title:  Trump Tweets Lie About America’s Third Biggest Trading Partner Triggering International Scandal
text: Donald Trump has been tweeting all day   and his latest is triggering a needless fight with one of America s largest trade partners. Naturally, it s based on complete lies.For reasons known only to Trump and his staff, the president has avoided doing any actual work today and has instead opted to rant about various things that come into his head. On Twitter, Trump has bashed Democrats, admitted he never had  tapes  of his conversations with James Comey, and finally turned to Mexico. The country has been suffering horrific violence due to a on-going drug war. Like his behavior towards London, Trump decided to exploit the tragedy to cynically push for his bigoted policies in America. And like London, he did so by lying.With no source, Trump announced that Mexico s homicide rate was second only to Syria. His information appears to come from a shoddy study released in May and promoted by CNN (which Trump claims not to watch) that claimed  Mexico was second-deadliest country in 2016.  Mexico s violent drug war had indeed been horrific, and the number of dead is staggering. But is it truly the second most violent place in the world? Almost immediately, the details of the study started to unravel.In May, the Washington Post took a hard look at the information and concluded it didn t hold up to scrutiny. For one thing, in terms of both population and raw numbers, many countries are more deadly than Mexico.The study appears to arrive at its findings by labeling Mexico a  conflict area  and counts the number of killed in that  conflict  as compared to other nations. Obviously, most nations aren t currently facing civil wars or strife so they aren t counted, even when they actually have more homicides. But Mexico isn t undergoing a civil war and in fact large sections of the country have very little contact with the drug war happening in specific hot spots. It is only when Mexico is placed in this ill-fitted category that it emerges as a particularly deadly place. Trump, who seems incapable of reading or understanding detailed information, failed to comprehend this nuance when he decided to impulsively smear the country on Twitter.It s boring at this point, but must be repeated again and again: What Trump is saying and doing towards America s allies, seemingly on a whim, is unprecedented. Mexico, for all its troubles, is one of America s closest allies and trading partners. The economies of both countries are dependent on one another and cooperation between the neighbors has been a longstanding tradition. Trump, in order to build his fantasy wall, is threatening to destroy that relationship.Mexico has already been furious with Trump for his attacks on its country and citizens. They, naturally, told Trump to shove it when he came up with his insane premise to get them to pay for his wall. His popularity in Mexico is lower than dirt. The leadership openly mocks him. But still he smears the country. It has pretty clearly reached a breaking point   and Trump only has himself to blame.Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images