By RICARDO CASTILLO    

Tweeting Donald began his latest tirade against Mexico last Monday, April 2. when he warned that a new threat was impending over the poor, helpless USA because the Mexican government was allowing a “caravan of Hondurans” to cross into Mexico and that caravan was heading for the northern border.

And, once again, POTUS threatened to cancel Mexico’s “milk cow,” namely the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Trump immediately asked the Pentagon to send troops to guard the border against this new wave of invaders.

Perhaps not knowing that the Pentagon can’t send troops to do the job Homeland Security and ICE authorities get paid to do, the U.S. president told the Pentagon to send troops to guard the border.

But that was not Trump’s worst display of ignorance; he had to be told that it is the bordering states, through their National Guard, who ought to be summoned to help federal authorities, both in detaining and returning persons entering the United States without a visa. Of course, Trump had to be reminded – if he ever knew – that former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had tried the same approach back in 2006 and 2010, respectively, only to end up sending the poor National Guard conscripts back home to their regular lives.

That was a bucket of cold water for The Donald, who on Wednesday. April 4, had to admit also that the group of 1,500 Hondurans who had marched from Tegucigalpa to Mexico City was part of an awareness movement in the United States to put the tiny nation — once coined a “banana republic” — on the international map. The group has been marching to Mexico City every Easter Week since 2010 and calls itself the “Migrants’ Viacrucis.”

But, as it has happened over the past 15 months of the Trump administration, every time Tweeting Donald decorates his daily literary portfolio with threats to the rest of the world, at least in Mexico, the hen pen starts cackling almost in unison.

For one, the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Relations (SRE) along with the Mexican Interior Secretariat (SeGob) issued Wednesday first a warning to President Trump that Mexico’s migration laws are not subject to any foreign influence.

Secondly, they explained that the SRE-SeGob was well informed that “as expected, the Caravan known as the Migrants’ Viacrucis began dispersing and under the law and with full respect for their human rights, had been escorted and that the decision not to continue was made by the persons integrating the group and not due to any external or internal pressure.”

The fact was that the marchers made their point that they want to go work and live up north. but then Mexico offered them visas, with 168 marchers accepting to stay to work in Mexico, while the rest of the group began splitting up as soon as they crossed the border in Tapachula, which borders with Guatemala. About one-third of the migrants went back home to Honduras immediately, and of those who made it to Mexico City, 468 were willingly repatriated by the Mexican government.

But there’s no doubt that Tweeting Don got the Mexican chicken coop cackling. For one, all the Mexican presidential candidates took the opportunity to state what they would do if U.S. troops were to arrive to guard the border. and polls-leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would line up a “human peace wall” with people holding hands all along the 3,185 kilometer-long border. “Surely millions of Mexicans would join hands in peace and respect,” he added. No wonder López Obrador gets accused of being a “populist.”

Back-of-the-pack candidate José Antonio Meade considered Trump’s gesture as “an inadmissible aggravation to Mexico” and pleaded with the U.S. president “not to make mistakes.” There’s no doubt that Meade is, indeed, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s voice in the electoral process.

By the way, all this guffawing noise made by Tweeting Don stems out of his frustration at not having made Mexico pay for the wall and not getting the U.S. Congress to shell out the cash to do it. He is doing it because he wants to make good on his campaign promise that he would not just build the wall, but force Mexico to pay for it. Surely, his followers chorused him enchantment when they chanted “build that wall” and he hollered back to them “who’s going to pay for it?” and they retorted “Mexico.” Sure, any day now.

Since Trump is not going to let up until he builds his wall, a good faith suggestion to him is why doesn’t he start panhandling with the followers who voted him in as POTUS because, in the end, it is they who want the wall.

It’s not a tweet, just an idea.