A tentative plan for President Donald Trump to host his Mexican counterpart in Washington has been put on hold, the White House confirmed Saturday, Feb.... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this Nov. 9, 2016 file photo, Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto gives an address in response to the U.S. presidential election in Mexico City. “Even from the get-go, the idea of Mexico paying for the wall was never going to fly. “We enjoy a great relationship with Mexico and the two administrations have been working for a year to deepen our cooperation across a range of issues including security, immigration, trade and economics,” Michael Anton, the top spokesman for Trump’s National Security Council, said in a statement. But in January 2017, just days into Trump’s presidency, Peña Nieto called off a planned trip to meet Trump in Washington amid an escalating war of words between the two leaders over Trump’s border wall proposal. If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.” 
 
 Since that call, Trump has not visited Mexico City and Peña Nieto has not been to Washington, although the two presidents have spoken by phone and met in person in July at the Group of 20 summit in Germany. Trump has not visited Mexico as president, though he and Pena Nieto met in Mexico City when Trump traveled there as a candidate during the 2016 presidential campaign. McMaster and other Trump administration officials to work out the parameters for a Peña Nieto visit, officials said. Trump and Peña Nieto made plans to speak by phone Feb. 20, and, assuming the call went well, their staffs would finalize an itinerary for the Mexican president’s White House visit. Trump offered condolences after a military helicopter carrying officials assessing earthquake damage crashed in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, killing 13 people, and Pena Nieto offered condolences over last week's Florida school shooting that left 17 people dead.
– After what the Washington Post is calling a "testy" 50-minute phone call between President Trump and his Mexican counterpart, the latter will not be visiting the former as planned. The major sticking point seems to be Trump's border wall, and Enrique Peña Nieto's refusal to pay for it. The Mexican leader had planned his first trip to the States since Trump's election this month or next, but dropped his plans after Trump refused to publicly acknowledge Peña Nieto's refusal to pay for the wall. Though Peña Nieto met in Mexico with Trump as a candidate, he canceled a planned January 2017 visit over Trump's wall rhetoric, reports the AP. The Post paints the two men as opposites, with the Mexican leader "a physically slight man," who is "exceedingly formal" and fond of "carefully scripted public events." And with Mexican presidential elections looming in July, he could be looking to make sure he avoids embarrassment for the sake of his party. "The problem is that President Trump has painted himself, President Peña Nieto, and the bilateral relationship into a corner," said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the US. "The idea of Mexico paying for the wall was never going to fly. His relationship with Mexico isn’t strategically driven. It’s ... personal, driven by motivations and triggers, and that’s a huge problem. It could end up with the U.S. asking itself, ‘Who lost Mexico?' "