Politics

Outrage after Mexico awards Jared Kushner its highest honor

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto presented Jared Kushner with the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor the government can bestow on foreigners — ruffling the feathers of critics back home angry with President Trump.

Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser received the award Friday before the start of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires for his “significant contributions in achieving the renegotiation of the new agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada,” according to Mexico’s foreign ministry.

The three countries signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on Friday, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump repeatedly slammed on the campaign trail.

Peña Nieto called Kushner a “grand ally of Mexico.”

The award has caused an uproar in Mexico, where many are incensed over Trump’s insulting comments about Mexicans and his call for a border wall that he has repeatedly said the country would pay for.

In June 2015, as a presidential candidate, Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.”

He added: “They’re sending people that have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Prominent Mexican historian Enrique Krauze called the decision to honor Kushner with the award an act of “supreme humiliation and cowardice.”

Mexican actor Gael García Bernal tweeted that bestowing the prize on Kushner sullies the nation’s honor, according to NPR.

Carlos Bravo Regidor, an analyst at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City, slammed Peña Nieto over the award.

“He is finished, defeated, humiliated, but he still doesn’t care and offers this award to Kushner to almost show it off,” he said of the unpopular Mexican leader, whose last day in office was Friday.

With Post wires