Part One: Duterte: The Mass Murdering Mayor

Duterte’s drug war in the Philippines is now the greatest mass slaughter of civilians in Asia since the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In episode 24, Robert is joined by comedian Blake Wexler to discuss what’s happening in the Philippines and how it is entirely intentional and directed by a single man, Rodrigo Duterte.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmm, Hello again everybody, and welcome to Behind the Bastards,
the show where we tell you everything you don't know
about the very worst people in all of history. Now
on this show, I read a story about someone terrible
to a guest who is coming in cold and this
week my guest is Blake Wexler, stand up comedian. You

(00:22):
just had an album drop called Stuffed Boy. I got
Stuffed Boy. You nailed this stuff Boy nailed it. Excellent, excellent.
How are you doing today? I'm good man, Thanks for
having me. Yeah, I love this idea. It's so cool. Well,
you don't know who we're talking about today. Um, does
the name Rodrigo do Terte mean anything to you? It
does not? Actually, Okay, yeah, this is good, fantastic. I

(00:45):
just took a sip of something that's not derito, so
I'm not going to give them a free ad. But
you did you see me wolf down a significant chunk
of a bag before we got into this, so you
liquefied it with your mouth. I'm fired up and I'm
ready to get into this, so let us start an
episode that I'm I'm right now calling Rodrigo du Terte,
the mayor of murder Town, this is a part one.

(01:06):
He's a politician. Then oh yes, yes, oh is that true?
Very successful politician, excellent title. Currently the President of the Philippines. Okay, yeah,
So early on in his presidency, Donald Trump congratulated Rodrigo Duterte,
President of the Philippines, for doing a quote, unbelievable job
on the drug problem. In February of two thousand eighteen,
a senior administration official said this to the website Axios.

(01:29):
Quote he Trump often jokes about killing drug dealers. He'll say,
you know, the Chinese and Filipinos don't have a drug problem,
they just killed them. Interestingly enough, large parts of both
of those statements are accurate. It would be fair to
call Dutertes drug war in the Philippines unbelievable. In the
last two years, one hundred and eighteen thousand, two hundred
and eighty seven drug users or dealers have been arrested,

(01:50):
and one point three million drug users have turned themselves
into the authorities. More than twenty thousand people, many of
them children, have been killed. Virtually all of them were murdered,
often by mask in on motorcycles. This carnage was all
explicitly promised to the people of the Philippines when they
voted for Rodrigo Duterte. He's been fairly open about his
desire to murder drug addicts, mostly users of shabu or methamphetamine.

(02:11):
In September of two thousand and sixteen, President Arte said this,
if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have and then
he pointed at himself and continued, Hitler massacred three million Jews.
There's three million drug addicts there are. I'd be happy
to slaughter them. So that's who we're talking about today.
Guy who became president promising to kill three percent of

(02:33):
the country, and so far he's kept his promise. Yeah,
the guy will deliver on a promise. Now, I think
he had promised to have killed a lot more by
this point, so you could argue that he's I mean,
every politician they've been to a little bit. He promised
something like sixty thousand and six months or whatever, and
he hasn't made that much. But how do you make

(02:54):
up for that, Like, you know, like we need more
masked men. Well, we ran out of masks, so we
can't do Have you seen the mask shortage lately? It's
there's just nothing left on the shelves. People stop using drugs. Now,
we just have to kill regular people. We're just murdering people,
which they are, they are. They also are killing petty criminals,
pickpockets and stuff are also getting shot dead by by
murder squads, like petty criminals and that like they're passive

(03:16):
aggressive and like they like you interpreted that sentence differently
than it usually is. Just major criminals who are really
really passive aggressive. No, no, no, that's not what's happened. Okay,
that's fair. They're just murdering poor people. Oh that's bad then, yeah, no,
it's it's really terrible. So President dotterte Is drug war

(03:37):
in the Philippines is now the greatest mass slaughter of
civilians in Asia since the camer Rouge in Cambodia. But
much of the death caused by the camar Rouge was
accidental due to their insane and patently idiotic social experiments.
What's happening the Philippines is entirely intentional, directed by a
single man. So how did a man like Rodrigo do
Tarte come to be and how did Filipino democracy allow

(03:59):
for his rise to power? Ready for a history lesson,
I'm very ready here's a quick Uh. Is Manny Pacio
in the Philippines. Yeah, he's coming to the story. He's
a member of Congress and a supporter of Day right, okay, cool? Yeah, yeah,
I mean he doesn't play a big role in this,
but he actually is like very politically active in a
supporter of the mayor's people agenda. God, that guy just

