A GUNMAN held for trying to kill Argentina’s vice president had criticised her during a TV rant weeks before the doorstep ambush.
Fernando Montiel, 35, allegedly aimed a pistol at Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and pulled the trigger outside her home last night.
The loaded gun jammed inches from Ms Kirchner's face and she was unharmed in the "assassination attempt".
Montiel – said to have a neo-Nazi tattoo on his arm – was bundled away by the vice president's security guards.
Hours after the Brazil-born driver's arrest, clips of two TV recent interviews emerged on social media.
In one from five weeks ago, he asked what he thought of the appointment of Sergio Massa as the country’s new minister of economy.
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He answered: “Massa no, no way” before adding in reference to Ms Kirchner and 2023 presidential candidate Javier Milei: “Or Cristina or Milei.”
The video went viral today along with a second TV interview in which he and his candy floss seller girlfriend criticised benefit scroungers.
Monteil later boasted about his TV interviews on Argentine TV station Cronica.
In one Instagram post he wrote: “I appeared on Cronica TV criticising the government and Sergio Massa and the journalists congratulated me saying I knew about politics and should be a journalist."
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The TV station was re-running the videos on its website today with the strapline: “The hitman who wanted to kill Cristina spoke to Cronica.”
Montiel, nicknamed Tedi, was born in Brazil but speaks perfect Spanish with a local accent after moving to Argentina in 1993.
Another Instagram post shows the death metal fan trying to take a selfie with Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died while on tour in Colombia in March.
Monteil said: "Video with Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters a week before he died.
"I feel his death very much having known him before he went."
His social media pictures also reveal he had an Iron Cross tattoo on his right hand and a Black Sun tattoo on his left elbow.
The symbol – schwarze Sonne in German – was used in SS chief Heinrich Himmler's castle and often appears on neo-Nazi flags.
Payton Gendron, 18, used it in a twisted manifesto issued before the Buffalo shooting rampage killed ten in May.
And white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 mosque worshippers in New Zealand, had a Black Sun symbol on his rucksack.
Montiel’s alleged links to far-right groups were being investigated today amid claims he followed extremist groups on his now-deleted social media.
It also emerged he was arrested in March last year after being found in possession of a knife.
The 14-inch weapon fell out of his Chevrolet Prisma after he was stopped by police over a missing number plate.
He said it was for self-defence and the case was later dropped.
'HATE AND VIOLENCE'
Montiel, who has an Argentine mum and Chilean dad, is said to have used a .32-calibre Bersa semi-automatic to try to kill Ms Kirchner, 69.
Shocking footage showed the handgun being pointed close to her face outside her home in Buenos Aires last night.
Hundreds of supporters had gathered to greet her when suddenly an arm holding a pistol was thrust out of the crowd.
Dramatic footage shows the terrified politician ducking and holding her head as her bodyguards overpowered the assailant.
President Alberto Fernandez said the gun had been loaded with five bullets but jammed when fired.
He said: "A man pointed a firearm at her head and pulled the trigger.
"Cristina is still alive because, for some reason yet to be confirmed, the gun did not fire."
He added it was "the most serious incident since we recovered democracy in 1983 after a military dictatorship".
Sergio Massa, the economy minister, called it an “attempted assassination.”
He tweeted: “When hate and violence prevail over debate, societies are destroyed and situations like these arise: attempted assassination,” he tweeted.
Former President Mauricio Macri also condemned the attack.
He wrote on Twitter: "This very serious event demands an immediate and profound clarification by the judiciary and security forces."
Ms Kirchner is herself a controversial former president and First Lady of Argentina.
She was president from 2007 to 2015, following her husband Nestor's four years in charge from 2003.
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She is currently in the middle of a corruption scandal and was returning from court when she came into contact with the crowd.
Prosecutors accuse her of being involved in a plot to divert public funds, which she denies.
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