As Donald Trump continues his way to the Republican convention, it is fair to ask what his foreign policy would be. On one issue so far, however, he has alienated not only all Mexicans living in the US, but practically all Mexicans living south of the border.
That is a bad beginning when one considers that Mexico is one of the US’s most important trading partners in Latin America and home of almost a million Americans.
To his often stated position that he would build a wall in the US border with Mexico to stop illegal Mexicans coming into the US – an unreasonable proposal at best – he recently added his comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel.
Judge Curiel is presiding over a class-action lawsuit against Trump University.
The plaintiffs in this case argue that Trump University duped them into paying tens of thousands of dollars on the mistaken belief that they would be taught Trump’s real-state strategies. Trump said that US Judge Curiel had “an absolute conflict” in presiding over the litigation given that he was of “Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino Lawyers’ association.
According to  Trump, the background of the judge was relevant because of his often repeated stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern US border to avoid new immigrants coming into the US. Trump called the judge “a hater of Donald Trump” and a “total disgrace” when commenting on his ethnicity.
Both the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have condemned Trump’s comments.
Trump’s comments on Judge Curiel come after he made equally dismissive comments about Senator John McCain. Although  Trump has never participated in real war, this has not stopped him for deriding McCain, who risked his life in several combat missions and suffered years in a Vietnamese prison camp, after his Navy dive bomber was shot down in 1967.
As he was ejected from this plane, McCain broke both arms and a leg, and later endured enormous pain when he was under torture during the five years he spent in captivity. On July 18, 2015, during an interview in Ames, Iowa, Trump famously said of McCain: “He’s a war hero because he was captured.
I like people who weren’t captured,” an irrelevant comment, if there ever was one.
Trump’s remarks, predictably, angered many war veterans and, particularly, Secretary of State John Kerry who, in a statement released to the press, said, “John McCain is a hero, a man of grit and guts and character personified. He served and bled and endured unspeakable acts of torture. His captors broke his bones, but they couldn’t break his spirit, which is why he refused early release when he had the chance. That’s heroism, pure and simple, and it is unimpeachable.”
In the meantime, as  McCain was in prison,  Donald Trump was busy presenting deferment arguments from going to war both through student deferment rights and a medical exemption to stave off the draft.
The two 2-S classifications covered both his time at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York, and his transfer to study business at the University of Pennsylvania.
In October of 1968, his physical examination was followed by a new classification, 1-Y, which essentially meant that he could only be drafted if there were a national emergency situation.
Later, in 1969, when the nation changed the selective service law to pick people through a random selection of birth dates, Trump got a number that allowed him to avoid being drafted.
Trump, however, has served the country although not in the field of war. In a 1997 interview with Howard Stern, Trump admitted that he had been “lucky” not to have contracted any sexually transmitted diseases when he was sleeping around at the time.“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that world,” he said.“It’s scary, like Vietnam. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
Trump’s other way of servicing the country was to have organised the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants, including the Miss Universe pageant in Vietnam in 2008. “I have truly enjoyed owning the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants,” Trump said at the time.“When I purchased the pageants many years ago, they were in serious trouble. It has been a great honour making them so successful.”
Nobody can deny  Trump’s considerable business acumen. But running a country is a more serious issue than running a beauty pageant.

- Dr Cesar Chelala is a winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award and two national journalism awards from Argentina.