Obama cancels a planned meeting with the Philippine president.
President responds to epithet by saying he’s a ‘colorful guy’
After being called an obscenity by the president of the Philippines, President Barack Obama canceled a meeting with the leader, Rodrigo Duterte, scheduled for Tuesday.
Duterte had threatened to curse out the U.S. commander in chief if Obama raised the issue of extrajudicial killings by Philippine authorities in a sweeping crackdown on drug trafficking. Speaking to reporters, Duterte, who took office in June, said the Philippines is a “sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony,” according to the Associated Press.
Blue language
He added that: “I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. ‘Putang ina’ I will swear at you in that forum.” That is the Tagalog phrase for “son of a bitch.”
Asked to respond during a news conference after the Group of 20 Summit in China, Obama said earlier Monday that he had been told of Duterte’s comments, but the U.S. president shrugged it off as another in a line of “colorful statements” from Duterte.
“Clearly, he’s a colorful guy,” Obama said. The president added that he had asked his staff to speak with their Philippine counterparts to “make sure if I’m having a meeting, it’s productive and we’re getting something done.”
Hours later, Ned Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that the meeting with Duterte had been canceled and that Obama would instead meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
The rift with the leader of a U.S. treaty ally was the most glaring example of how Obama has frequently found himself bound to foreign countries and leaders whose ties to the U.S. are critical even if their values diverge.
In Hangzhou this week, Obama heaped praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping for hosting the Group of 20 economic summit in his country, an authoritarian state long accused of human rights violations. His next stop was another one-party communist country with a dismal rights record: Laos, where disappearances have fueled concerns about a government crackdown.
And sitting down with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Obama made no mention in public of the roughly 35,000 people Erdogan’s government detained following the summer’s failed coup in Turkey. Instead, he worked to reassure the NATO ally the U.S. would help bring to justice whoever was responsible for plotting the coup.
Putin meetings more blunt
Obama also spent about 90 minutes Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, another leader whose fate seems intertwined with Obama’s in all the wrong ways. On opposing sides of many global issues, the U.S. and Russia are nonetheless trying to broker a deal to address the Syrian civil war.
“President Putin’s less colorful,” Obama said, comparing him with Duterte. “But typically the tone of our meetings is candid, blunt, businesslike.”
Last month, Duterte said he didn’t mind Secretary of State John Kerry but “had a feud with his gay ambassador — son of a bitch, I’m annoyed with that guy.” He applied the same moniker to an Australian missionary who was gang raped and killed, and even to Pope Francis.