MEXICO CITY -- Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Thursday that Donald Trump's proposals represent a "threat" to his country, a day after the two men met in the Mexican capital.

Pena Nieto has been widely criticized in Mexico for inviting and meeting with Trump, as well as for not confronting him more directly about comments calling immigrants from Mexico criminals, drug-runners and "rapists," and the candidate's vows to build a border wall and force Mexico to pay for it.

Speaking at a nighttime town-hall-style gathering where he fielded questions from young people, Pena Nieto defended his decision. He said the simpler path would have been to do nothing, but he believed it necessary to stress to Trump the importance of the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

"It would have been easier just to cross my arms," he said. "And my decision as president of Mexico and as the person responsible for taking care of Mexicans and taking care of Mexico was to face him and open up a space for dialogue.

"What is a fact is that in the face of candidate Trump's postures and positions, which clearly represent a threat to the future of Mexico, it was necessary to talk," Pena Nieto said. "It was necessary to make him feel and know why Mexico does not accept his positions."

He repeated that he told Trump in person that Mexico would "in no way" pay for the proposed border wall.

The president came under fire for not responding to Trump's mention of the wall during a joint news conference Wednesday, something he has since sought to correct. Earlier Thursday, after Trump tweeted that Mexico would pay for the wall, Pena Nieto fired back his own tweet saying that would "never" happen.

Reaction to the gathering between Pena Nieto and Trump seems to indicate the Mexican president wasn't too focused on how it would play at home.

Televisa news anchor Carlos Loret de Mola marveled that Trump would dare go to Mexico and reiterate his intention to build the wall. "The humiliation is now complete," he tweeted.

Particularly irksome to Mexicans was that Pena Nieto appeared to do little to push back against Trump's unpopular proposals and earlier negative statements about Mexican aliens in the U.S.

Pena Nieto "did not even take a really strong stand and talk to Mr. Trump directly to his face and tell him exactly why his stances are not acceptable to Mexicans," said Tony Payan, director of the Mexico Center at Rice University's Baker Institute. "He sounded tepid and too soft. He essentially rolled over and allowed Mr. Trump to get away with his own goals without getting anything in return."

Pena Nieto did say that Mexicans felt "aggrieved" and had disagreements with Trump, but many people felt that it was not enough.

Javier Urbano Reyes, a professor in the department of International Studies at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City, said he thought Trump gained a little with the meeting, but Mexico's president lost a lot.

"Without a doubt, my perception is that it is going to make it even worse, even stronger the drop in approval," he said, referring to Pena Nieto's near 20 percent approval rating, according to recent polls, a rate that ranks him the lowest of any Mexican president in two decades.

"He permitted Trump to appear presidential for nothing," said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based political and security consultant. "Serving as a carpet for Donald Trump won't likely help him."

Pena Nieto's opponents took the visit as an opportunity to criticize him.

"Whose idea was it to invite Donald Trump to Mexico at the worst moment of his campaign, after he has insulted Mexicans?" Ricardo Anaya, the leader of the National Action Party, the second-largest bloc in Congress and the party of Pena Nieto's predecessor Felipe Calderon, asked in a Twitter post after Trump and Pena Nieto's meeting.

Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu, who sat in the front row for Wednesday's news conference, said in a Twitter post that in the meeting with Trump, Pena Nieto "expressed the injury and outrage of Mexicans over insults and offenses."

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Trump was trying to boost his sagging campaign. "He fooled him [Pena Nieto]."

In the growing uproar in Mexico over the meeting, Pena Nieto told Televisa's Denise Maerker that he had invited Trump because his policies are a threat to Mexico -- precisely the reason why most Mexicans think he shouldn't have met with him.

Payan hypothesized that Pena Nieto had little good news to give in his state-of-the-nation address Thursday and was looking for a distraction with the "ill-advised" meeting.

"Maybe Pena saw the opportunity to distract the attention of the Mexican people," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Peter Orsi, Christopher Sherman, Mark Stevenson and Maria Verza of The Associated Press and by Nacha Cattan and Eric Martin of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 09/02/2016