Donald Trump's visit may already be a lose-lose situation for Mexico's president

Thomson Reuters

Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto gives a speech during a lunch for Turkey's President Erdogan in Mexico City.

To the shock and wonder of many on both sides of the border, US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump announced that he would visit Mexico on Wednesday ahead of his much-anticipated speech on immigration, a trip confirmed by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Peña Nieto said he extended an invitation to both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump, but Trump's visit - after months of him disparaging Mexico and Mexican immigrants on the campaign trail - has already been decried by observers on both sides of the border as a considerable misstep by the embattled Mexican leader.

Much of the criticism has centered on the notion that Peña Nieto, in an attempt to be diplomatic, has played into Trump's hands.

"I think President Peña is taking an enormous political risk by hosting Trump. If he's perceived as going soft on Trump, it will hurt him greatly, he will even be considered like a traitor," former Mexican President Vicente Fox told CNN on Wednesday.

"Well I will say something else...great photo for his campaign that the government has given to Mr. Trump," Mexican journalist Carlos Puig wrote in the above tweet.

"Peña Nieto repeated time and again that he would not put himself in the foreigners' election. He is doing that and in the worst way: lending himself to help Trump," Carlos Bravo Regidor, a professor in Mexico City, tweeted.

Regidor added that Peña Nieto would try to show that he could moderate Trump's rhetoric but said it wouldn't work, as Trump would return to the US and say he had backed down the Mexican president.

Trump has a rich history of comments involving Mexico and its government. He kicked off his presidential campaign by declaring the Mexico was sending rapists and other criminals across the border. Peña Nieto, in turn, has compared Trump's rise to that of Mussolini and Hitler. And he has said Mexico would not pay for the border wall Trump says he will build.

Yet with the invitation, Peña Nieto "has converted himself into a piece of propaganda for the worse enemy of the country," read a tweet from Jesús Silva Herzog Flores, a government and public policy professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey

While the visit has elicited a kind of amused surprise in the US - another twist in a campaign full of them - the news of the trip has stirred outrage in Mexico. The anger with Trump there is widespread and noticeable.

By giving the appearance of accepting the Republican candidate's past statements, the Mexican president has opened himself to more criticism from his countrymen - only 23% of whom approve of his performance in office.

"High risk: Mexicans would not pardon [Enrique Peña Nieto] for remaining silent before Trump. [Peña Nieto] has to demand an apology from" Trump, influential Univision anchor Jorge Ramos noted.

"Trump is saying that we will pay for his wall and we respond [by] receiving him with open arms. Really?!?" said Wilson Center scholar Viridiana Rios added in a tweet.

"The biggest stupidity in the history of the Mexican presidency. There is no parallel to what was just announced," Herzog Flores said.

If the tensions that have built between Mexican and Trump surface in the meeting, it's probably won't be immediately apparent. Peña Nieto and Trump are slated to meet early Wednesday afternoon at the Mexican president's official residence in Mexico City, Los Pinos. The two leaders will issue statement after the meeting, but neither plans to take questions, according to The Wall Street Journal.