Portugal president stands by controversial cleavage comment

Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is under fire for making a snarky remark about a young woman’s breast during a trip to Canada last week.

De Sousa, 74, was touring Toronto during an official visit Friday when he was greeted by a mother and daughter from his country, according to The Telegraph.

“The daughter is more beautiful than the mother,” the president reportedly said.

“But the daughter might catch the flu, yet. Have you seen her cleavage?” the politician from Portugal’s conservative PSD party added, with a smirk.

Political opponents in Portugal noted he’d recently mocked an overweight woman by offering her a seat before asking “Can the chair take it?” — and demanded an apology for both comments.

“This is 2023. You can’t just walk up to a woman you don’t know and make a joke about her weight or about her cleavage,” Isabel Moreira, a Socialist Party MP, reportedly said.

When pressed by journalists, De Sousa stood abreast with his statements, according to the report.

“It wasn’t a sexist comment. I didn’t think of it like that and neither did the young woman or the old ladies. It wasn’t sexist at all,” he insisted.

De Sousa had recently also made headlines for defending Luis Rubiales, who resigned from his post as the head of Spain’s football federation for forcibly kissing a player in the country’s championship women’s World Cup squad.

When asked for his opinion of the incident, which is under criminal investigation, de Sousa reportedly said it was “a minor issue” compared with the war in Ukraine.