(04:19):
gets worse and worse press over and over. Yet he's
a homophobe, not good at boxing anymore, and he uh,
he supports a murderer all right anyway, Yeah, just wondering murderer. Sorry,
don't you dare take the mass away. Don't undercut this
man's accomplishments. He earned that title. He did, Yes he did, Yes,
yes he did, and yes he can have That was

(04:41):
just shot in the streets. That was his campaign slogan,
by the way, Yes, yes we can shoot pickpockets. Yes
we can accidentally gun down children off of motorcycle. Back
because it's hard to hit drug addicts when you're shooting
at him from a motorcycle. It is, yeah it is. Yeah, Well,
accidents are going to happen. You miss a hundred of

(05:01):
the shots that you don't take. That's a really good
way to look at gunning down people in the street. Yeah.
I've been saying it for years in regards to that issue.
I think American police could adopt that as a motto too.
They definitely could, especially when they're well, I mean, we
all live in Los Angeles, we were all there for
the that's outside of the point the police firing at
a trader Joe's. But oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. You

(05:23):
do get a lot of cases like that in in
the Philippines right now, because there's just essentially guys on
motorcycles roaming around killing people who have been the government
has put on the list as drug pushers or whatever,
and they're just kind of firing into crowds and stuff
a lot of the time. Do they have a cool name? Um? Yeah,
actually they do. I figured they'd have to write yeah, well,
we'll get into that. There is a cool name. Yeah, no,

(05:46):
for sure. They even have like a patch and stuff.
It's pretty sweet. Um. All right, So let's get in
some history so we can understand sort of the context
that Dot came to power, and so Spain was the
first colonial power to take control in the Philippines. Their
rule they're sort of began the fifteen twenties, when fernand
Magellan successfully planted some flags and then got murdered. UH.
Spanish domination nonetheless spread across the island chain, and for

(06:07):
the next three hundred and something years they would be
the dominant power in the archipelago. UH Spain brought many
things to the Philippines, including the Catholic faith. This would
prove to be a decidedly mixed bag, but that's coming
in a little bit. So by the late eighteen hundred,
Spanish power had started to fade. In eighteen ninety six,
self declared president Emilio Aguinaldo led a local insurrectioning in Spain.

(06:28):
By the time the Spanish American War kicked off and
US forces reached the Philippines, Aguinaldo had conquered basically everything
in the Philippines but the capital of Manila. So the
Filipino rebels worked with the U. S. Navy to encircle
the city, but the US refused direct support until her
troops were able to land and replace the Filipinos around Manila. See,
the US was actually communicating directly with Spain during this

(06:50):
whole time, because even though we were actively at war
with them and fighting alongside the insurgents trying to cast
off Spanish control. We still considered Spain the rightful government
of the Philippines. Um the fact that the Filipino people
had actually already picked a president and fought and bled
for a new government didn't really matter to us. So
we sat down and we worked at a deal with
the Spanish garrison commander. He agreed to surrender under the

(07:11):
condition that the US make it look like there'd been
a battle. So he was like, I'll surrender the city,
but you gotta pretend that we fought for it. But
people have to die in this surrender. Well, I don't
think anybody died in the fighting. It was like a
staged battle where they were just kind of like shooting.
So it looked like, Okay, we didn't just surrender Manillas.
Like when your kids you just bang your swords together.

(07:31):
You know, we're fighting with fake swords. That by the way,
I was assuming that we've all had sword fights as children.
Was yeah, but it's not an actual stabbing motion. You're
just hitting. Yeah, I would love to watch a fake battle. Yeah,
it seems like it could have been a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah,
So there were other conditions to the surrender, no Filipino
rebels could be allowed inside the city. So on August,

(07:52):
the fake Battle of Manila was fake fought, and Americans
took the city. Now, you might think that helping a
captive people throw off the chains of colonial bondage would
have been the US is thing, what with that being
our history. Uh. But President William McKinley felt differently. He
decided to annex the islands and reded a better quote,
educate the Filipinos and uplift them and christianize them. He

(08:15):
did not believe that they were capable of governing themselves.
The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish American War,
gave the US the option of buying the Philippines for
twenty million dollars. By January of eighteen ninety nine, they
were ours. Yeah. The assassinated got shot dead by an
anarchist and kind of had it coming. I'm gonna go
ahead and say a fun funk, William McKinley, kind of

(08:36):
a dick. Yeah. Uh. So, as you might have guessed,
the army of free people who had just liberated themselves
from a colonial oppressor, we're not happy with having another
colonial oppressor. Land on top of them. In February, Aguinaldo
and his army attacked the United States Forces. Conventional warfare
was not successful for the Philippine rebels, what with the
machine guns and such, so the Filipino Army turned into

(08:59):
the Filipino and urgency in November of eighteen nine. The U. S.
Army proved profoundly ill suited to guerrilla warfare, which is
something that's never happened again in our history. Right, Yeah, Yeah,
that was the first and the last time. First and
last time. It's the uniforms. They're not breathable. You can't
wear a minute jungle. No. And once we figured out
under armour, we really had counterinsurgency down. That was the key.

