Former Mexican president tells Trump to drop White House bid

LEON, Mexico, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Former Mexican President Vincente Fox continued his critiques of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, this time calling for the real estate mogul to drop out of the presidential race.

"I will invite this guy to withdraw from the race, to go back to his business and [forget] about what is a nation, what is a presidency of a nation, what is microeconomics," Fox told Fox Business Network on Friday. "Let me tell you -- 40 percent of Fortune 500 [businesses] have been created by migrants, by foreigners."

Fox also continued to lambaste Trump's promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, at Mexico's expense.

"He feels fear. Only those who feel fear build walls," he said. "He said that the Chinese wall was many more miles longer than the U.S. wall. Well, I want to tell Trump that the Chinese wall did not work against their enemies. The Berlin Wall, built by Russia, a dictatorship, did not work against freedom. He's absolutely wrong."

On Thursday, Fox used some strong language to rebuke the plan.

"I declare: I'm not going to pay for that [expletive] wall," Fox told Fusion. "He should pay for it. He's got the money."

At Thursday night's GOP presidential debate, Trump responded: "The wall just got 10 feet taller."

Trump also demanded Fox apologize for cursing.

Fox joins former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who told CNBC earlier this month: "Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall! And it's going to be completely useless."

The current president of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, said in August that Trump's claim that Mexico would foot the bill for such a wall was untrue.

"Of course it's false," Eduardo Sanchez, a spokesman for Pena Nieto, told Bloomberg. "It reflects an enormous ignorance for what Mexico represents, and also the irresponsibility of the candidate who's saying it."