Mexican presidential candidate vows to fire back at Trump’s ‘offensive’ tweets

A leading candidate in Mexico’s presidential race vowed to fire back at President Trump if he continues to insult Mexico on Twitter, Yahoo News reported.

“If he makes an offensive tweet, I’m going to take responsibility for answering him,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday.

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Trump has regularly attacked Mexico in speeches and on Twitter since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015.

López Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, said Trump needs to respect Mexican people.

“I think [Trump] is going to understand he has to get himself under control, that he can’t go around offending the Mexican people. We don’t want confrontations with him, but we are going to ask him to respect us,” he said during a campaign rally.

This is not the first time López Obrador has threatened to counter Trump’s Twitter use. 

In January, López Obrador said he was going to “put him in his place.”

“Without disrespecting [Trump], we’re going to put him in his place, we’re going to make him come to his senses,” he said. “We’re going to respect President Donald Trump, but he’s going to have to learn to respect us.”  

He has criticized current President Enrique Peña Nieto for only responding to Trump through official channels.

Trump has sparred with Peña Nieto on Twitter, but his foreign ministry insists that diplomatic matters should not be dealt with over social media.

“Peña doesn’t reply, Trump scared him since he called him on the telephone, he raised his voice and shut him up, but with us it’s different,” López Obrador said.

Peña Nieto addressed Trump’s rhetoric toward immigrants in a video directed at him last month after Trump deployed the National Guard to the southern border.

“If your recent statements come from frustration with internal political affairs, with your laws, or with your Congress, talk about them, not about Mexicans,” Peña Nieto said. “We won’t allow negative rhetoric to define our actions.”

López Obrador is the populist, left-wing front-runner and holds a double-digit lead in most opinion polls, Yahoo reported.

The election is July 1.