WHETHER or not President Duterte would get to visit President Trump at the White House should he go to the United States is no longer in question, but whether he (Duterte) will go. “It’s whether he wants to go. He has had so many invitations already from President Trump, he really likes Duterte,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., said on Wednesday while waiting at the premier airport for the arrival of 27 migrant Filipinos from Lebanon.
The first time that Trump invited Duterte was when they talked over the phone way back in 2017, where they discussed North Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
Trump invited Duterte to visit the White House, which was confirmed when the White House released a statement saying Trump “enjoyed the conversation,” which it described as “very friendly.”
In their talk, Trump acknowledged the Philippine government was fighting “very hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries throughout the world.” He said he looks forward to his own visit to the Philippines in November (2017), and that the two countries were “now heading in a very positive direction.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Trump. I like you. We have the same kind of mouth,” the White House released this conversation over the telephone, which probably endeared the Philippines’s tough-talking Chief Executive to Trump, who is also a no-holds barred talker—on Twitter.
Questions of Duterte’s visit to the US have arisen anew after Trump signed recently the US 2020 budget that included a provision inserted by several senators, mandating the Secretary of State to deny entry to Philippine officials about whom it finds “credible information” of involvement in the “unjust detention” of Sen. Leila de Lima, who earlier accused Duterte of leading her persecution because of her criticism of his tolerance for extrajudicial killings.
Earlier, Malacañang said President Duterte hates the cold and would probably visit the US in the summer. The two Chief Executives were scheduled to meet when President Duterte makes a stopover in Florida on the way to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting in Santiago, Chile, in October this year, which was canceled due to ongoing protests.
Some quarters also held the view that Trump would have liked to be seen with Duterte, who received an 87-percent approval rating in December, and is highly popular among overseas Filipino workers (OFW).
Trump, gearing for a 2020 preelection, would probably like to endear himself with Filipino-American voters, according to this school of thought.
The straight-talking Duterte, nicknamed “the Punisher,” had declared a soft spot for Trump early on. He had also cursed at former President Barack Obama in 2017, vowing to sever the longstanding alliance between the US and the Philippines.
Trump has returned Duterte’s overtures of friendship—despite the reported extrajudicial killings in Duterte’s antidrug campaign in the Philippines. In a December 2016 phone call, Duterte said, Trump was supportive of his crusade. “He was quite sensitive also to our worry about drugs,” Duterte said of his phone pal. “And he wishes me well.”