(KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP)
Social media critics collectively laughed at Donald Trump on Wednesday night after the president-elect appeared to get a brutal fact-check from the president of Mexico.
Trump bragged earlier in the day that Mexico agreed to help him close the U.S.-Mexico border following his threats to levy a significant tariff on the country.
“Just had a wonderful conversation with the new President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday night. “She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
In a separate follow-up post, he repeated that “Mexico will stop people from going to our Southern Border, effective immediately.”
“THIS WILL GO A LONG WAY TOWARD STOPPING THE ILLEGAL INVASION OF THE USA. Thank you!!!” posted Trump.
Sheinbaum Pardo refuted Trump’s claim on X, however, insisting she explained Mexico’s comprehensive strategy to address illegal immigration while respecting human rights.
“Thanks to this, migrants and caravans are assisted before they reach the border,” she said. “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples.”
Critics of the president-elect seized on Sheinbaum Pardo’s clapback.
“Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL,” Mike Nellis, a former senior adviser to Kamala Harris, wrote on Bluesky.
Political commentator and MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen jabbed: “Trump: Mexico is ‘effectively closing our southern border.’ Mexico: ‘no plan to close border.'”
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” joked Sam Stein, a journalist for The Bulwark and MSNBC.
“So Mexico agrees to do the thing it’s already been doing, and Trump claims victory. Sounds about right,” quipped Catherine Rampell, an economics columnist for The Washington Post.
Rampell added that Mexico has invested “huge resources” in the last year to prevent migrants from reaching the border. This includes military patrols, highway checkpoints, and busing migrants en masse from the northern part of the country to the south.
“Key reason why illegal border crossings into US are [down] 75%,” she said.
Rampell slammed Republican “talking points” about the border crisis as “woefully out of date.”
As I’ve been saying for months: GOP talking points on the border are woefully out of date. Crossings are way down And having a president with (ahem) good diplomatic relationships has been key to that decline. img.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202…
[image or embed]
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) November 27, 2024 at 8:33 PM
