Trump says Mexico will pay for the wall 'a little later' in tweet

In a trademark late-night tweet, US President-elect Donald Trump said that Mexico will pay for a wall along the southern US border "a little later" in an attempt to discredit reports that the wall will be funded by Congress.

Trump said that the "dishonest media says Mexico won't be paying for the wall if they pay a little later so the wall can be built more quickly", on Sunday (9 January), taking aim at reports surfacing from CNN that the wall Trump repeatedly promised during his campaign will be financed by the federal government's annual spending bill.

Trump said on Friday (6 January) that US money would "speed up" the process of building the wall before Mexico then paid for it: "We're going to get reimbursed. But I don't want to wait that long. But you start, and then you get reimbursed." Trump suggested that reimbursement could be part of a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexican leaders have loudly spoken out against the wall, with former President Vicente Fox tweeting that "neither myself nor Mexico are going to pay for his racist monument." Fox previously surprised viewers during a television interview when he said: "I'm not going to pay for that f***ing wall."

Current Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, later got into a Twitter argument with Trump after the two met: "At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall."

Trump's tweet, posted at 11:05pm local time on the US east coast, also continued the president-elect ire at the media, which he claims treats him unfairly. The message started with "dishonest media" and then ended with "media is fake!"