Donald Trump’s “very poor” performance in Monday’s presidential debate should concern foreign leaders who would have to work with him in the Oval Office, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Tuesday.
Fox has been a vocal critic of the Republican presidential nominee since earlier this year, when he made headlines for suggesting America’s Southern neighbor will never pay for Trump’s “f—king wall.” In an interview with The Washington Post, he compared the first one-on-one debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton to the Disney film “Beauty and the Beast.”
“Hillary was gracious, she looked very presidential, and he was very clumsy and poor in his presentation,” Fox said. “She really looked like a statesman, and he looked very poor.”
Fox said he and other former or current heads of state view Trump as “a danger” and a “threat to the world.”
“When he speaks about geoeconomic situations and the geopolitical situation and terrorism, he’s absolutely ignorant, and he’s only provoking us democratic leaders from around the world to reject everything he’s proposing,” he told the Post, adding that Trump is “an imperialistic gringo.”
Fox said one moment in particular — when Clinton hit Trump over comments he once made about the weight of Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe pageant winner — caught his and other Latin American leaders’ attention as they watched the debate.
“He was very aggressive and offensive to her, like he’s been with everybody,” Fox said. “I think it was great of Hillary to present that one case, but [Machado] represents many other cases of how he has spoken about women, how he has spoken about we Mexicans.”
Trump and Clinton will reconvene for the second of three presidential debates on Oct. 9 in St. Louis, while their running mates will face off next Tuesday for the first and only vice presidential debate in Farmville, Va.
