I think that, when Enrique Pena Nieto invited Hillary Clinton and invited Donald Trump to meet with him here in Mexico City, it was a thought that maybe, in the future, whoever won the presidency, during that transition period, or right after, would decide to come and visit Mexico.

Jose Diaz-Balart

Categorized in : Thinking Cities Transition

I`m not sure that Enrique Pena expected Donald Trump to take him up on his offer to come to Mexico and meet with him in the short period of time that there is between now and the elections.

Jose Diaz-Balart

trump mexico election

I don`t think Enrique Pena Nieto expected [visit]. I don`t think anybody expected it to be so quick, the response [like Donald Trump].

Jose Diaz-Balart

response trump thinking

Donald Trump says, we talked about the wall, but we didn`t talk about who was going to pay for it, not in this meeting. President Pena Nieto doesn`t say or do anything.

Jose Diaz-Balart

wall president pay

There is a lot of people just shaking their heads and wondering, what was really behind this meeting [of Donald Trump and Enrique Pena] as far as from the president of Mexico.

Jose Diaz-Balart

mexico president people

I think the best explanation is that he [Enrique Pena] threw the offer out there, and just like Hillary Clinton didn`t answer it immediately, still hasn`t, he didn`t expect [Donald]Trump to do it either.

Jose Diaz-Balart

clinton answers thinking

If you closed your eyes during that [Donald Trump] conference and you didn`t pay attention to who was saying those words, it could have been Jeb Bush saying those words last year, Jeb Bush. It could have been Marco Rubio saying those words last year during the primaries, because that`s the position of, well, those two Floridians, you know, no pathway to citizenship according to Jeb Bush, pathway to citizenship in the long term, according to Marco Rubio, but talking about the need to brush up on the border.

Jose Diaz-Balart

eye talking years

As a matter of fact if you think about [Donald Trump press conference after visit to Mexico], that could have been may be one of the Gang of Eight, the bipartisan group that in the Senate some years ago passed a bill that said border security. It said thousands of new border guards to deal with the porous border. It talked about a pathway to legalization for the 11 or 12 million undocumented that live in this country.

Jose Diaz-Balart

country years thinking

A lot of the things that seem to be coming out now [in 2016] could have been written just maybe three years ago by the Gang of Eight or by Jeb Bush.

Jose Diaz-Balart

eight three years