Sympathy was always seen in the meetings that AMLO and Trump held in the past, something very different from the body languages shown in AMLO’s meetings with Biden.
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, could be the most relevant factor in the upcoming US elections.
AMLO, as he is commonly known, has never hidden his sympathy for Donald Trump, the (almost) Republican candidate for president.
In the previous elections, amidst Trump’s accusations of electoral fraud, AMLO supported him and claimed that he had faced the same situation in his previous attempts to become Mexico’s president.
“It’s because I already experienced it; they disqualified me because they didn’t want me to appear on the ballot as a presidential candidate,” says AMLO.
Mexico was one of the last countries to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the last elections, going against the tradition of ‘good neighbors.’
“I like him,” the Mexican president has said about Trump, despite analysts and organizations criticizing the American politician’s vehement attacks on Mexican migration.
Renowned analyst Andrés Oppenheimer published a column this week identifying AMLO as the most important figure in the US election due to the relevance of the immigration issue in American politics.
“According to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll from January 22, immigration has become the main concern of American voters, surpassing inflation. And much of Biden’s efforts to curb migration will depend on López Obrador’s goodwill,” says Oppenheimer.
Arturo Sarukhan, former Mexican ambassador to Washington, summed up López Obrador’s policy towards the United States in two words: “diplomatic blackmail.”
“It is clear that López Obrador is playing with opening and closing the flow of migration through Mexican territory to the US border,” Sarukhan wrote in the Mexican newspaper El Universal. López Obrador aims for the United States to remain silent about Mexico’s elections, he added.
Sarukhan also suggested that “given López Obrador’s sympathy for Trump,” it would not be unreasonable to speculate that the Mexican president might use the migration flow to assist the former president in the US elections.
In fact, it would not surprise me if López Obrador opens the doors to illegal immigration to help Trump. The Mexican president likes Trump because he is a populist with authoritarian dreams who does not criticize the erosion of democracy or human rights violations in Mexico. (To be fair, Biden has not been a champion of democracy in Mexico either, but overall, he is much more supportive of fundamental freedoms than Trump), says Oppenheimer.
Could the Mexican president tilt the balance and help bring Donald Trump back to power?
Many warn that Biden should be prepared.
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