with war and walls, but we open the National Palace," the president of the Mexican Senate wrote, adding that the invitation approved of Trump's "proposal of demagogy and hate." A former diplomat tweeted, "I feel embarrassed as a Mexican thanks to my president." On CNN on Wednesday morning, former president Vicente Fox (who has been outspoken about Trump) disparaged Peña Nieto's decision
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