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| Bing-bong, when we were strong folks, when we were strong |
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte promised to kill 100,000 criminals within his first six months in office and said there would be so many corpses in Manila Bay that the “fish will grow fat.”
Turns out the controversial leader may have some firsthand experience: On Monday, Duterte claimed that he’d personally killed criminal suspects during his time as mayor of his home city of Davao.
"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?” he said while speaking to business leaders at the presidential palace. "I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”
A reporter mentions that what Trump is saying echoes the rhetoric of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen the extrajudicial killing of thousands of alleged drug dealers and users in recent months. The President-elect offers no objection to the comparison. “Well, hey, look, this is bad stuff,” he says. “They slice them up, they carve their initials in the girl’s forehead, O.K. What are we supposed to do? Be nice about it?”
Days later, Trump will have a phone call with the Philippine President, who called President Obama the “son of a whore” a few months ago. A readout from the Philippine government subsequently announces that during the call, Trump praised Duterte’s deadly drug crackdown as “the right way.”