Only One Mexican American GOP Rep Has Commented on Trump’s Racist Meme

Mexican American GOP lawmakers have been largely silent on MAGA’s sombrero memes this week.

President Donald Trump on Monday shared a video featuring House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Truth Social, using AI to depict Jeffries wearing a mustache and sombrero while mariachi music plays and Schumer trashes Democrats.

The president’s allies (including the official Republican Party) have gleefully seized on the absurd video, making and sharing their own memes of Democratic lawmakers in sombreros. Some Latino advocacy groups have condemned Trump for using stereotypes to demean Mexicans.

But most Mexican American Republicans in Congress—Representatives Brian Mast, Tony Gonzales, David Valadao, Juan Ciscomani, Monica De La Cruz, and Gabe Evans—have not addressed the memes publicly as of this writing Thursday afternoon.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna is the only Mexican American Republican to comment on the meme, and in fact, she can’t seem to stop. The Florida representative has even changed the profile picture on her congressional X account to a portrait of herself in a digitally-added sombrero.

Luna dismissed “fake outrage” over the memes on Wednesday, and later told Fox News host Jesse Watters that the joke inspired her to purchase red sombreros for Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

On Wednesday evening, Luna shared a photoshopped picture of JD Vance donning a sombrero and mustache. On Thursday, she posted a photo of herself, Vance, and Jeffries in sombreros, asking her followers, “Who wore it better?”

On the Democratic side of the aisle, many members of Congress of Mexican descent have reacted to the memes.

Senator Alex Padilla and Representative Teresa Leger Fernández seized on the moment to criticize Trump’s childish posting habits and pin blame for the ongoing government shutdown on Republicans.

“Democrats came to the White House to keep the government open. The President answered with a racist AI video,” Padilla wrote on X. “Anyone searching for an answer on who owns this shutdown—look no further.”

Fernández accused Trump of “acting like a six-year-old,” saying, “The problem is that when he acts like a six-year-old, it’s not like you can just get mad at him and say, ‘stop drawing mustaches on people.’ People will die because of their decisions.”

Representative Jimmy Gomez responded to the memes with an AI-generated movie poster featuring Donald Trump and the late notorious sex criminal—and former Trump associate—Jeffrey Epstein. “Every time Donald Trump puts up a racist AI generated video of Hakeem Jefferies or any of my colleagues, I’ll put [up] a new movie poster about Trump and Epstein,” he wrote.

Senator Ruben Gallego responded to Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s sombrero meme by highlighting the 2021 scandal in which the Texas senator took a trip to Cancún, Mexico, while a winter storm left millions of his constituents freezing without power and heat.

Posting an image of Cruz in the airport—with a photoshopped sombrero and mustache, of course—Gallego wrote, “Cancun Cruz knows a thing or two about Mexico and a lot about raising health care costs for 24 million Americans.”