Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, known for his inflammatory, no-holds barred remarks, clearly does not like the U.S. ambassador to the country.
While speaking to a group of soldiers at Camp Lapu-Lapu in the Philippines Friday, Duterte said his recent meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry went well, saying, “I am OK with him.”
But when it came to describing U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg, Duterte called him “gay” and a “son of a bitch,” The Korea Times reports.
“I quarreled with his gay ambassador,” Duterte said, speaking of Goldberg, Kerry’s subordinate. “I am pissed with him. He meddled during the election, giving statements here and there. He was not supposed to do that.”
“That son of a bitch really annoyed me,” Duterte added.
Enmity between the two emerged in April, when Duterte, not yet president, made fun of an Australian missionary who was raped and murdered in 1989.
“She was beautiful,” Duterte said at the time. “I should have raped her in the first place as a mayor.”
Such a statement provoked outrage from Amanda Gorely, the Australian ambassador to the Philippines, and Goldberg immediately stepped in to support her point.
“I can only agree with the colleague from the Australian Embassy,” Goldberg said. “Any statements by anyone, anywhere that either degrade women or trivialize issues so serious as rape or murder, are not ones that we condone.”
Goldberg added that the U.S. did not condone such an offensive and outlandish statement. Duterte was not at all phased, responding that Goldberg shouldn’t interfere with the election in the Philippines. Duterte even suggested he might end relations with the U.S. over the incident.
Duterte recently attracted heat from the international media for saying in a national address Sunday, “I don’t care about human rights, believe me” in reference to his crackdown on drug users and traffickers, which has resulted in 800 deaths since he was elected in May.
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