Donald Trump hits back on Mexico border wall: 'It just got a lot taller'

Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Donald Trump is still smarting from former Mexican President Vicente Fox saying his country will never pay for a "f--king" wall between the U.S. and Mexico, declaring at the CNN Republican debate Thursday night that the wall "just got 10 feet taller."

Trump said he watched Fox use the "filthy, disgusting word on television," and he should apologize. Under his watch, Trump said it would cost $10 billion to $12 billion to build a 1,000-mile wall, which would be a "heck of a lot higher than the ceiling you're looking at." If one of his rivals in the presidential race built the wall, "it'll end up costing $200 billion," Trump scoffed, and the bill he would send to Mexico would cover just a "small portion of the kind of money we lose and the deficits we have with Mexico."

Marco Rubio jumped into the fray to echo comments he made earlier in the debate, telling people to Google "Donald Trump polish workers" and saying if Trump "builds the wall the way he built Trump Tower, he'll be using illegal immigrant labor to do it." Trump dismissed Rubio's comments as "a cute soundbite," but Rubio wasn't done: He went on to tell Trump he should manufacture his clothing line in the United States, and questioned his online education company, Trump University. "There are people that borrow $36,000 to go to Trump University, and they're suing him now," Rubio said. "That's a fake school. They take a picture with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump, that's what they paid $36,000 for."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.