Mexico's president says Trump agreed to hush wall funding talk in public

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Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said he and President Donald Trump agreed to stop publicly talking about who would pay for a border wall, but the U.S. administration made no mention of such a deal in its version of a joint statement by the two governments. The difference was notable in the joint statements released after what both sides described as a "productive and constructive" hour-long call meant to ease a widening rift between the two neighbors and trading partners. The two governments released statements that were mostly the same except for one sentence that appeared in the Spanish-language version from Mexico and not in the one from the U.S.: "The presidents also agreed for now to refrain from speaking publicly about this controversial topic."

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Officials at the White House and Pena Nieto's office didn't immediately respond to questions about the discrepancy.

The wall has become a delicate subject for both leaders. Trump has had to publicly acknowledge that taxpayer dollars will be used to start construction with the cost, estimated as high as $20 billion, somehow recouped from Mexico later. In that regard, he may view an agreement with Pena Nieto to stop talking about the issue in public as a relief. Pena Nieto has been firm in rejecting the idea that Mexico would pay to erect a wall along almost 2,000 miles of border and has come under increasing domestic political pressure to stand up to Trump.

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