"Former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto took a $100 million bribe from international drug traffickers..."

"... according to a witness at the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous crime lord known as El Chapo," the NYT reports.

ADDED: Remember Trump's (leaked) conversation with Peña Nieto, back in August 2017?

You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big-league. But they have to be knocked out and you have not done a good job of knocking them out. We have a massive drug problem where kids are becoming addicted to drugs because drugs are being sold for less money than candy because there is so much of it. So we have to work together to knock that out. And I know this is a tough group of people, and maybe your military is afraid of them, but our military is not afraid of them, and we will help you with that 100 percent because it is out of control – totally out of control.

Why is there so little talk about the leaked transcripts of Trump's phone conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia?

The Washington Post must have thought it was worth it to drop these full transcripts. They had to worry about criticism, exposing the confidential communications of the President with world leaders, undermining the power and prestige of the American presidency. They had to have thought it was worth doing. Why dump all this verbiage? Did they think the sheer amount of material would have a devastating impact?

I thought we were going to see many, many articles picking into the details here, but the story seems to have already blown over. On the front page of the NYT website, the only reference to the transcripts is a little teaser under the heading "More in Politics." Coming in third after "Kushner Firm Said to Be Under Inquiry Over Visa Program" and "Trump Cites Familiar Argument in Ban on Transgender Troops" is "Trump Called New Hampshire a ‘Drug-Infested Den.’" Trump's calling New Hampshire a ‘Drug-Infested Den'" is incredibly inconsequential, but it's what I broke out too when I was reading the news yesterday.

Why are we not seeing more? I noticed some stories claiming the transcripts show Trump is an idiot, but every day I see stories saying Trump is an idiot. And from what I've read of the transcripts (not every word), I don't think they show idiocy, and I think they're going to take careful reading to understand how Trump was trying to work with the 2 leaders. I suspect that Trump-haters who undertook serious study of the language have decided it's best not to try, that a close examination of the text will only help Trump, and therefore the transcripts have rapidly become a non-story.

Now, I'm going to read the transcript with Peña Nieto, and I'll update to tell you what I'm seeing.

ADDED: I'm reading the whole transcript and dropping my thoughts here as I go. I'm amazed at how long each man talks when he gets his turn to speak. Nieto, speaking Spanish, goes first and quickly gets to looking for a solution to the disagreement about Mexico paying for the wall. He sees potential for "a win-win situation" if the 2 countries are "creative" about it.

Trump compliments Peña Nieto and talks about tariffs as a solution to the trade deficit. He goes on at length about it, and finally it's Peña Nieto who brings up the wall again:

Let me tell you that the best virtual wall that I think we can build between our two countries is to make sure that both countries have economic development.

Trump then takes up the subject of the wall. When times are good in Mexico, yes, there's a "virtual wall," but the real wall is needed for when there are tough times, he says. "We have enough people coming across, we want to stop it cold." Then he switches to the subject of what is obviously a shared interest with Mexico, drug gang warfare:

"The peso is tumbling after Mexico's president, Enrique Peña Nieto, says he won't meet with US president Donald Trump."

Business Insider reports.

Trump likes to say you have to be willing to walk away from a deal.

ADDED: The next presidential election in Mexico is in 2018, and the incumbent is not eligible to run. So Nieto has no election to worry about. According to Wikipedia:

Peña Nieto began his term as President with an approval rating of approximately 50%, but the falling value of the Mexican Peso and sluggish economic growth had caused this figure to drop to 35% by 2015. Prone to gaffes, Nieto has also faced several major controversies as President.... According to the Newspaper Reforma, by August 2016, Peña Nieto's approval ratings had dropped to 23% - the lowest for any president since the paper began opinion polling in 1995. The approval decreased more by January 19, 2017, remaining at 12%.

He won the election in 2012 with 38% of the vote.

ADDED: What would Trump do if he — with his art-of-the-deal genius — were in Nieto's position?