The Associated Press reports that Donald Trump “threatened in a phone call with his Mexican counterpart to send U.S. troops to stop ‘bad hombres down there’ unless the Mexican military does more to control them itself.”
The excerpt of the call did not make clear who exactly Trump considered “bad hombres,” — drug cartels, immigrants, or both — or the tone and context of the remark, made in a Friday morning phone call between the leaders. It also did not contain Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s response.
…
“You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,” Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt seen by the AP. “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”
A person with access to the official transcript of the phone call provided an excerpt to The Associated Press. The person gave it on condition of anonymity because the administration did not make the details of the call public.
Andrew Beatty reports that the White House denies it.
The White House tells me POTUS did not threaten to invade Mexico. https://t.co/93Np22bgUm
— Andrew Beatty (@AndrewBeatty) February 1, 2017
Every day is another alarm joining the cacophony, with no way to tell which is real and which is just noise.
Update: CNN reports that it has been provided with a transcript that differs with the “readout” provided to the AP, which “wrongly suggested Trump was contemplating sending troops to the border in a hostile way.”
According to an excerpt of the transcript of the call with Peña Nieto provided to CNN, Trump said, “You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with. We are willing to help with that big-league, but they have be knocked out and you have not done a good job knocking them out.”
Trump made an offer to help Peña Nieto with the drug cartels.The excerpt of the transcript obtained by CNN differs with an official internal readout of the call that wrongly suggested Trump was contemplating sending troops to the border in a hostile way.
The Associated Press report said Trump threatened to send US troops to stop criminals in Mexico unless the government did more to control them, but both the US and Mexican governments denied details from the story.
Sources described the AP’s reporting as being based upon a readout — written by aides — not a transcript.