MEXICO CITY – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday defended former U.S. President Donald Trump in the face of the formal accusation he could face for allegedly paying women who claimed to have had sexual relations with the politician to buy their silence.
During his morning conference López Obrador attributed to a political maneuver the process against Trump, the main aspirant to the Republican presidential candidacy in 2024, and said that the possible accusation is “so that he does not appear on the ballot”.
The ruler recalled that he also faced in the past the “fabrication of a crime because they did not want me to be a candidate.”
“That is completely undemocratic because the people are not allowed to decide,” he added.
Last weekend Trump announced that his arrest was imminent and issued a call to his supporters to protest at a time when a grand jury in New York is investigating alleged payments made to women who claim to have had sexual encounters with the former president to buy their silence.
After a series of provocative statements on the fentanyl crisis, López Obrador on Tuesday returned to criticize the actions of U.S. authorities in this matter and asked “why is it allowed in the United States that a cartel or several cartels operate in that country freely distributing fentanyl, which does so much harm to young people?
In recent days, the Mexican president has questioned the U.S. anti-drug policy, assuring that it has failed and even proposed that both countries ban the use of fentanyl in medical treatments, despite the fact that the product that arrives from health centers to the illegal market is very scarce.
Criticism arose after calls from the United States to declare Mexican cartels terrorist organizations, a proposal that has infuriated López Obrador.
The Mexican president also reacted against the State Department’s annual report on human rights in the world, which mentions the accusations against members of the Mexican army, municipal police and government officials accused of rights violations and warns about impunity and low prosecution rates.
López Obrador called the State Department authorities “liars” and said that “they believe themselves to be the government of the world, they assume themselves to be the government of the world and they only see the speck in someone else’s eye and not the log in their own”.
Aside from the issue that grips Donald Trump, the presence in Mexico of John Kerry, Washington’s envoy for climate affairs, served as a sign of the gestures of closeness between the two countries. Distanced from the frictions that have arisen in recent days between the United States and Mexico, Kerry on Tuesday, during a visit to the southern state of Oaxaca, praised the leadership of López Obrador.
Through a translator, he said it was “clear to him that he understands the extent to which our futures are now united.”
“The United States (and) Mexico forever,” the special envoy said in Spanish, recalling President Joe Biden’s stance towards his neighbor.
López Obrador acknowledged Biden’s friendship with Mexico and thanked Kerry for his participation in the celebration of the birthday of former Mexican President Benito Juárez. He recalled that the relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and Juarez is an example that “cooperation and communion of principles and purposes can and should go beyond cultural and political divergences, economic differences and historical grievances.
Kerry’s visit to Oaxaca generated uneasiness among some of those present. In the middle of the official act, it was heard that someone shouted “Yankees go home” shortly before the special envoy took the floor.