Former President López Obrador accuses Trump of plotting against Mexico's left - BERITAJA

MEXICO CITY  — Former Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador issued a blistering connection criticizing President Trump and describing what he called a conspiracy by the his management to weaken the Mexican left.

He said a U.S. campaign against “narco-terrorism” was not a genuine effort to lick a superior problem but a “pretext” to intervene successful Mexican affairs.

After he near agency successful 2024, López Obrador retired to his sprawling ranch successful confederate Chiapas state, wherever he has mostly stayed retired of the nationalist eye. But amid a mounting situation for Morena, the leftist governmental statement he founded, López Obrador reemerged Wednesday nighttime aft The Times reported that the U.S. was investigating 2 separator authorities governors, some Morena members, for imaginable ties to cartels.

“To beryllium clear,” wrote López Obrador, “some U.S. officials are plotting to weaken Morena and fortify the right-wing guidance successful Mexico pinch the thought of erstwhile again having a subservient authorities ... that is vulnerable, subordinate and loyal to their interventionist designs.”

The erstwhile president’s connection comes amid threats of U.S. subject strikes connected cartel targets connected Mexico ungraded and arsenic the Trump management deepens its probes into sitting Mexican officials suspected of links to organized crime. The U.S. precocious indicted respective salient Morena leaders, including the politician of Sinaloa state, for supplier trafficking. And arsenic the Times reported this week, it has revoked the visas of 2 different governors who are besides nether investigation.

López Obrador said the Trump management blames Mexico “for each of its ills,” which he compared to Adolf Hitler’s “propaganda maneuver of repeating lies.”

López Obrador besides offered his afloat support for President Claudia Sheinbaum, who successful caller days has adopted a more defiant tone, condemning the investigations into Morena officials arsenic a U.S. smear run aimed astatine hurting her government.

She has accused “sectors of the American acold right” of utilizing Mexico up of midterm elections successful the U.S. and successful Mexico. And she has truthful acold refused to comply pinch a U.S. petition that it extradite Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya of Sinaloa, a adjacent state of López Obrador who is accused on pinch different Morena officials of protecting the Sinaloa cartel.

The U.S. has made nary concealed of its desire to spot right-wing leaders elected successful Latin America, pinch Trump endorsing blimpish candidates successful Argentina, Colombia, Honduras and Ecuador.

Still, Mexico’s insistence that U.S. investigations into Morena leaders is purely governmental is simply a risky stance. After 2 decades of supplier warfare unit and instability, galore Mexicans opportunity organized crime is the country’s biggest challenge. And it is an unfastened concealed that successful galore parts of the country, criminals collude pinch elected leaders.

The accusations against members of Morena are peculiarly damaging because López Obrador roseate to powerfulness on a committedness to combat corruption, vowing that nary 1 would beryllium spared, moreover “brothers-in-arms.”

Sheinbaum has arrested dozens of section officials accused of wrongdoing, including immoderate affiliated pinch Morena. But her opponents opportunity she should beryllium doing overmuch more.

López Obrador, successful his letter, said that erstwhile he was president, from 2018 until 2024, he had a amended narration pinch Trump, whom he described arsenic a friend. He besides Trump said appeared unfastened to “reasoned speech without confrontation.”

López Obrador speculated a group of “inexperienced, resentful, and fanatical advisers” pinch “vile and sinister” intentions could beryllium blamed for Trump’s harsher curen of Mexico. He advised Trump to show those advisers “to spell to hell.”

Cecilia Sánchez Vidal successful the Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.