Why is AMLO worried about an outsider? She’s funny, profane — and inspiring.; The Washington Post, August 20, 2023

 David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Why is AMLO worried about an outsider? She’s funny, profane — and inspiring.

"“Beware of what is happening in Mexico,” Gálvez warns me at the end of our conversation. “Our president is capable of anything. He has no limits.”

A chilling example of what frightens many Mexicans about López Obrador happened last Wednesday morning at the president’s office, a few miles from where I was talking to Gálvez.

At his regular morning news conference that day, reporters asked López Obrador about five young men from Jalisco who had disappeared a few days before. A horrific video had just surfaced that showed the five, friends since childhood, their bodies battered and bloody, with their mouths taped shut and their hands tied behind their backs. One victim was forced to bludgeon another with a brick and then decapitate him, before he was killed himself. Investigators later recovered their badly burned bodies. The governor of Jalisco said the murders were “clearly linked to organized crime.”

And what did the president say when reporters asked him to comment on this appalling crime? “Can’t hear,” said López Obrador, cupping his hand to his ear. He then told a crude joke about a poor Mexican man who pretended he couldn’t hear a question. And then he smiled and walked offstage."