Former Mexican President Vicente Fox escalated his battle with Donald Trump, saying in an interview airing Friday that the GOP presidential hopeful is an incurable racist who is copping an “attitude about the supreme white race.”
The brash Mr. Fox, who served as Mexico’s president from 2000 to 2006, told Al Jazeera English’s “UpFront” program that he would not apologize for using profanity to insult Mr. Trump, and said it’s the billionaire businessman who should show regret.
“I see Mr. Trump as a false prophet, Mr. Fox says in the interview airing later Friday. “He is going to bring that great nation to the desert, to hunger.”
Mr. Fox has previously compared Mr. Trump to Hitler and has mocked the candidate’s vow to build a border wall. Mr. Trump responded by saying that thanks to Mr. Fox, he’s going to raise the final height of the wall.
American immigration policy is critical to Mexico, which at one point had about 10 percent of its population living in the U.S. — about half of them illegally. Mr. Fox himself has admitted he believes “in open borders,” and repeatedly tried to get the U.S. to grant them citizenship rights during his term in office, working on a deal with then-President George W. Bush.
Negotiations were derailed first by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and later by the same internal GOP politics that Mr. Trump has tapped into.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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