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By KELIN DILLON

While the disappearance and brutal murders of five youths from Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, have dominated Mexico’s national headlines during the past week, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) claimed he didn’t address the the subject during his daily morning press conference on Wednesday, Aug. 16, because he “didn’t hear” journalists’ questions about the incident.

After the end of Wednesday’s conference, a number of journalists asked AMLO his opinion on the Lagos de Moreno case. But rather than answer the questions, the federal executive instead responded by motioning his hands as if to cover his ears, cracked a joke about a friend who doesn’t listen to his wife and urged his team to “go to breakfast, now, now, now” instead of handing microphones over to the press as usual.

However, during his press conference the next day on Thursday, Aug. 17, López Obrador said he “didn’t need to apologize” for not addressing the murders of the five youths because he supposedly didn’t hear the questions, and that any backlash against his lack of response was an “invention” by the press.

López Obrador went on to allege that the criticism around his response came from the opposition parties and “corrupt presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez,” who AMLO has a judicial order to not speak publicly about.

As for his poorly timed joke, AMLO once again claimed it was made because he didn’t hear the questions, saying “I have principles and ideals, I am a man of feelings, I cannot mock pain.”