{"id":720332,"date":"2026-06-23T02:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T02:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720332\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T02:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T02:26:10","slug":"duck-steals-the-spotlight-at-mexico-press-briefing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720332\/","title":{"rendered":"Duck Steals the Spotlight at Mexico Press Briefing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Wearing the green jersey of Mexico&#8217;s national soccer team and a FIFA tie, he waddled into the room ahead of President Claudia Sheinbaum, took a seat facing reporters, and quickly became the star of her Monday morning news briefing. Merl\u00edn the duck\u2014Mexico&#8217;s unofficial World Cup mascot\u2014didn&#8217;t take any questions; his owner, Carla G\u00f3mez, did that for him. <\/p>\n<p>  G\u00f3mez, a street vendor who sells water and soft drinks, introduced her family with pride and determination, presenting them as representative of countless other working-class Mexicans, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newser.com\/article\/2d8f9bd2e4354c8c9c87fbd1dc8f1bc6\/merlin-the-duck-steals-the-spotlight-at-president-sheinbaums-news-briefing.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AP<\/a> reports. &#8220;We are the working part&#8221; of Mexico, she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Wearing the green jersey of Mexico&#8217;s national soccer team and a FIFA tie, he waddled into the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[122488,64548,27545,26,79,403,201],"class_list":["post-720332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-duck","tag-mascot","tag-mexico","tag-science","tag-soccer","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}