Why The World Thinks The Philippines Has A Crazy President

In the Philippines, the President does have the power to pardon himself. “Pardon given to Rodrigo Duterte for the crime of multiple murder,” he joked in front of a crowd.

A reporter asked Duterte what he would do if he caught his own children taking drugs. He probably thought he’d catch Duterte off-guard, but Duterte didn’t hesitate. He replied, “I will kill him.”

“If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself,” Duterte told his people. “Getting their parents to do it would be too painful.”

People on his list get anonymous threats from strangers. One showed a reporter a text message from an unknown number, reading nothing more than, “Bro, just wait. You’ll be next.”

After getting trapped in a traffic jam in Manila, the country’s capital, Duterte asked who could be coming to town that would cause so much gridlock. “They said it was the pope,” Duterte reported. “I wanted to say, Pope, son of a whore, go home. Don’t visit anymore.”

When the UN criticized Duterte’s take on crime, he got hostile. With his trademark eloquence, Duterte declared, “You do not just go out and give ash—tting statement against a country.”

He went on to call the UN expert who wanted to investigate him “a very stupid expert” and gave them his list of 10 bad things he can say about the group. He started with calling them inutile. “F—k you UN, you can’t even solve the Middle East carnage,” Duterte said. “Shut up all of you.”

Barack Obama had planned to meet and talk to Duterte in person, but it didn’t happen. Duterte, anticipating their meeting, publicly warned Obama not to bring up human rights issues. “I do not have any master except the Filipino people. Nobody but nobody,” he declared. “‘You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions.’ Son of a bitch, I will swear at you in that forum.”

In public, Obama laughed it off, saying, “Clearly, he’s a colorful guy,” and he canceled the meeting.

When people started to protest against Duterte’s plans to massacre thousands of Filipino people, he didn’t shy from the legacy he knew he’d leave. “Hitler massacred three million Jews,” Duterte told his supporters. “Now, there are three million drug addicts . . . I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

It wasn’t even the only time he gleefully compared himself to a tyrant. Later, he said, “I will retire with the reputation of Idi Amin. I am not afraid of human rights. I will not allow my country to go to the dogs.”

“Forget the laws on human rights,” Duterte told his voters. If elected, he promised, he would execute 100,000 people in the first months. “It’s going to be bloody.”

The people loved it. Duterte won the election by a landslide, with nearly 15 million votes, and he went through with his promise. Shortly after taking office, he introduced a shoot-to-kill order allowing police to gun down any suspected drug dealers on sight.

“If you want me to become your president, you should know everything about me,” Duterte told his supporters. “They are telling me that they heard I am a womanizer. That is very true.”

Duterte had more than one wife, he told the crowd. There was another woman he’d gotten pregnant on a trip to the United States, and he had two other girlfriends on the side. “I do not support them with the money from the government,” he promised, “but from my own money and allowances.”

“They raped all of the women,” Duterte said. “There was this Australian lay minister . . . I saw her face and I thought, ‘Son of a bitch. What a pity.’ ” He wasn’t upset because she was raped, though—he was upset because he wasn’t invited. “The mayor should have been first.”