complicate the united states relationship with mexico. clearly president trump trying to start off on taking a very strong stance. remember, he has also said he wants to renegotiate nafta. the question becomes how does he renegotiate that trade deal with mexico when there is currently this rift between them and how will mexico respond to this 20% tax. a lot of unanswered questions. bottom line, though, this is roiling one of the united states relationships with one of its most important allies. talk us through a little bit more about how exactly this played out, the canceling of the meeting. donald trump was threatening on twitter earlier in the day saying, if you don t want to pay for the wall, don t come to the meeting. the mexican president said, okay, i m not coming to the meeting. the white house says this is a mutual thing. some people who have been studying trump have said you should view most of his actions through the lens of negotiation.
strong retort to this border wall, which they see as so offensive. that s why you have the president of mexico threatening to cancel the meeting last night and then president trump with the tweets today saying, well, maybe it is better if we cancel the meeting, and then ultimately we have this cancelation. take a listen to what president trump had to say about it earlier today. the president of mexico and myself have agreed to cancel our planned meeting scheduled for next week. unless mexico is going to treat the united states fairly, with respect, such a meeting would be fruitless, and i want to go a different route. reporter: president trump trying to cast this as a mutual agreement, but the president of mexico said it was all his idea. sean spicer was pressed on this and said, no, it is mutual. bottom line is they re saying the lines of communication are still open. by the way, dhs secretary kelly
that is simply an example of how the wall could be funded. with me to talk more about this and much more, michael steele, msnbc political analyst. former chairman of the republican national committee and bill press, host of the bill press show. bill, let me start with you. so much i am laughing because it does seem like they re flying by the seat of their pants. it is. nobody i think the press, i think his own party in philadelphia, doesn t quite know what to make of the strategy here. there is so much that s out there right now. one thing that is out there, it s the issue of mexico. it s the issue of paying for the wall. and building the wall in the first place. we did see paul ryan, the house speaker, he now seems to be on board with this. saying, look, congress will come up with the money. how should democrats treat the issue? because on one hand they ridiculed it during the campaign but trump did win on this message. i think what democrats ought to do is continue to let r
torture is illegal. we want it to stay this way. alsohe issue of voter fraud. trump touched on it briefly in his speech. the republicans said, he was pretty light about it, it was not the main focus here. so i think it made them feel a little bit better, most of them don t want to revisit the popular vote here. you know, part of what s so difficult for this congress and for donald trump is that donald trump, he alluded to this in the speech. he very much likes simple, easy-to-explain solutions that cut through the noise and go straight to the american people. it s part of why, when we were talking about this, how to pay for the border wall. for donald trump it s simple. we ll explain it by saying we re going to tax mexico at the rate of 20%. imports from mexico. 20% tax. seems relatively easy to understand. if you actually dig into the details of the republican policy proposal, it s incredibly complicated. and so you are seeing a lot of friction there between trump and
themselves and fight among themselves on this wall. i think it s pretty embarrassing. first of all, look, i don t believe in the tooth fairy. mexico is not going to pay for this wall. period. it won t happen. donald trump would never make a deal as a businessman where he would spend $15 billion on a promise that somebody else would pay him to build that building. would not happen. now what i find, the republicans it can t happen without congress. here you have republicans in congress remember who demanded offsets before they would put emergency funding for tornadoes in the south or hurricane sandy. now they re saying, oh, yeah, we ll throw $15 billi at this wall and build it on donald trump s prose that mexico is going to repay. i think it s first foreign policy initiative and he laid an egg. michael steele, let me ask you about that. if donald trump now, first of all, we are getting suggestions now from trump from the folks around him and spicer putting one out there that ma