As a ring to the finger

By Sofía Guadarrama Collado

In previous columns I wrote that the relationship between Donald Trump and Claudia Sheinbaum was just what she needed. It fit her like a glove. They speak the same language. They are of the same ilk: populists, narcissists, fascists and liars.

If Kamala Harris had been elected, things would be very different. First of all, U.S. foreign policy would still be moderate, discreet and diplomatic. Something that does not go with the fourte. Good manners do not work with them. They love scandal, bullying and victimization.

Donald Trump's threats to impose tariffs, as happened in the previous six-year term, were just that. Claudia Sheinbaum and Andrés Manuel López Obrador knew it. Bullies understand each other. Donald Trump could not take the risk that a week before Super Bowl LIX, Mexican avocados would rise to 12 dollars.

If Joe Biden had known that his party would not allow him to continue in the presidential campaign, he would surely have been much harsher with López Obrador, but there was no way to predict the future and he played fair. He dodged all the spittle thrown at him by López Obrador. He needed the Mexican government to stop the migrants, but he never applied Trump's threats or got entangled in the cobwebs of Obrador's demagoguery.

The toxic relationship between Donald Trump and Claudia Sheinbaum has just begun and has already generated returns for Mexico's president: national unity and an 80% approval rating in the polls. Nationalist Mexicans -no matter what party they belong to- will always celebrate when the president of Mexico responds to his or her counterpart from the northern country. Ah, how nice it feels to hear her defend our national sovereignty. "We are not subjects! We will defend our sovereignty!" They even sang the national anthem for her in the Congress of the Union.

Claudia Sheinbaum had three months to seek out Donald Trump and raise a collaboration between the two nations to stop drug and arms trafficking, but that did not serve to fuel the anger and morbidity of her political base.