President Donald Trump threatened Thursday morning to break off an upcoming meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto after Peña Nieto reiterated that his nation would not pay for Trump's border wall.
"Mexico doesn't believe in walls," Peña Nieto said Wednesday. Hours later, Trump tweeted:
"If I'm not mistaken, this is straight from the 'you can't break up with me [because] I was already breaking up with YOU' manual of [international] diplomacy," The Washington Post's Rebecca Sinderbrand quipped.
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House Speaker Paul Ryan told MSNBC on Wednesday night that "there are a lot of different ways of getting Mexico to contribute to doing this, and there are different ways to defining how exactly they pay for it," but at first, "we're going to pay for it and front the money up." When interviewer Greta Van Susteren said the estimated price tag is $8 billion to $14 billion, Ryan agreed, saying, "That's about right." Other estimates put the price as high as $25 billion for just construction.
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