International embarrassment: Trump caught fabricating phone call with Mexican president

While bragging about how his administration has cracked down on border crossings, Trump said, “Even the president of Mexico called me — they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.”

But Enrique Pena Nieto flatly denied that he called Trump to pay him the ultimate compliment. The Mexican Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that the call never happened.

The statement makes clear that Nieto “has not recently spoken to President Donald Trump over the telephone,” and notes that the only time the two men spoke was an aside at the G20 summit in July (where Trump was busy fawning over Russia’s Vladimir Putin).

News of the fake call comes at the same time the Boy Scouts of America exposed another made-up interaction from Trump. He told the Wall Street Journal that the head of the Boy Scouts called him after his infamous partisan tirade at their national meeting and said “it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them.” The Boy Scouts say the call never happened, and reiterated their condemnation of Trump for his vulgar comments.

Trump has employed a cast of made-up characters he cites in speeches and interviews to validate his bizarre rantings.

He has spoken of his trucker friend who says American roads are terrible.

He has referenced his friend “Jim,” who told him not to go to France. Trump traveled there earlier this year anyway, where he enjoyed a lengthy handshake with the French president, the “good physical shape” of the “beautiful” first lady of France, and a lot of horses.

And for years he cited an “extremely credible source” who falsely told him President Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake.

Trump has also associated with “John Miller” and “John Barron,” characters he made up and played over the phone to push news stories about himself.

It is embarrassing for the United States to be led by someone who so blatantly makes up interactions that prompt another world leader to call him out, which has resulted in yet another breach of precedent and norms that Trump has unfortunately normalized.