As the dust settles from election-night upheavals, a phone call between President-elect Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stands out as a telling hint about how our southern neighbor might be dealt with over the next four years.
Sheinbaum was among the first world leaders to congratulate Trump in the days following the election.
On the surface, it appeared to be a normal call, but further revelations about the president-elect’s Nov. 7 conversation with the Mexican leader appear to hold serious weight.
“We had a very cordial call with President-elect Donald Trump in which we talked about the good relationship that there will be between Mexico and the United States,” Sheinbaum wrote in a Spanish-language post on X.
Tuvimos una llamada muy cordial con el presidente electo Donald Trump en la que hablamos de la buena relación que habrá entre México y Estados Unidos. pic.twitter.com/LZiRvkKKo3
— Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (@Claudiashein) November 7, 2024
Sheinbaum’s call may not have been as “cordial” as she claimed, however.
A Nov. 11 report from the Associated Press detailed the conversation’s critical turning point.
During the call, Sheinbaum said Trump first brought up the border and highlighted the ongoing issues there.
Should the border become Trump’s top priority?
Trump’s position on border security, and his plan to address the uncounted millions of people illegally in the United States of America, was made abundantly clear in the appointment of Tom Homan as his future “border czar.”
Homan was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the first Trump administration and he plans to get right back to work on the border.
“I’ve been on this network four years complaining about what this [Biden] administration did to this border,” Homan told Fox & Friends on Monday. “I’ve been yelling and screaming about it and telling them what they need to do to fix it. So when the president asked me, ‘Would you come back to fix it?’ Of course. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t. I’m honored the president asked me to come back and help solve this national security crisis, so I’m looking forward to it.”
Trump’s second comment to Sheinbaum hints it’s not just veteran border officers the Mexican president needs to worry about.
After talking on the border, the president-elect asked Sheinbaum to send his greetings to Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former president of Mexico.
According to the AP, Obrador is a mentor to Sheinbaum, who was elected to her first term in August. Trump’s greetings to him could mean that he sees Obrador as the real power in Mexico City.
Obrador and Trump have a good relationship, despite major political differences. As late as July, then-President Obrador called then-candidate Trump “a man of intelligence and vision.”
It’s likely Trump wouldn’t want to ignore a long-standing relationship, even if it means snubbing a foreign president to further American interests.
By all appearances, Sheinbaum has been put on notice by the incoming Trump administration.
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