Recently inaugurated Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is “expressing regret” for his comments at a fiery press conference, in which he called President Obama a “son of a bitch” or “son of a whore” (depending on how you translate the Tagalog) and threatened to swear at him in a planned bilateral meeting.
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Following the cancellation of the meeting, President Duterte said on Tuesday that he regretted his comments about President Obama.
Obama learned about the insult as he emerged from the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, China.
President Duterte said of Obama’s plans to ask about the killings, “You must be respectful”.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte called Barack Obama a “son of a whore” on Monday, September 5, as he vowed not to be lectured by the USA leader on human rights when they meet in Laos, where the Association of South-East Asian Nations summit is being held.
“All of the attention frankly was on those comments, and therefore not on the very substantive agenda that we have with the Philippines”, he told reporters.
In a statement read out by his spokesman, Duterte said that while his “strong comments” in response to questions by a reporter “elicited concern and distress, we also regret it came across as a personal attack on the USA president”. He’s visited the country twice in his second term, and announced on a stop there in November the return of a US military presence at a critical naval base on the South China Sea.
Obama responded to the outburst by cancelling the talks, which prompted a Duterte to offer a qualified expression of regret.
Unimpressed, Obama threatens to put a freeze on USA foreign aid to the Philippines.
National Security Council spokesman Ned Price says Obama will meet instead with President Park Geun-hye of South Korea.
Duterte was elected into office in a landslide.
He said in a speech as the summit got under way that his push to make the U.S. a key player in Asia-Pacific was not some “passing fad”. Everybody has a awful record of extrajudicial killing. Prime Minister Lee agreed saying that one drug trafficker destroys 10,000 lives.
“He’s a colorful guy”, Obama joked.
President Duterte today affirmed that he continues to value the alliance with the United States, noting that both our countries share common goals in their pursuit of the war against drugs, terrorists, crime and poverty.
Duterte might have picked an especially bad time to insult a USA president.
At the ASEAN summit Tuesday, Duterte defended the rise in killings.
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They discussed issues surrounding the South China Sea where both countries have territorial disputes with China.