(09:20):
It turned out d Yeah, it was a hydration, Yeah
it was. It was a hydration issue. But that's that
was the problem. Uh So, after about a year of fighting,
Major General Arthur McArthur took over the US forces and
declared martial law over the entire Philippine Archipelago. He enacted
General Order one hundred, which was an old Civil War

(09:41):
directive that allowed the army to execute ununiformed combatants in
their supporters. The goal was to isolate the guerrillas, and
that's exactly what happened. Aguinaldo was captured in March of
nineteen o one. Now at that point things degenerated into
severe ugliness. General Franklin Bell forced three thousand Filipino civilians
on deca centration camps, where a good number of them
died of disease. In August of nineteen o one, there

(10:04):
was a machete attack that wiped out most of an
American garrison on an island called Samar. The U. S.
Army responded by massacring every man above the age of ten,
which you may note included a lot of children. I've
never heard the phrase, oh I saw this eleven year
old man the other day checking on. Okay, he's ten,

(10:25):
But this this sounds a heart eleven, like you get
him in the killing truck. There was a group of
twelve year old men yelling at yeah, I mean, this
was a different time. People died of cholera when they
were fourteen usually, I guess, but still seems a little
bit harsh. Um the average age of retirement. By the way, Yeah,

(10:47):
we did make the general who carried out the massacre retire,
So that's a version of justice. It really is a
shade of justice. Yeah. By February of nineteen o two,
the insurgency finally ran out of steam. President Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt,
the bully guy, declared victory on the fourth of July
nine two. They actually extended the length of the war

(11:08):
so that he could declare victory on the fourth. Yeah,
that's a very Teddy Roosevelt thing to do. What's a
few more days of war? Four? We'll save so much
money on fireworks. Let's do this right. Uh. In total,
four thousand, two hundred and thirty four Americans died during
the fighting, along with twenty thousand Filipino insurgents and two

(11:30):
hundred thousand civilians. So it's a bad time, bad time
all around. Except for a three year occupation by the Japanese,
the Philippines remained in US control until nineteen forty six,
when we gave the country back to itself and helped
them build a wonderful democracy in our image. From nineteen
fifty to nineteen sixty five, this worked pretty well. Average

(11:50):
economic growth was higher in the Philippines than it was
anywhere else in Southeast Asia, so a little bit of
a rough start couple of hundred thousand dead, you know. Yeah,
not a great start, right, but you can move on.
But you can move on, and by the fifties you're
making bank. Yeah. We use them as a base and
so yeah, we used the ship out of them as
a base. Man. We parked some planes on that fucking

(12:11):
rock boats, all the damn boats, aircraft carriers going left
and right. US soldiers getting real drunk in Manila. Oh
my god. I mean, how many generations of now elderly
Americans got their tattoos and Manila in that period. I
would love if we can get that stat that exact
stat how many staff infections from the tattoos? Right, Yeah,

(12:33):
identical amount. By the way, it's the same number, the
same number. Uh. Rodrigo Roa du Terte was born right
on the cusp of this period on March ninety five,
so right before the Philippines gets its independence. So like
many Filipinos, he grew up Catholic, which I said before
has been kind of a mixed bag for the people
of the Philippines. Um, now the people of the United

(12:55):
States as well, really the world people, yeah, really, for
for everybody. In two thousand two, Archbishop Orlando Cuivado, president
of the Catholic Bishop's Conference, admitted that two hundred of
the seven thousand priests in the Philippines may have committed
sexual misconduct over a twenty year period. I'm gonna guess
this means that actual abuse of Filipino children by Catholic

(13:18):
priests goes back further than twenty years, probably to the
beginning of Catholicism in the Philippines. One of the presumably
many Filipino children molested by Catholic priests during this time
was a fourteen year old school boy named Rodrigo do Tarte.
Shortly after taking off as he called Pope Francis a
son of a whore, uh, due to a traffic thing

(13:38):
that the Pope had caused. And when this coused something
of an out yeah, yeah, the yeah, thetly relatable thing,
that defensible thing that he's done. Get piste off at traffic,
piste off at traffic and calling the Pope the son
of a horror of horror, this creates something of an outrage,
and do Tarrte sort of talked because most of the
Filipino people are Catholic, and so do Tarte sort of

