MEXICO CITY (Border Report) — Mexico’s president has come out in defense of his 15-year-old son, who has become the target of ridicule and offensive jokes on social media.

“My dear son who I love, Jesus, who is overweight, was attacked after a photo came out,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said of his son Jesús Ernesto López Gutiérrez. “It’s cowardliness, if you have a problem, it’s with me, not him.”

López Obrador said he doesn’t understand why a family member would be the subject of this type of vitriol.

The president’s son is referred to on several social media sites as “el chocoflan,” a popular Mexican custard-like dessert.

“Even with true mafia families, you respect the family,” López Obrador said. “But I get it, it’s an act of desperation when they can’t be critical of me.”

But the president’s comments have been met with scorn from the son of a former president.

Luis Felipe Calderón Zavala, whose father Felipe Calderón led Mexico from 2006 to 2012, called López Obrador a hypocrite, saying he had criticized him years before for his physical appearance.

“Mr. President, I’m not celebrating the jokes directed at your son, but it looks like you forgot how you used public resources to slander me during a poor attempt to intimidate my parents, don’t be a hypocrite,” Calderón Zavala said.

Calderón Zavala, went on to encourage AMLO to become more sympathetic to parents of children with cancer since he “left them without medications.”

Before the pandemic, there has been a critical shortage of chemotherapy medications and other drugs for cancer patients, especially children, in Mexico.