GUATEMALA CITY (AP) —
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador started a five-day tour to four Central American countries and Cuba on Thursday by lashing out at the U.S. government.
López Obrador criticized American officials sharply for being quick to send billions to Ukraine, while dragging their feet on development aid to Central America.
On his first stop in neighboring Guatemala, López Obrador demanded U.S. aid to stem the poverty and joblessness that sends tens of thousands of Guatemalans north to the U.S. border. The Mexican leader had been angered that the United States rebuffed his calls to help expand his tree-planting program to Central America.
“They are different things and they shouldn’t be compared categorically, but they have already approved $30 billion for the war in Ukraine, while we have been waiting since president Donald Trump, asking they donate $4 billion, and as of today, nothing, absolutely nothing,” López Obrador said.
“Honestly, it seems inexplicable,” he added. “For our part, we are going to continue to respectfully insist on the need for the United States to collaborate.”
Meanwhile, Former U.S. defense secretary Mark Esper in his new book reveals that then-president Donald Trump asked him in 2020 about launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs” and kill cartels.
In a report on Thursday, the New York Times cited Esper’s forthcoming book ‘A Sacred Oath’ to reveal many startling discussions between him and the former U.S. president.
“We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” Trump suggested, according to the book, which is expected to create a buzz in intelligentsia circles in coming months.
Trump asserted that Mexico didn’t “have control” over its own country and that “no one would know it was us,” Esper, who apparently objected to it, recounts in the book, according to the Times.
It is one of the several exchanges detailed in Esper’s book, which will be published on Tuesday.