(13:59):
tried to walk this back by claiming that he had
been abused by an American Jesuit priest, father Mark Falvey,
in nineteen fifty nine when he was fourteen. Deuchart said, quote,
it was a case of fondling, you know what he
did during confession. That's how we lost our innocence early.
Um Touchart claimed he was too afraid to file a
complaint at the time, but he claims that Falby abused

(14:20):
several other boys as well, and this is very likely true,
um Fall. They returned to the United States I think
in the mid fifties after his time with Ducharte in
his classmates and set up shop on Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood, California,
and was there for a couple of decades and allegedly
abused a number of children in the United States, although
none of this came out until he was already dead, right,
It's interesting that this guy is such a pile of

(14:41):
ship that even someone who like speaks out about his
personal set, like you know, being sexually abused, is still
not a sympathetic character, you know. I mean, there's a
claim to be made that maybe this guy is a
worse person. This may have contributed to some of why
he is the way he is. Sadly couldn't have helped,
you know, no, no I would. Yeah, it certainly didn't
make him a kinder person. Was not a positive thing.

(15:04):
He has a major anti Catholic bias, and currently with
all the fund up stuff as governance doing, the Catholic
Church is fighting back against it, which in this case
I think they're right to be fighting against murdering people
in the street. But also he's got a real good
reason to be angry with the Catholic Yeah, it is.
It is a real mess. So obviously, uh, you know,
it's hard to say how this abuse impacted adult president

(15:27):
you tete, but it undoubtedly had an impact on him.
As a child, he repeatedly got in trouble for acting
up in school. On one occasion, he got in trouble
for shooting rocks at a priest with a homemade catapult.
Now it is possible that the writer who related this
story meant, uh sling shot. I didn't check up on

(15:47):
that to see if that slang, because I want to
believe that he fashioned and crude. That's that's imagine what
the Oh you have to have a team as well,
you have to have a team, and you have to

(16:08):
be very good whittling that. That is a very funny word. Confusion. Yeah,
I choose to believe that it was a catapult. He
also got in trouble for shooting at a priest who
was in like on all white outfit, some weird priest outfit,
with a water gun filled with ink. He would know
it was after a labor day in his that's cute,
it's cute, that's it. It's fun so far. Of course,
he was known to go truant for months at a time. Um.

(16:30):
And of course all of his acting out was punished brutally.
Rodrigo's mother, solid Dad Roa Gonzalez, was a harsh disciplinarian.
She would flog him brutally for his misbehavior, like whipping
him in the back and stuff. She was also a
teacher known for forcing her students to stand out in
the tropical sun for long periods of time when they misbehaved.
So Jesus, he's got a rough childhood in a lot

(16:53):
of ways. Um, he's also kind of a privileged kid
in a lot of ways. Because Rodrigo's father was Vincent
du Terte, prominent politician who became the governor of the
de Vaux province. Now, Rodrigo and his three siblings grew
up with a private cook, a driver, a boy, which
I don't know that's how he's described as a boy.
So I assume that's like a little girl for a

(17:16):
runner or something. But just a kid in the house,
just a child that we basically own, right, that is
a rich thing. Yes, no, we uh you know. I
was born with only one boy, but I've worked my
ass off and now we have six boys. Six boys.
Oh boy, yeah, oh boy, there we go. He also

(17:36):
had several bodyguards. Rodrigo was even given a bodyguard of
his own, and since his parents were too busy to
talk to him a lot of the time, the bodyguards
who took care of Rodrigo did a lot of the raising. Now,
this next quote comes from a book called Rodrigo de Tete,
Fire and Fury in the Philippines by Jonathan Miller for
British Correspondent, foreign correspondent who spent years and years living
in and reporting on Philippine politics. Quote adopted the persona

(18:01):
of a bugoy, the term for hoodlum in his local
Bisaiah language. He developed what was to become a lifelong
obsession with guns. He drank and smoked and slept around.
Often he didn't come home at all, and if he did,
he'd slip in at four am. He became increasingly nocturnal
and remains so to this day. He holds press conferences
that begin at one am. He appears groggy when he
has to attend a morning function. Now this is not

(18:23):
that the teritories a dictator, because he's not quite yet.
But this is a thing that you will run into
in dictators all throughout histories. They are all night owls,
like interest all in Kaddafi, Saddam, the list goes on
and on and on, like they all are famous for
staying up really really late and usually have trouble getting
up in the morning. They often are like watching movies
late into the night and stuff like it's just kind

