Did Donald Trump insult former foreign affairs minister Marcelo Ebrard, calling him a “stupid person” and a “low IQ individual”?
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and Ebrard himself apparently believed he did, but the former United States president and Republican Party presidential candidate appeared to be referring to current U.S. President Joe Biden.
Trump was speaking at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday when he asserted that “Mexico has taken 35% of the [U.S.] auto industry.”
“And we did something very strong with Mexico. But you know when I was building the wall I said ‘you have to give us 28,000 soldiers’ and they laughed at me. I hate when people laugh at me, I hate it,” he continued.
Trump said he told “the gentleman representing the [Mexican] president” — Ebrard in his capacity as foreign affairs minister — that the United States would charge Mexico escalating tariffs “on every car that you send into America” if it didn’t deploy troops to its northern border.
“He said, ‘I’d like to discuss this with the president.’ I said, ‘Five minutes. I’ve got to go. I have something much more important to do.’ He came back, he said, ‘Mr. President, we would love to give you soldiers to protect your wall.’ Free of charge, of course. That’s how I got those great [illegal immigration] numbers on that beautiful, beautiful graph that we talk about,” the former U.S. president said.
“They gave us everything I wanted. I got everything from Mexico,” continued Trump, who asserted in 2022 that Mexico “folded” and agreed to place troops on its northern border to stem illegal immigration to the U.S. when he threatened in 2019 to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican imports.
“And then this stupid person, low IQ, he’s a low IQ individual. Take his IQ. I guarantee you it’s in the low 50s or 60s. And he’s negotiating against Putin, President Xi of China, Macron of France.”
Although he had been speaking about Ebrard, the Republican candidate was almost certainly referring to Biden as a “low IQ individual.”
The target of his mockery became even clearer with a subsequent remark he made.
After recounting how he obtained a favorable outcome for the United States by making a tariff threat against France during a conversation with President Emmanuel Macron, Trump said:
“You think Joe Biden does that? He doesn’t know what the hell’s he doing.”
Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s remarks in a social media post.
“I regret the rude language of ex-president Trump and of course I disagree with his opinion about Marcelo Ebrard,” she wrote.
“For me he is one of Mexico’s best public servants and he will be a great economy minister for our country, which no one should forget is free and sovereign,” the president-elect added.
Ebrard, who Sheinbaum announced as her economy minister last month, also responded to what he saw as a slight against him.
“When you’re insulted during a campaign, as ex-president Trump just did [to me], there is always an electoral purpose: to gain supporters,” he wrote on X.
“I will never accept an appraisal from a candidate abroad. He doesn’t intimidate me. I will defend the interests of Mexico with complete dignity and strength,” Ebrard added.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — who Trump mistakenly said Saturday is “no longer president” — weighed in on the matter on Monday.
“I support the president-elect because she is who will represent us,” he said after a reporter at his morning press conference noted that Sheinbaum had come out in defense of Ebrard.
“… And of course I have a lot of admiration for Marcelo Ebrard as a public servant. If there was confusion [about what Trump said] it should be cleared up,” López Obrador said.
“And let it be clear that we Mexicans, with Claudia Sheinbaum [as president], are going to insist that a policy of good neighbors is maintained with the United States because it’s in our interests, not just of the [two] governments, but also of … our people, the Americans and the Mexicans. So no to confrontation and yes to dialogue, cooperation, agreement and respect for our sovereignties,” he said.
After Trump gave a fiery anti-migrant speech at the U.S. Republican National Convention last Thursday, López Obrador said he would sent a letter to his “friend Donald Trump” because he believes that “they’re not informing him well about the migration issue and also about the importance of maintaining economic integration between the United States, Mexico and Canada.”
Mexico News Daily
