The Washington Post has published two transcripts of President Donald Trump’s phone conversations with Mexican President Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The transcripts feature Trump’s phone calls to the pair of world leaders, created by White House staff. Details of the documents were revealed in the first months of the Trump administration, but this is the first time the full texts of the conversations have been published entirely.
“The documents provide an unfiltered glimpse of Trump’s approach to the diplomatic aspect of his job, subjecting even a close neighbor and long-standing ally to streams of threats and invective as if aimed at U.S. adversaries,” the Washington Post noted after publishing the transcripts.
The transcripts are considered classified, as they include sensitive information about diplomatic negotiations.
The president challenges Nieto for repeatedly asserting that Mexico would not pay for the wall, saying that he “cannot live with that” if it continued.
He also put pressure Nieto on trade and the potential of adding border tariffs for products produced in Mexico coming into the United States.
Trump also discussed the “tough hombres” in Mexico, promising that his then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary General John Kelly would help them defeat the drug lords “knocking the hell out of our country.”
The president was more frank with Turnbull, raging against a refugee deal made by the Obama administration.
“This is a stupid deal. This deal will make me look terrible,” he said, denying Turnbull’s insistence that it would look good for the United States. “This shows me to be a dope.”
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