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Mexico City: Donald Trump arrived in Mexico on a surprise visit to meet with the president of a nation he derided at the start of his White House campaign as a source of rapists and criminals coming to the US.
Trump said he and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto discussed Trump's proposal for a border wall between the countries but not the New York businessman's demand that Mexico pay for it.
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Trump and Pena Nieto emerged from about an hour of talks at the presidential palace in Mexico City to deliver statements to the news media and take questions.
"We did discuss the wall, we didn't discuss payment of the wall, that will be at a later date, this was a very preliminary meeting, it was an excellent meeting," Trump said.
Pena Nieto, in his statement, said the border must be seen as an asset for the region. He said undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States had dropped considerably since reaching a peak a decade ago.
The trip, a politically risky move 10 weeks before Election Day, put Trump in a country where he's widely despised alongside a foreign leader who has compared him to Adolf Hitler.
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It also came hours before the Republican presidential nominee delivers a highly anticipated speech in Arizona about illegal immigration, a defining issue of Trump's presidential campaign, but also one on which he's appeared to waver in recent days.
Mexicans awakened on Wednesday morning to the news that the man who labelled them drug traffickers and rapists - as a political platform - was en route to their capital to meet the country's president found a moment of national unity in the question: "Are you completely serious?"
Looking presidential: Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto and Donald Trump shake hands. Photo: AP
After a year's worth of Donald Trump's invective - wall, criminals, etc. - his surprise meeting with Nieto left the country bewildered. This was the US presidential candidate who suggested players at a professional golfing tournament that had moved to Mexico City from one of Trump's courses might need "kidnapping insurance."
"Mexico doesn't want Donald Trump. Mexico never trusted him. We won't let him use our country for his own interests," former Mexican President Vicente Fox said on his Twitter account before the meeting.
"There's no turning back Trump. Your insults against Mexicans and Muslims and others have led you to being in the hole that you're in today. Goodbye Trump."
Pena Nieto's political opponents didn't pass up the opportunity for condemnation. The president made a "grave political mistake by letting himself be used to serve the electoral interests of Donald Trump," Miguel Barbosa, senate leader for the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, wrote on Twitter.
Alicia Lopez Fernandez paints a pinata depicting Donald Trump at her family's store "Pinatas Mena Banbolinos" in Mexico City in 2015. Photo: MARCO UGARTE
Margarita Zavala, wife of former President Felipe Calderon, who has said she'd seek the presidential nomination for the National Action Party in 2018, wrote that while he was invited, Trump should know "he isn't welcome."