US President, Duterte discuss ‘madman’ Kim and drug killings

President Donald Trump labelled North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un a “madman with nuclear weapons” during a private phone conversation with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte last month, just days before stating publicly that he would be “honoured” to meet with Kim.

In the April 29 call, Trump sought Duterte’s input on whether Kim is “stable or not stable” and expressed some satisfaction in North Korea’s recent failed missile tests, noting that “all his rockets are crashing. That’s the good news”, according to a transcript of the conversation made by the Philippine Government on May 2 and obtained Tuesday by the Washington Post.

Duterte responded that Kim is “playing with his bombs, his toys” and offered that “his mind is not working well and he just might go crazy one moment”. That prompted Trump to point out that the United States has “a lot of firepower over there”, includ- ing “two nuclear submarines” sent by the Pentagon to the region last month.

Later in the call, Trump raised the stakes of the escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula when he observed: “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.”

Since taking office in June, Duterte has moved to hedge on the Philippines’ long-standing defence alliance with the US by establishing closer relations with China. And his Administration has overseen a brutal extrajudicial campaign that has resulted in the killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers.

Trump has not spoken out against that strategy, and in their call he praised Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem”.

“Many countries have the problem, we have the problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that,” Trump said, according to the transcript.

After Duterte replied that drugs are the “scourge of my nation now and I have to do something to preserve the Filipino nation,” Trump appeared to take a swipe at his predecessor, Barack Obama, saying: “I understand that and fully understand that and I think we had a previous President who did not understand that.”