Mexico leader: We won’t pay for wall. Trump: Yes you will

DONALD TRUMP today vowed that Mexico will pay for a giant wall along its border with the United States — just hours after the country’s president insisted they would not foot the bill.

After their meeting in Mexico City yesterday, Mr Trump and President Enrique Peña Nieto appeared to part with very different views on how the talks on immigration had gone.

“We will build a great wall along the southern border. And Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent,” the Republican White House hopeful told a rally later in Phoenix, Arizona.

“They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.”

He described the wall as “impenetrable, tall, powerful, beautiful”, and said it would include high-tech sensors to sniff out tunnels.

But the Mexican president gave a very different version of events.

“At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” he tweeted soon after their private meeting and joint press conference.

Mr Peña Nieto had initially put a diplomatic slant on the meeting, hailing it as “open and constructive”.

And, while still in Mexico at least, Mr Trump appeared conciliatory, saying: “We discussed the wall. We didn’t discuss who pays for the wall. That’ll be for a later date.” He even referred to the Mexican leader as his friend and a “wonderful president”.

But as soon as he was back in the US, he took up his hardline stance again.

“They’re great people, great leaders, but they’re going to pay for the wall,” he told cheering supporters. “Mexico will work with us. I really believe it.

Meanwhile, the Mexican president angrily tried to defend himself from criticism for his decision to invite Mr Trump despite the billionaire property tycoon’s repeated attacks over immigration. “His polic y stances could represent a huge threat to Mexico, and I am not prepared to keep my arms crossed and do nothing,” Mr Peña Nieto said in an interview.

“That risk, that threat, must be confronted. I told him that is not the way to build a mutually beneficial relationship for both nations.”

After the two men emerged from their private discussions yesterday afternoon, Mr Trump described it as “a very substantive, direct and constructive exchange of ideas”.

He said that the pair discussed “five shared goals”, and that number one was ending illegal immigration.

There had been speculation that the Republican candidate would ease up on his plan to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. He gave mixed signals on the issue during his speech in Phoenix last night but later insisted: “Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation.”

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta said the Mexican president’s denial of Mr Trump’s claims over the wall had left egg on the mogul’s face. “It turns out Trump didn’t just choke, he got beat in the room and lied about it,” Mr Podesta said.