Priebus Defends Trump’s Chummy Call With Philippine President Duterte

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus attends a meeting on African American History Month, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington African-American History Month meeting, Washington DC, USA - 01 Fe... White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus attends a meeting on African American History Month, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington African-American History Month meeting, Washington DC, USA - 01 Feb 2017 (Rex Features via AP Images) MORE LESS
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White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on Sunday defended a glowing readout of President Donald Trump’s call with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose crackdown on illegal drugs has led to a spike in extrajudicial killings.

“It praises him for working very hard to rid his country of drugs. This is someone with an abysmal human rights record who’s been accused of basically mass extrajudicial killings,” ABC’s Jon Karl asked Priebus on “This Week.” “Did that not come up in the phone call? And why is it not mentioned?”

“Well, I didn’t sit through the entire call,” Priebus said. “But it is something that this president in the Philippines is claiming that he’s working towards. Obviously we want to encourage him to do better.”

In March, Human Rights Watch reported that more than 7,000 killings have taken place since Duterte took office last year.

The official readout of the call also noted that Trump invited Duterte to the White House “to discuss the importance of the the United States-Philippines alliance.”

“This call — the purpose of the call — was all about North Korea,” Priebus told Karl. “He’s been speaking a lot to all of our partners in Southeast Asia.”

Priebus said Trump is trying to get “all of our folks together.”

“Whether they’re good folks, bad folks, people that we wish would do better in their country, doesn’t matter. We’ve got to be on the same page,” he said.

Priebus did not specify which of those categories Duterte would fall into. He also cited Trump’s decision to launch missile strikes on a Syrian air base in April following a chemical weapons attack.

“Look at what President Trump and his team did in Syria,” Priebus said. “I mean, that was a matter of human rights.”

 

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Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for pshah pshah says:

    Did Reince mention how efficiently the trains are running in the Phillipines?

  2. “Whether they’re good folks, bad folks, people that we wish would do better in their country, doesn’t matter. We’ve got to be on the same page,” he said.

    Yes, Reince. Keep using guys like Duterte as examples and Trump will be on the same page : Of the Indictments filed at the Hague.

  3. Posted it on the last Wrenched thread, apropos here as well.

    Reince Priebus, minus vowels: RNC PR BS

  4. We’ve worked with bad guys before, sometimes in ways that seemed forced upon us, and other times less justifiably. But I question what possible help Duterte offers with North Korea, that’s just nonsense aimed at the large segment of Americans who couldn’t find either country on a map. And you have to question Trump’s reflexive, enthusiastic embrace of autocratic killers. That’s not realpolitik. That’s being a sicko wannabe.

  5. ”This is someone with an abysmal human rights record who’s been accused of basically mass extrajudicial killings,” ABC’s Jon Karl asked Priebus.

    I’m so old, I can remember when we called those “murder”…

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