Mexico City: Former Mexican president Vicente Fox called Donald Trump “crazy” and used the F-word to lash out against the US presidential candidate’s demand for Mexico to pay for a border wall.
“I am not going to pay for that fucking wall. He should pay for it. He’s got the money,” Fox told Fusion in an excerpt of the interview on the US television network’s website.
Trump quickly hit back on Twitter, writing: “Vicente Fox horribly used the F word when discussing the wall. He must apologize! If I did that there would be a uproar!”
Asked whether he was afraid that the front-runner for the Republican nomination could be the next US president, Fox said: “Not at all. Democracy cannot take crazy people that don’t know what’s going on in the world today.”
But Fox, who was president from 2000 to 2006, admitted that he was worried about the fact that Trump won the backing of 46 percent of Hispanics who voted in the Republican caucus in the western state of Nevada.
“I’d like to know who those hispanics are because they again, they’re followers of a false prophet,” he said.
“Please, you Hispanics, Latinos in the US, open your eyes. It’s not to defend our race. It’s not to defend our creed. It’s to defend this very same nation that is hosting you. This nation is going to fail if it goes into the hands of a crazy guy,” Fox said.
Another former Mexican president, Felipe Calderon, also lashed out at Trump’s wall idea this month.
“Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall. And it’s going to be completely useless,” Calderon, who was president from 2006-2012, told CNBC. “The first loser of such a policy would be the United States.”
Trump has angered Mexico by saying that the country was sending rapists across the border and has vowed to make the country pay for a wall if he is elected.
President Enrique Pena Nieto’s administration has called those comments “prejudiced and absurd.”
During a visit to Mexico City on Thursday, US Vice President Joe Biden told Mexican officials that the rhetoric by Republican candidates against Mexicans was “dangerous” and “disturbing” and did not reflect the views of the vast majority of Americans.
