Day 298: Trump Laughs at American Press Alongside Mass Murderer, Cowers in Private Yet Again

Donald Trump is in the Philippines, astonishingly meeting with and standing alongside their president, Rodrigo Duterte.

Here’s what we wrote about Duterte on Day 101:

Meanwhile, Duterte has admitted to personally carrying out the killing of suspects:

“In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys [police] that if I can do it why can’t you. And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”

The BBC reported Duterte’s open opposition to human rights and his suggestion that even lawyers merely defending drug suspects might be targeted by his police force.

Duterte’s war on drugs has led to the murder of thousands of suspects nationwide without any semblance of due process. Amnesty International has bluntly stated, “If you are poor, you are killed.”

To see Trump standing and smiling next to Duterte is jarring. Duterte once bragged, “I am a dictator? Yes, it is true.”

As if the visual of the two men standing shoulder-to-shoulder and shaking hands isn’t ugly enough, it opens up Trump to more scrutiny and questionable situations.

For instance, Duterte stopped American reporters’ questions, calling them “spies,” as Trump chortled like a high school bully’s sidekick.

Then, when Trump had the chance to push Duterte on the pressing human rights issues in the Philippines during their one-on-one meeting, Trump — in what has become a pattern around world leaders in important moments on both the Asian trip and in the last 298 days — chickened out.

298 days in, 1164 to go

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