MANILA, Philippines – Mark his words: President Rodrigo Duterte will never again set foot in the U.S., which he described as a “lousy” country, even if it’s President Donald Trump who would request him to do so.
“There will never be a time that I will go to America during my term or even thereafter…So what makes that guy think that I am going to America?” said Duterte during a press conference in Davao City on Friday, July 21.
Democratic Party’s James Patrick McGovern, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Massachusetts’s second congressional district, was the guy that the President was referring to.
Speaking on Thursday at a congressional inquiry into the war on drugs in the Philippines, McGovern, co-chair of the U.S. House’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, said Duterte could expect many protesters, including himself, should the Philippine leader visit the U.S. upon Trump’s invitation.
Duterte on Friday got back at his American critic and challenged McGovern to also investigate numerous cases of human rights violations committed by his own country, especially in the Middle East.
“Marami silang [They have many] human rights violation. It would be good for the U.S. Congress to start their investigation of their own violations of how many civilians (were) killed in the prosecution of the war in the Middle East,” said Duterte.
“Otherwise, I will be forced to investigate you also. I will start with your past sins and I will produce from your archives, the photos of the people you murdered here in the Philippines. The Moro massacre…I can do what you can do ten times over,” he said.
The President added that he had already been to the U.S. and he never liked what he saw there. “Tapos na ako d’yan. I’ve seen America and it’s lousy.”
