Former Mexican president Vicente Fox made some headlines on Thursday for his colorful comments about Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall on the Mexican border and “make Mexico pay for it.” But perhaps more interesting was some of his other comments about Trump, who he said would cause the United States to “fail” as a country if he were elected president.
The attention-grabbing part of his interview with Fusion news host Jorge Ramos was his choice of obscenity when asked about Trump’s wall.
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“I declare, I am not going to pay for that f***ing wall,” he told Ramos. “He should pay for it. He’s got the money.”
But Fox spoke about more than just Trump’s wall plan. A transformational figure in Mexican politics, Fox entered politics after a career in business, which ended with him running all of Coca-Cola’s operations in Latin America. He was the first leader in the country’s history to take over from a political rival without violence or other disruption, and his election in 2000 marked a rightward shift in the country’s politics.
Fox was on friendly terms with U.S. president George W. Bush and continues to be a high profile figure in his home country and internationally.
Asked by Ramos if he fears a Trump presidency, he first said: “Not at all. Democracy cannot take crazy people that [don’t] know what’s going on in the world today.”
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Fox didn’t bother to disguise his disdain for the brash billionaire currently leading the GOP race. “What is Trump? He’s not a Republican,” Fox said. “Absolutely not. Those are not Republican principles. He is not a Democrat. He is just himself. He’s egocentric.”
What did seem to surprise him was that 44 percent of the Hispanics in Nevada who voted in the GOP caucus cast their ballots for Trump.
“I’d like to know who those Hispanics are, because they are followers of a false prophet, and he’s going to take them to the desert,” Fox said. “And if they think that they would benefit from an administration led by Don Trump, they’re wrong. They must open their eyes. Please, Hispanics, Latin in the U.S., 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.”
