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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Drew Hawkins in New Orleans

Republican John Kennedy: southern plain-talk or Foghorn Leghorn shtick?

Senator John Neely Kennedy recently earned a rebuke from the Mexican government for his ‘vulgar and racist’ language directed towards Mexicans.
Senator John Neely Kennedy recently earned a rebuke from the Mexican government for his ‘vulgar and racist’ language directed towards Mexicans. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, offended Mexicans across the world in a hearing on the FBI and DEA’s budget this month, calling for American military members and law enforcement agents to invade their country in order to “stop the cartels” while adding that Mexico would be “eating cat food and living in tent behind an Outback [Steakhouse]” if not for “the people of America”.

Mexico’s top diplomat condemned the comments as “profoundly ignorant”, and the country’s ambassador to the US called for a formal apology for the “vulgar and racist” language. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, urging the more than 37 million Americans of Mexican and other Latin American descent to “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.

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