The Duke Visits Mexico

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Sept 2016

Donald Trump visited Mexico yesterday and met the Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto.  At the press conference afterwards, Trump towered over Mr. Nieto like Duke Wayne in one of his classic westerns.

The president of Mexico offered to meet with both presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and Trump accepted immediately.  He was in Mexico within forty-eight hours of the invitation.  By all accounts, Trump was taking a big risk.  No preparations had been made, and if he looked unsteady at the meeting or at the press conference, then Hillary’s charge that Trump can’t represent the United States abroad would be established.

By all accounts, Trump pulled it off big time.  He looked decidedly presidential, he was diplomatic, the meeting was cordial, and he dominated the press conference afterwards both by his stature and his command presence.  Hillary’s campaign, a rudderless, powerless derelict adrift on the winds and tides, just took a torpedo beneath the water-line.

Trump critic Charles Krauthammer was impressed:

“He took a risk, and he pulled it off.  Look, the big negative about Trump, the thing that the Clinton campaign plays on, is the fact that it's hard to imagine him as president,” Krauthammer said, adding, “Now, here he is standing on the world stage with a world leader. This is a big step.”

Krauthammer went on to say that Trump took control of the joint appearance and “spoke well.”

“He not only held his own, I think, in some ways, he sort of dominated… At the very end when they took questions, it was Trump who took charge,” Krauthammer said. “He's sitting in the palace of the president of Mexico. This never happens. Normally, it's the host who picks the journalist. Trump took charge naturally, walked off the stage as the dominant guy.”

He added that Trump’s behavior in Mexico could pay dividends for the candidate.

“I think he really helped himself,” he said.  (courtesy of Fox News.)

The folks at National Review, the geometric center of the #neverTrump movement were likewise impressed.  This from Rich Lowry,

“I can’t imagine that Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto intended to give Donald Trump his best political moment since the GOP convention, but that’s what he did. That Peña Nieto reportedly said that Mexico won’t pay for the border wall in their private meeting and diplomatically dissented from Trump on other matters in public don’t compare to the priceless platform he gave Trump to look presidential on the international stage, and in Mexico no less. The trip carried risks for Trump–Peña Nieto easily could have embarrassed him–but it paid off.”

Hillary’s attempt at damage control sounded like this:

“It’s more than a photo-op.  It takes consistency and reliability. Actually, it’s just like building personal relationships: People have to get to know that they can count on you, that you won’t say one thing one day and something totally different the next,...And it certainly takes more than trying to make up for a year of insults and insinuations by dropping in on our neighbors for a few hours and then flying home again. That is not how it works. American leadership means leading with our values, in pursuance of our interests in protection of our security.”

In her “Alt-Right” speech Hillary said, “The last thing we need in the situation room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference — or doesn’t care to — between fact and fiction. And who buys so easily into racially tinged rumors.  Someone so detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come. And that is yet another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States.”

Hillary also claimed that Trump simply didn’t “understand” America’s place in the world.

Comparing these words with the actual facts, one is forced to choose between what Hillary says and your lying eyes.  Given Hillary’s growing reputation about truth-telling, these words look like another Clinton lie.

Trump’s trip to Mexico shows how nimble his campaign is.  Hillary has yet to accept the invitation, and the odds are that she won’t, except as an act of desperation.  Hillary cannot face the press, and a press conference is the usual way a diplomatic event finishes.

Hillary’s attempt to portray Trump as unable to handle American diplomatic affairs just got blown sky-high.  The business of Trump being temperamentally unfit to be president was demonstrated yesterday to be manifestly false.

Suddenly, the reasons to fear a Trump presidency evaporated.

Having a Duke Wayne in charge of America may not be such a bad idea after all.

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