SANTA MONICA, California — Former Mexican president Vicente Fox warned Wednesday that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump could revive anti-Americanism around the world, causing the U.S. to be viewed as “that hated gringo.”
“This nation needs to keep leading the world, needs to keep showing the way like it has always done,” he added. “Nobody wants back the ‘ugly American.'” He added that the U.S. had been seen as “that hated gringo” in the 1950s and 1960s, and “we don’t want that.”
“We need now to share prosperity to work together,” Fox said.
Fox apologized during the interview for harsh rhetoric he had used earlier this year, and invited Trump to visit Mexico to see the border from the other side. However, he continued to criticize Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and he remained critical of Trump’s foreign policy.
“To say that he’s going to make this nation great again, how great does he want it? This is the great, powerful nation of the world,” Fox told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview on Wednesday.
“It is the leading nation and it’s protecting its interests by participating with NATO by participating … to go and defeat ISIS. United States by itself, they’ll never defeat ISIS,” he said.
“United States [would say,] ‘You solve it, you’re Europe. You solve it, you’re Russia. You solve it, I’m going to stay at home with my [comfortable] wall and I don’t want trouble out there,” Fox said, mocking Trump’s proposed border wall.
Fox was visiting the U.S. to deliver remarks at the Milken Institute‘s annual conference, focusing on his philosophy of “compassionate leadership,” which he said that Trump, and the U.S., should exemplify.
At the moment, he said, he supported Hillary Clinton for president, but hoped to convince Trump to change his rhetoric and policies.
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