Mexico City, Feb 27 (AP) Mexicans have backed former President Vicente Fox in his verbal spat with Donald Trump after Fox called the Republican front-runner "crazy" and a "false prophet" and Trump replied that he ought to be "ashamed of himself" for using a profanity.
In the streets of the capital, newspapers and social media, locals yesterday sided with the usually unpopular ex-leader over Trump, who is probably viewed even more negatively by Mexicans for campaign rhetoric denigrating immigrants as "rapists" who bring crime and drugs to the United States.
Folks also largely shrugged off Fox's use of an F-bomb in an interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos to emphasize that he has no intention of paying for Trump's border-wall plans.
"The vulgarity came from Vicente Fox's soul. Never better said. Never better targeted," columnist Francisco Garfias wrote for Excelsior.
"The sad thing, paraphrasing the late Umberto Eco, is that there are 'legions of idiots' who believe" Trump's assertions that he can force Mexico to pay for the wall, Garfias continued. "I'm not exaggerating when I say Trump is an embarrassment to his country."
Mexican media treated US Vice President Joe Biden's apologies for inflammatory presidential campaign rhetoric about Mexico during a visit to the country as the day's biggest story, but the Trump-Fox spat got second billing.
One cartoon in La Jornada showed a grotesque-faced Trump waving a newspaper with Fox's comments and saying, "I demand respect ... Only I can use bad manners and bad words!"
Fox, a conservative cowboy type with warm ties to President George W. Bush, ended seven decades of uninterrupted rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party with his 2000 election as president. But Fox never regained the popularity with which he began his term, partly because he failed to conquer corruption and violence and was prone to verbal gaffes and family controversies.
Like Trump, Fox is famous for his outsider image, brash style and in-your-face language. He's also no stranger to high-profile spats. Once, after leaving office, Fox called Venezuela's then-President Hugo Chavez a "burro" (years earlier Chavez had accused Fox of being a "lapdog of the empire").
That history wasn't lost on some Mexicans, like Jesus Pinon, a resident of the northern state of Chihuahua.
"Vicente Fox says Donald Trump is a loudmouth, liar, ignorant and arrogant. Typical case of the donkey who talks about (someone else's) ears," Pinon, who uses the handle @JepsMeine, said via Twitter.
