Donald Trump endorsed Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign of extrajudicial killings for his ‘war on drugs’ that has taken more than 4,000 lives in the six months since he came to power.
The other parts of the conversation were not aired in the video but in a statement released by his aides, Duterte said "he was wishing me success in my campaign against the drug problem."
"He understood the way we are handling it and I said that there's nothing wrong in protecting a country," Duterte said. "It was a bit very encouraging in the sense that I supposed that what he really wanted to say was that we would be the last to interfere in the affairs of your own country."
"He said that ... well, we are doing it as a sovereign nation, the right way," Duterte said in his statement. It was unclear whether he or Trump remarked that the widely criticized crackdown was being carried out properly.
Duterte has lashed out at President Barack Obama, the State Department, EU and U.N. officials and human rights groups for raising concerns over the crackdown, which has left more than 4,000 suspected drug dealers and user dead, including many who are feared to have been gunned down in gangland-style killings.
While being antagonistic to the U.S., his country's treaty ally, Duterte has reached out to China and Russia.
During his campaign Trump let it be known he was a fan of treating protesters with brutality. Apparently he is also a fan of thousands of brutal murders without a trial.
By Megha Mohan
Duterte's landslide victory came after a campaign during which he vowed to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office and told drug pushers and others: "I'll dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there."
The War on Drugs - the terminology has now been softened to the Crackdown on Corruption - has resulted in more than 4,000 killings since President Duterte came to power in June.
I think back to conversations with the country's Official Commission on Human Rights, as well as Human Rights Watch; that this is, in fact, less of a "war on drugs" and more of a "war on the poor".
They are "the country's poorest, most marginalised, most vulnerable citizens", says Phelim Kine, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "The victims have been unemployed or underemployed urban poor who eke out subsistence existences as street vendors or tricycle taxi drivers."