Trump claims a win over Obama: 'Warm rapport' with authoritarian Duterte, who called the US 'lousy'

By Aaron Blake November 1 at 3:47 PM

President Trump slipped something cryptic into his remarks to reporters on Wednesday: It was about his upcoming trip to the Philippines.

“You remember the Philippines — the last trip made by a president that turned out to be not so good,” Trump said. “Never quite got to land.”

It was, in fact, the second day in a row that Trump mentioned the last administration’s failure to “land” in the Philippines. On Tuesday, he said, “We’re going to the Philippines, which is a strategically important location where the previous administration was not exactly welcome, as you probably remember.”

Trump is no stranger to attacking former president Barack Obama. But these asides — in which he seems to be bragging about his ability to woo Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in a way Obama didn’t — are exceedingly strange.

The first reason is that Obama actually called off his meeting with Duterte — not the Philippines. So it’s unclear what Trump means when he says the Obama administration “was not exactly welcome.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/01/trump-claims-a-win-over-obama-warm-rapport-with-authoritarian-duterte-who-called-the-u-s-lousy