Boris Johnson's long record of insults, gaffes

LONDON – Britain's new foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has a long history of making provocative and sometimes insulting comments that are distinctly undiplomatic in their tone. Here are some examples:

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In April, Johnson criticized President Barack Obama for endorsing Britain's position in the EU in a newspaper column and suggested that his attitude might be based on his Kenyan heritage. Recounting a story about a bust of Winston Churchill that was returned to the U.K., he wrote: "Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire — of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender."

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Johnson won a prize in May for submitting the most offensive poem, in which he insults Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with vulgar and sexual-oriented slurs.

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Johnson compared U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to a sadistic nurse in a 2007 column in the newspaper The Telegraph. "She's got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital."

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In December, Johnson argued in a column in The Telegraph that Britain should work together with Russian President Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic State extremists. That didn't discourage him from describing the Russian leader in this way: "Despite looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf, he is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant."

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Also in December, U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump implied that parts of London were dangerous due to radicalization. Johnson responded by calling Trump ill-informed and said: "The only reason I wouldn't go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump."

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Johnson said in an interview in May that the EU is aiming for a similar goal as Hitler did by trying to build a super-state. "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically," he told The Telegraph. "The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods."

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As a newspaper columnist in the early 2000s, Johnson used a derogatory term for black children in a story about Queen Elizabeth II and the Commonwealth.

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In 2006, Johnson offended an entire country by linking Papua New Guinea to "cannibalism and chief-killings" in his newspaper column. He afterwards issued an apology for causing offense.

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Johnson was in 2004 ordered by Conservative Party leader Michael Howard to apologize to Liverpool, because he had accused the residents of the city of wallowing in "victim status" because of public grieving after a Liverpool resident was taken hostage and slain in Iraq.