MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Trump and Macri have lunch in Florida

Macri and Trump were never this close while they were both presidents of their countries

Former Presidents Mauricio Macri of Argentina and Donald Trump of the United States had lunch Thursday at the latter's Mar-a-Lago residence in the State of Florida.

During the meeting, they discussed ongoing political affairs and the current relationship between their two countries.

Trump and Macri were acquainted with each other through real estate businesses long before they both turned into politics.

“Today I shared lunch with Donald Trump, where we exchanged views on the global context, the link between Argentina and the United States, and all that our countries can continue to build together,” Macri explained on his Twitter account.
 

Hoy compartí un almuerzo con Donald Trump, donde intercambiamos opiniones sobre el contexto global, el vínculo entre Argentina y Estados Unidos y todo lo que nuestros países pueden seguir construyendo juntos. @RealDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/biSIbvtzHx

— Mauricio Macri (@mauriciomacri) April 7, 2022

 

The former Argentine president traveled to the United States at the beginning of this week to fulfill his commitments with the University of Florida, where he is a guest professor of leadership. He flew straight in from Madrid, where, as head of the FIFA Foundation, he had met with FIFA chief Gianni Infantino.

Prior to meeting Trump, Macri had been in Italy participating in the Bridge World Cup, where he ended up eliminated due to conjunctivitis.

Meanwhile, Jujuy Governor Gerardo Morales of the Radical Civic Union of former President Raúl Alfonsín and the main partner of the Macrist PRO's Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) coalition which took the former mayor of Buenos Aires to the Casa Rosada, was not happy about the Florida lunch.

Both Macri and Morales are reportedly vying to run for president in 2023.

“I never liked Donald Trump very much,” said Morales, who likened the US leader to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I was afraid that I acted like the Putins who go around in life, with that sometimes messianic conception,” he added.

While Macri is in favor of privatizing Aerolíneas Argentinas, Morales, who also chairs the UCR, highlighted the carrier's role in linking provinces with each other. Morales had also criticized Macri for praising former President Carlos Menem.

The UCR leader said the picture with Trump was part of Macri's strategy to position himself for the 2023 presidential election. “I think Mauricio is going to be a candidate, you can see him, it looks like a campaign photo,” he said. “He is the head of PRO and he has every right to be a candidate.”

But he “is not the head of Juntos por el Cambio, he is the head of PRO. Macri is not the head of radicalism, he is not my boss. It is my turn to preside over Radicalism. We have dialogue, beyond the fact that sometimes we do not agree on some aspects or looks, especially when revisionism is made and we start looking at past decades where we were on opposite paths,” he stressed.