On Dec 2, Fri, special assistant to the president Christopher ‘Bong’ Go posted photos on his Facebook account showing President Rodrigo Duterte on the phone. According to Go, Duterte had a “very engaging and animated phone conversation” with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Later on, a Manila Bulletin report said that Trump invited Duterte to visit the White House in 2017.
Then on Sat afternoon (Dec 3), Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella clarified that “Trump didn’t specifically invite Duterte” to go to the White House next year.
By now, nobody’s surprised that statements coming from the president’s camp have to be clarified within the next 24 hours.
But for the sake of accuracy, here is the full statement of President Duterte about his phone call with Trump as released by Malacañang.
“The President-elect Trump wishes the, to extend his warmest regards to the Filipino people. And in just a few minutes, we were talking a lot of things.
He was quite sensitive also to our worry about drugs. And he wishes me well to, in my campaign and he said that… well we are doing it as a sovereign nation, the right way. And he wishes us well. And I said that, well, we assured him of our ties with America.
I appreciate the response that I got from President-elect Trump and I would like to wish him success. He will be a good president for the United States of America. I am very sure.
And he has invited me to visit New York and Washington DC, he said that if I’m around, he wants to be notified of my presence and maybe—
And I mentioned to him about the ASEAN Summit next year and he said that he will try his best to be here. He wants to attend the Summit and that would be great for our country.
I could sense a good rapport, an animated President-elect Trump. And he was wishing me success in my campaign against the drug problem.
He understood the way we are handling it and I said that there’s nothing wrong in protecting a country. It was a bit very encouraging in the sense that I supposed that what he really wanted to say was that we would be the last to interfere in the affairs of your own country.”
Well, what do you think? Did Trump invite Duterte or not? Do you think they’ll get along well? We could only hope for the best.
