Friday, July 26, 2024

Vicente Fox’s account is suspended on X social media platform

The X (formerly Twitter) account of Vicente Fox has been suspended after the former president described the wife of Nuevo León Governor and presidential aspirant Samuel García as an “escort.”

Fox, president of Mexico between 2000 and 2006, called Mariana Rodríguez a “dama de compañia,” or escort, on the social media platform last week.

Samuel García and Mariana Rodríguez
Samuel García with his wife Mariana Rodríguez and daughter Mariel. (Samuel García/X)

Rodríguez hit back at the 81-year-old ex-president, telling him on X that she is not an escort, but “a woman, university graduate, entrepreneur, wife and mother.”

“I will not allow you to speak to me or any other woman like that. We’re not accessories or objects. … What you did is called violence,” she wrote last Saturday.

Three days later, Fox’s X account disappeared from the social media site purchased by Elon Musk in late 2022.

Former first lady Marta Sahagún issued a statement on behalf of her husband, in which Fox said that his account – which had some 1.5 million followers – had been suspended “without any notice and in an arbitrary way.”

“We’re working to resolve this problem,” said the ex-president, who had been taking aim at García on X shortly before his account became inactive.

As of midday Tuesday, the message “This account doesn’t exist” still appeared below the @vicentefoxque X handle.

Fox is well known for using blunt, colorful and derogatory language, both on and off social media.

On X, he has called President López Obrador “autistic” and described presidential aspirant Claudia Sheinbaum as “Jewish and foreign at the same time.”

In a 2018 interview, Fox called Donald Trump a “wild beast,” and on social media the same year he told the then U.S. president that his mouth was “the foulest shithole in the world.”

It was unclear who at X took the decision to suspend Fox’s account. There was some speculation that the ex-president deleted it himself, but his statement appeared to debunk that idea.

Musk, it should be noted, has a personal relationship with Governor García, having met with him and his wife in Nuevo León last year ahead of the announcement that Tesla would build a new “gigafactory” in the northern border state.

With reports from Reforma and El País

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