Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Chatted On Thanksgiving, But Recall The Conversation Quite Differently

After President-elect Donald Trump shared what he called “a wonderful conversation” with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Wednesday evening, he claimed that the pair agreed “to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”

That’s not how she remembers it.

“In our conversation with President Trump, I explained to him the comprehensive strategy that Mexico has followed to address the migration phenomenon, respecting human rights,” Sheinbaum wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. “Thanks to this, migrants and caravans are assisted before they reach the border. We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples.”

Earlier on Wednesday, before Trump posted his statement on Truth Social, his social media site, Sheinbaum said they “had an excellent conversation.”

“We discussed Mexico’s strategy on the migration phenomenon, and I shared that caravans are not arriving at the northern border because they are being taken care of in Mexico,” she wrote on X. “We also discussed strengthening collaboration on security issues within the framework of our sovereignty and the campaign we are carrying out in the country to prevent the consumption of fentanyl.”

The two presidents’ call comes days after Trump announced he would impose, via an executive order on the first day of his presidency, 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada. “This Tariff,” he began, “will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”

Avocados, tequila, and beers like Modelo are some of the products that would likely see price hikes should Trump follow through.

In a letter responding to Trump’s tariff threat, Sheinbaum said her government would retaliate if he moved forward with this stated plan. “For every tariff, there will be a response in kind,” Sheinbaum wrote, according to a statement released by the Mexican Embassy Tuesday morning. “Among Mexico’s main exporters to the United States are General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor Company, which arrived in Mexico 80 years ago. Why impose a tariff that would jeopardize them? Such a measure would be unacceptable and would lead to inflation and job losses in both the United States and Mexico,” she added.

Sheinbaum also addressed Trump’s ceaseless claim, which he repeated in his tariff announcement, that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before.”

“Seventy percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country,” the Mexico president wrote. “We do not produce these weapons, nor do we consume synthetic drugs. Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours.”

According to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, “70 percent of firearms reported to have been recovered in Mexico from 2014 through 2018 and submitted for tracing were U.S. sourced.” ATF noted that this number may not include all recovered firearms across the country, including some recovered by Mexican states.

Sheinbaum, who was sworn in as Mexico’s first female president in October, has promised to protect an expanded social safety net, continue a deepening militarization of domestic security, and further other policies put in place by her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

In April of this year, while President Joe Biden was still running for reelection, Sheinbaum told Bloomberg, “I think it will be good whether President Biden or President Trump wins,” noting, “We have very strong economic integration with the United States. We are now the principal trading partner, and that requires us to have a good relationship.”

“Now,” she also said, “I think that, obviously, we are always going to defend Mexicans abroad. We are not in favor of any discriminatory discourse, but there is going to be a good relationship.”

When Trump won, Sheinbaum reassured her country that “there’s nothing to worry about.” “We are a free, independent, sovereign country and there will be good relations with the United States. I am convinced of this,” she said.

Their conversation on Thanksgiving, along with Sheinbaum’s letter from earlier this week, represents some of the first official communications between the neighboring leaders after Trump ran, in large part, on decrying immigration. In the president-elect’s closing speech, the day before the election, Trump referred to the US as an “occupied country” and promised to “rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered.”

In the past year alone, he’s said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and has labeled the group “animals” (then defended his remarks, saying, “I’ll use the word animal because that’s what they are”), and claimed, without evidence, that Vice President Kamala Harris “has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world.”

Historians of violent rhetoric have sounded alarms about how Trump talks about immigrant communities.

“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism, told Politico in October.

“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued, adding, “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”