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

The Louisiana senator, once a Democrat, trots out folksy, at times racist lines in an exaggerated accent - but is it a put-on?

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, Andres Manuel Lopez 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.