Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged American Hispanics not to support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ White House bid and accused him of using illegal immigrants for his campaign.
The Mexican head of state was at a news conference when he attempted to take credit for predicting the Florida Republican would run for high office.
As López Obrador referred to DeSantis’ campaign announcement, he told reporters he knew it was around the corner.
“As you can see I wasn’t wrong that all his politicking over migrants was because he wanted to be the Republican Party’s candidate,” he told reporters, according to The Hill.
It is not clear what López Obrador exactly was referring to.
DeSantis has joined other Republican governors in busing immigrants who are in the country illegally to so-called sanctuary states and cities.
The 44-year-old flew some migrants into the exclusive liberal Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard last year.
Mexico’s president said Florida Hispanics should not support DeSantis.
“Hopefully Hispanics in Florida will wake up and not give him one single vote, to not vote for those who persecute migrants, those who don’t respect migrants,” he said.
The DeSantis campaign’s Twitter account responded to his appeal by saying, “Too late.” It shared an image of an article about the governor’s strong support from Hispanic voters in the November election.
Too late. pic.twitter.com/Fg0UKnSOrt
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) May 25, 2023
López Obrador went on to say, “We have to be thinking about this regrettable phenomenon of necessary migration, used with political ends in the United States.”
The Mexican president criticized both DeSantis and Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott without using the latter’s name.
“The governor of Texas, campaigning, [saying] he will militarize the border and that he will continue building [the] wall, and the governor of Florida, the same, because he wants to be the Republican Party candidate and he’s politicking,” he said.
DeSantis told radio host Dana Loesch a day earlier he will complete the border wall that was started by former President Donald Trump if he enters the White House.
Loesch asked the governor, “Are we ever going to get a wall?”
“If I’m president, we will, because we’ll declare a national emergency on day one, we’ll mobilize the military, we’ll mobilize resources as that emergency declaration would allow us to do, and we will not take no for an answer,” DeSantis said.
WATCH: @DLoesch asks “are we ever going to [finish] the wall?”
DESANTIS: “If I’m president we will.” pic.twitter.com/pnxDK2ccne
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) May 25, 2023
The governor concluded, “But you’ve got to be willing to do that on day one.”
“You’ve got to be disciplined about it. You got to be just relentless to make sure it gets done,” he said in an apparent shot at Trump, the current front-runner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary race.
he loves the open border of course he isn’t going to support any GOP candidate that will force him to act.
When this as asshole takes Mexico back from the cartels I’ll listen. Anyone think that he doesn’t benefit from Biden’s open borders? Fuck this chimp.
I don’t care who anyone else does or doesn’t back for POTUS. I’m Trump all the way and DeSantis was elected by we Floridians to do a job that he has not completed his contract on.