This will be hard for Joe. He's going to Mexico -- along with clown advisors Blinken and Sullivan, Kamala was not invited in spite of her skin color and border expertise.
AMLO is similar to Putin: stoic, polite, nerves of steel, long memory, well informed, able to control agendas and conversations. He and his able staff have been preparing for this meeting with Biden and Trudeau/Freeland. They will be polite and likely maintain a focus on border issues along with trade but the reception already looks set up to be chilly. AMLO just informed Biden that he will need to land at an airport way outside the city which means he'll need to endure a 60 minute ride through traffic to get to the meeting. Same for Trudeau.
Mexican media reporting that President Joe Biden and Air Force One will NOT land next week at Mexico's new Felipe Ángeles Airport, rejecting AMLO's public request to do so.
— Eric Martin (@EMPosts) January 4, 2023
The reason is security concerns about the drive to the city, according to Mileniohttps://t.co/GbO79Tq4Qv
"The new airport is about 30 miles north of Mexico City’s National Palace, where the summit of North American leaders will take place, and traffic can mean the drive can take more than an hour. The more convenient Mexico City International Airport, which has serviced the capital since 1931, is about five miles from the Mexican version of the White House.
Biden will visit Mexico for his first international trip in the Western Hemisphere since taking office last year amid a record-breaking wave of illegal immigration across the border between the two countries. AMLO last year blamed Biden for inspiring the border rush, saying, “Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do so.”
NYPost | This takes air traffic control to a whole new level.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is asking President Biden to land Air Force One at a new airport farther from the center of Mexico City when he visits next month — describing it as a favor to quell domestic criticism of the project.
The unusual request sets up a potentially awkward start to the visit and would require Biden’s motorcade to add time to its commute when the president arrives Jan. 9 for talks with López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“I am taking the opportunity to tell [Biden] that out of friendship, out of diplomacy, we ask him that his plane land at the Felipe Ángeles International Airport,” the 69-year-old Mexican president, known by his initials, AMLO, said Wednesday at a press conference.
AMLO said Trudeau had already agreed to land at the more distant airport, which opened in March, and said he was presenting his request for Biden to the US Embassy, according to Mexico City’s Excélsior newspaper.
Biden previously visited Mexico as vice president in February 2016, when he brought his son Hunter with him aboard Air Force Two after hosting his Mexican business associates at the official vice presidential residence in Washington.
Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for potential crimes including tax fraud and unregistered foreign lobbying linked to an array of influence-peddling operations while his father was vice president and held sway in countries such as Mexico, China and Ukraine. House Republicans, who retake power next week, are vowing to determine Joe Biden’s role in his family’s overseas consulting work.
Joe Biden in 2015 posed for a group photo with his son and Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Alemán Velasco in DC. In 2016, Hunter Biden emailed Alemán’s son, apparently from Air Force Two en route to Mexico, complaining that he hadn’t received reciprocal business favors after “I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment