Should he be called an attention-seeker?
President Rodrigo Duterte said at a Partido Demokratiko Pilipino – Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) campaign rally in Marikina City yesterday that he intentionally uses expletives in his speeches because he knows the media would report about it.
In a video posted by the Presidential Communications (Government of the Philippines) last night, Duterte said, “The media can weave a lot of stories out of a single line.”
“That’s why I engage [with the media]. I purposely [say] putang ina (son of a bitch), so the [media] is challenged,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.
“‘Duterte isn’t educated,’ correct, I’m not,” he said.
“They say I’m not a statesman, correct. Because there’s no statesman subject in our curriculum, is there?”
“They say I’m rude, that’s right, my mouth is rude,” he added.
“Son of a bitch, I am even ruder to [these] rude media, so they will write and work more. I’ll give them work because, in the end, she will fight against herself.”
The president added that he believes the media didn’t want him to become president because he doesn’t belong to any of the country’s ruling elite.
“I am not your president,” he added, directing it to the media. “I am for the people. Because the people voted for me.”
Duterte, who likes to ramble in his speeches, said these statements after once again criticizing the Catholic Church, one of his favorite topics.
Duterte said that God didn’t tell him to kill “bad boys,” but that he could insult the Catholic priests who criticize him.
Duterte often calls out the Catholic Church and clergymen in his public speeches due to their criticisms of his government’s bloody drug war. At one event in December, he even urged the public to “kill” Catholic bishops whom he accused of lambasting his government.
He later took this back but still continues to publicly blast the Church.
