“He could be crazy so we’ll see what happens”
by digby
I wrote about President Trump’s latest phone call with the psychopathic leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte right after it happened last month:
A coupla’ brutal demagogues sittin’ around talkin’
by digby
I wrote about the Duterte invitation for Salon this morning:
A few weeks ago, the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography was awarded to a freelance photojournalist named Daniel Berehulak for a multimedia report published in the New York Times last December called “They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals.” It documented the deaths of 57 homicide victims in the Philippine government’s brutal campaign against drug users and dealers. The photographer had this comment upon winning the prize:
The story is indeed important. Those photographs document the grotesque campaign of terror in the Philippines, which experts believe has left more than 7,000 people dead in less than a year from extrajudicial killings at the hands of police and vigilantes.
The Philippines is currently run by President Rodrigo Duterte, who won the election last June after in his final campaign speech, “Forget the laws on human rights, if I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor [of the coastal city of Davao]. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out because I’d kill you.” He kept to his word, telling his police forces the day after he was sworn in, “Do your duty, and in the process, [if] you kill 1,000 persons, I will protect you.” Last September, he proudly compared himself to Adolf Hitler:Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now there is 3 million, what is it, 3 million drug addicts [in the Philippines], there are. I’d be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have [me]. You know, my victims, I would like to be all criminals, to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.
Duterte admitted to being a murderer, and not in the abstract sense of being a leader who orders killing by others. He says he has personally pulled the trigger. As the New York Times reported last December:
“I killed about three of them because there were three of them,” Mr. Duterte told reporters at a news conference in Manila, the capital. “I don’t really know how many bullets from my gun went inside their bodies.”
“It happened. I cannot lie about it,” he said in English.
The remarks followed comments he made on Monday, when he told business leaders that as mayor, he had patrolled the streets on a motorcycle and killed criminal suspects in order to set an example to his police officers.
None of that stopped President-elect Donald Trump from chatting up Duterte after the election, telling him that he was going about his war on drugs “the right way.” And last Saturday night the White House released a statement that they two men had had another “very friendly conversation,” in which they’d talked about regional security and “discussed the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs.” (That’s one way of putting it.) It said that “President Trump enjoyed the conversation and looks forward to visiting the Philippines in November” for the East Asia Summit meeting.
Then the statement said that Trump had invited the admitted murderer and Hitler admirer, Rodrigo Duterte, to the White House.
According to the New York Times, White House aides were “slack-jawed” at the invitation and both the State Department and National Security Council were expected to object internally. The call was simply supposed to be part of a hand-holding exercise for Asian nations whose leaders were feeling neglected by Trump’s single-minded focus on China, Japan and North Korea.
Reince Priebus tried to clean it up on ABC’s “This Week,” saying that Trump was rounding up support against North Korea. That might make some sense if it weren’t for the fact that Manila is 1,700 miles south of Pyongyang, and the Philippine navy can hardly defend its own coastline. North Korea has never shown any interest in the Philippines and it’s fairly obvious that Donald Trump couldn’t find either country on a map without color coding and multiple guesses.
No, Trump was making pro-forma calls they told him to make and simply hit it off with the violent, authoritarian president of the Philippines. He’s had similarly “warm” conversations and meetings with the autocratic leaders of Egypt and Turkey and, as he did on the campaign trail, he continues to praise Kim Jong-un for being a very impressive young man. Everyone knows in what high regard he holds Vladimir Putin.
Trump is a natural authoritarian and is drawn to others like him. It’s obvious that he has little respect for constitutional principles. This weekend alone he has indicated that he wants to consolidate his power because he thinks the system is archaic and needs to be changed for the good of the country. His chief of staff said twice on Sunday that the Trump administration is “looking at” changing the First Amendment. Since he has put Jeff Sessions — a ruthless, doctrinaire drug warrior — in charge of federal law enforcement, it’s possible that Trump’s compliments on Duterte’s brutal tactics might be more of a consultation about best methods and practices.
Even setting aside the president’s autocratic temperament, he is also still involved in his family business. One cannot discount the fact that all the despots he has cultivated are leaders in countries in which he either has ongoing deals or whose bankers are rumored to have business with him. (We don’t know the specifics, because Trump has refused to reveal the extent of his business ties or divest himself of them.)
Time magazine put together a handy map of all the deals that are public knowledge, and the locations include Egypt, Turkey and Russia, as well as other nations in Russia’s economic orbit. But the deal with the Philippines is very big and very current:
Trump Tower Manila is the most advanced of a series of Trump-branded buildings planned by property magnate Jose E.B. Antonio (though it remains under construction today, with scaffolding up, exposed pipes and breeze blocks stacked outside). Just before Trump’s election, the Philippines appointed Antonio as its special envoy to the U.S.
Assistant to POTUS models in an ad for POTUS’s new Tower in Manila. President of Philippines just got WH invite. pic.twitter.com/zEDxTkGN17— Peter Brack (@peterbrack) May 1, 2017
For multiple, overlapping ideological and financial reasons the president of the the United States has seen fit to invite a confessed murderer and brutal tyrant to the White House. That should alarm every one of us.
The Intercept got a copy of the transcript of the actual call and it’s worse than we knew. Here’s President Trump:
“I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
Duterte:
“This is the scourge of my nation now and I have to do something to preserve the Filipino nation.”
Trump:
“I understand that and fully understand that and I think we had a previous president who did not understand that, but I understand that and we have spoken about this before.”
They went on to talk about the threat of North Korea as if they had no more knowledge of the situation than two random fellows sitting at the end of bar in Poughkeepsie:
“We can’t let a madman with nuclear weapons let on the loose like that. We have a lot of firepower, more than he has times 20, but we don’t want to use it,” Trump told Duterte. (In fact, the U.S. has 6,800 nuclear warheads and North Korea is thought to have about 10.) “You will be in good shape,” he added.
“We have a lot of firepower over there. We have two submarines — the best in the world — we have two nuclear submarines — not that we want to use them at all,” Trump said. “I’ve never seen anything like they are, but we don’t have to use this, but he could be crazy so we will see what happens.”
During the call, Trump echoed his publicly stated position that he wants China to take the lead in addressing potential threats from North Korea. “I hope China solves the problem. They really have the means because a great degree of their stuff come [sic] through China,” Trump said. “But if China doesn’t do it, we will do it.”
Duterte then volunteered to call Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding, “The other option is a nuclear blast which is not good for everybody.” Both leaders expressed a preference for avoiding a nuclear confrontation, but nonetheless, Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and a leading expert on nuclear weapons, was alarmed by the exchange.
“Trump has a disturbing tendency to talk very cavalierly about nuclear weapons — as if he is an impulse away from using them,” Cirincione said. “He doesn’t seem to understand the vast destructive nature of these weapons and the line he would be crossing by using them.”
I don’t know what to say anymore. Anyone who thinks this is just a political game and that Trump is not a uniquely dangerous president needs to think again.
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