Mexico on Monday withdrew its offer of aid to the United States to help victims of Hurricane Harvey, saying those resources are now needed at home as Mexico recovers from a separate hurricane and a devastating earthquake.
Last month, as Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston with days of record-breaking rains, Mexico issued a statement offering to send food, generators and medical aid to Texas “as good neighbors should always do in trying times.”
Mexico offered help even as President Trump was attacking the country on Twitter, calling Mexico “one of the highest crime nations in the world” and reiterating his claim that Mexico will pay for construction of a border wall between the two nations.
While Trump never responded to Mexico’s offer, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said his state would accept the country’s aid.
In a statement released Monday, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said that aid is now being redirected to care for Mexican families and communities still reeling from the recent one-two punch of natural disasters that struck the nation.
At least 95 people died in Thursday’s magnitude 8.1 earthquake, according to the Foreign Ministry, most of them in the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. While aid has arrived in many of the hardest-hit regions, where thousands of homes were reduced to rubble, local media have reported that in some places, survivors are still waiting for help.
While authorities scrambled to dig victims from rubble and provide shelter to the homeless on Mexico’s southwestern coast, a Category 1 hurricane struck Mexico’s Gulf Coast on Saturday. At least two people were killed by Hurricane Katia, which was downgraded to a tropical storm shortly after making landfall, officials said.
Trump did not offer condolences to Mexico after either disaster, as is common when tragedies befall U.S. allies, even as multiple American mayors and governors offered their sympathies and help. Nor did Trump offer U.S. aid to Mexico.
Trump’s silence as the earthquake death toll climbed was widely seen here as another sign of Trump’s cool attitude toward Mexico.
Cool attitude? He says they are sending all their criminals over the border to "drop babies" rape old ladies and shoot white girls. (And some, I'm sure are good people who clean your houses, fix your meals, mow your lawns and raise your children.) He ants to build a wall to keep the poison out of our pristine beautiful country where the people are clean and peaceful and never hurt a fly.
Yeah, he has a cool attitude.
I think former Mexican president Vicente Fox has recognized that trying to be diplomatic and decent isn't really going to help. He knows how to communicate in language Trump will understand.
We're not paying for that fucken wall:
Your whole image is as a winner, but if you keep robbing the poor to give to the rich, your tenants will take your name off your buildings, your children will take your name off your grandchildren, and you will go down as the single biggest loser your proud country has ever produced. This is a dark thought, ain’t it?
The first question to ask yourself before you start a war: Would you fight in it? Not now, obviously—you’d be useless unless we get attacked by golf balls—but back when you dodged the Vietnam draft, when bone spurs prevented you from serving your country but not serving on the tennis court. If a war you want to start today isn’t so fuckin’ righteous that a young Donald Trump would have willingly served in it, then don’t send other young people to die in it, OK?
It's sad that it's come to this but when you elect a buffoon for president somebody probably needs to get in his face. Who better than a former president of Mexico?
