President Trump offered to return a Filipino fugitive who had fled to the US — and did not discuss human rights at all with strongman Rodrigo Duterte, with whom he said he has a “great relationship,” according to a report.
A Duterte spokesman suggested to the Washington Post that he was surprised that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said “human rights briefly came up” during their meeting.
“It was not Trump who raised it. Trump never raised it, honestly,” Harry Roque told the paper Tuesday.
Sanders said earlier that the two leaders discussed ISIS, trade and illegal drugs during their 40-minute sit-down, during which human rights came up “briefly” in the context of the Philippines’ fight against illegal drugs.
Roque said he believes Sanders wanted to make it seem like Trump had raised human rights to mollify his “domestic constituency.”
He said he decided not to challenge her statement right after she distributed it to reporters in an email as a way of compromising with her.
Sanders did not reply to an email by the Washington Post seeking comment about the discrepancy after Roque said “there was no mention of human rights.”
During their meeting, Trump offered to extradite a Filipino fugitive in the US, Roque said.
“Do you want him back?” Trump asked, according to Roque, who did not identify the escapee. “I will send him back because I know you follow the rule of law.”
Roque added that it could be interpreted that Duterte was alluding to human rights issues when he said the drug war was important as a matter of “human development.”
“It’s not as if we are trigger happy,” Duterte apparently told Trump. “It’s not as if we kill people who are kneeling down and shooting them in the head.”
Duterte emphasized to Trump that traditionally strong ties between the two countries had deteriorated over one “sour point” — a reference to former president Barack Obama, Roque said.
Duterte believed Obama was “oblivious to the actual threat presented by drugs in the Philippines,” Roque told the Washington Post
Before boarding Air Force One for his trip back to Washington, Trump told reporters that the Obama administration had a “a lot of problems” in terms of its relationship with the Philippines, calling it “horrible.”
“And now we have a very, very strong relationship with the Philippines, which is really important — less so for trade, in this case, than for military purposes,” he said.
“It is a strategic location — the most strategic location. And, if you look at it, it’s called the most prime piece of real estate from a military standpoint,” he continued.
“So it’s very important that we get along with the Philippines, and we really do. We have a very good relationship. I would actually say probably better than ever before.”