There’s an old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. After Tuesdays primary results establishing Donald Trump as the Republican nominee, former Mexican president Vincente Fox recognized he had dug himself a deep one. In commenting on Trump’s building a wall on our southern border and getting Mexico to pay for, Fox had stated in a news interview that Mexico wasn’t going to pay for the “f—king wall.”
In response, Trump noted the progress that the statement evidenced. The former position, Trump noted, was that there would be no wall, and the latter position put it 50% closer.
But Trump also did something else; he lambasted the press for underreporting Fox’s comments, and he used himself as an example of what they would do if he used the same vulgarity. Not as a nation’s leader, but only as a candidate.
And he kept the pressure on at campaign rallies. And he got very serious, too.
In 2015, for the first time in their history, remittances—the money Mexicans send back to Mexico—was a larger source of national income than the entire petroleum revenue; $24.8 to $23.4 billion. Trump began floating the idea of blocking or putting a fee or tax on those remittances, and that is what almost certainly got Fox’s attention.
Can you imagine the heat Fox would take if that revenue spigot turned off with his name on it?
So on Wednesday, Fox traveled to Santa Monica, California and apologized to Trump, and he got religion too! Admitting that he had called Trump “ignorant,” “crazy,” “egocentric, “nasty,” and a “false prophet,” his retraction went:
I apologize. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader. You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor. (link)
Only time will tell if Fox is a genuine convert, but one thing is for sure: Fox recognized he was in a Foxhole.
Oh, and for the record, it’s “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mat 22:39).
