The Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum, said Americans “don’t understand much about geography” and that the US will “beg us to tear down this ugly wall”.
We can find no evidence President Sheinbaum ever said this. An almost identically worded post circulated in 2017, before she was in power.
We can find no evidence that the Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told US President Donald Trump that Americans “don’t understand much about geography” and that the US will “beg us to tear down this ugly wall”.
It appears that an old viral social media post has been translated in English and misattributed to President Sheinbaum.
Lengthy posts shared thousands of times on social media include the text of a supposed address from President Sheinbaum, which begins: “So, you voted to build a wall. Well, dear Americans, even if you don’t understand much about geography, since for you America is your country and not a continent, it is important for you to know, before the first brick is laid, that there are 7 billion people beyond that wall.”
The posts go on to say Mexicans “can easily stop buying Ford or Chevrolet cars” and replace them with alternatives made elsewhere, and can also swap Hollywood movies for “Latin American or European productions” and travel to “other great destinations in South America, East America and Europe” instead of Disney resorts.
It concludes by suggesting that if Mexican citizens don’t buy American products, “there will be unemployment” in the US “and their economy will collapse…to such an extent that they will beg us to tear down this ugly wall”.
While President Sheinbaum made a sarcastic comment to President Trump recently, proposing that North America be renamed "Américana Mexicana" we could find no evidence from any credible news outlets, official government releases, or on social media that she has said the words quoted in the viral posts.
A similarly worded post circulated in January 2017 in Spanish, just after President Trump was first elected, and more than seven years before President Sheinbaum became president in Mexico. These posts were attributed to “the rest of the world”, not President Sheinbaum.
We’ve recently fact checked an image that appears to show President Sheinbaum wearing a hat with the slogan “Make America Mexicana Again”. But the picture isn’t real and was likely created using artificial intelligence (AI).
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because we can find no evidence President Sheinbaum ever said this, and an almost identically worded post circulated in 2017, before she was in power.
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