Menendez: Mexico’s president tried to ‘blackmail’ Biden to invite ‘dictators’ to Americas summit – By Rebecca Morin (USA Today) / June 9, 2022
A top Democratic senator on Thursday accused Mexico’s president of trying to “blackmail” President Joe Biden into inviting several autocratic countries to the Ninth Summit of the Americas.
Sen. Bob Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accused Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of siding with “dictators and despots” after he decided to skip the summit because Biden refused to invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“I think that President López Obrador basically tried to blackmail President Biden into insisting that countries that are not democratic – countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Daniel Ortegas’ Nicaragua, that are dictators and despots – should have been invited to the summit,” Menendez, D-N.J., said during an interview on MSNBC Thursday.