(18:44):
of a dictator trope. Interesting, Yeah, I guess it makes
sense because like, yeah, no, I don't need all like
you know, the sun, you know, just anything. Not a
lot of positive things happen at night after you get
past a certain period of nights, like now I need
to be up at four for all the wonderful things
that happened at four am. It's very isolating and are

(19:05):
you like that? I am like that. I like it,
But I think that there's probably like a reason if
you're the kind of person who is awake more often
at night than you are in the day, you have
a different perspective than everybody else does. And that's useful
in a lot of things. But one thing that may
be useful and is if you're trying to like manipulate
a political structure, maybe having that different perspective on things

(19:28):
helps you do that. Maybe the fact that these guys
don't live in the same world as everyone else allows
them to manipulate it better. Yeah, that makes sense. Why
do these bats have feathers? Day bats? These day bats,
these damn davits. Somebody get my boy to get rid
of these day bats. Well, that's the boys, you found it.

(19:50):
That's his job, getting rid of the day bats. Uh.
So Miller, the guy just quote it who wrote Fire
and Fury in the Philippines. That's a major source for
this episode. It's like it's the first I think biography
of Doutete that's been published at least for like a
world audience so far, and it has a very clear

(20:12):
anti Doutete bias. Um But the journalist writing it also
has spent a lot of time talking to Rodrigo in
person and a lot of figures in his life, his
sisters and like other family members, people who knew him
as kids. So the book is pretty indispensable, even though
it is it does have a clear bias. He got
a number of anecdotes about young Rodrigo. One of them
from his sister Jocelyn, was about how when he was

(20:34):
a teenager, Rodrigo would scare off her want to be
boyfriends by when they would come over to the house
waving a gun at them. That'll do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So this is what he's doing, is like, you know,
fourteen or so, right, Um. Now, in nineteen sixty five,
when tar Te was twenty, Ferdinand Marcos was elected President
of the Philippines. Do you know much about Marcos? Actually

(20:54):
he was not a nice guy. No, no, no, no. Uh.
It just so happens that this was at a time
when the economy had started to level off. So Marcos
comes to power in a in a time when sort
of this fifteen year boom is coming to an end
and starting to reverse a little and with less money
coming in, the problems inheriting the system that the Philippines
had inherited from the United States became more evident. I'm

(21:15):
going to quote from the Rise and Fall of Ferdinand
Marcos from the University of California Press quote. The US
style judicial system, with an adversary process that emasculated the
poor and complex procedures that endlessly delayed decisions, could not
cope with injustice and crime. That doesn't sound yeah, yeah,
that sounds old. Private weapons were more widespread than in
any country. That doesn't sound familiar either, and it was

(21:37):
common for cars to be stopped and robbed in daylight
on major streets. The democratic patronage system inhibited removal of
corruption and incompetent civil leaders. Democracy directly inhibited measures designed
to ameliorate some of the world's worst social inequality. A
congress of elected landlords dragged its feet in passing land
reform legislation and then funding it. A series of presidents
who were landholders, including Ferdinand Marcos, initially refused to spend

(21:59):
land reform funds. The landholders lawyers defeated the valid claims
of peasants who could afford no lawyers, and exploited the
complexity of US style court procedures to delay adverse judgments
for a decade or more. So, basically, they handed the
Philippines essentially the same sort of political system the US has,
but the Philippines did not have one of the things
that we have as a buffer against the very rich,
at least we used to have, was a very large

(22:20):
middle class. And so these people could get in court
and could make their cases hurt, and you know, it's
still stacked against them, but they had more power. Yeah,
it wasn't just very poor people and then very rich people,
which is what the Philippines inherited. So the problems that
are becoming more obvious of our system now in a
time of increasing inequality in the United States, where started

(22:43):
to tear apart the Filipino national unity you know, in
the nineteen sixties. So that's essentially what's happened. Yeah, it
was a fast forward version of America. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Now they've passed us like that's future. They skipped right
to the end. Right, We're going to get to the
rest of Marcos term and what Rodrigo dou Tarte gets
up to during that period of time and then his

(23:05):
election as mayor of a city where he will. He'll
murder people, that's what he does, right, But first it's
something that won't murder you. And we're back. We're talking
about Rodrigo do Tarte and uh, well, actually we're talking

(23:28):
about Ferdinand Marcos, who just became president of the Philippines,
and we're gonna talk about that and what do Tarte
his life was like. In the narrative of this podcast,
we're not breaking news, he's not. No. No. If this
is news to you, you should read a little bit.
Why is this the first thing that you listened to
after coming out of your comma? Oh my god, shit?

(23:51):
What else? A dictator in the Philippines from going back
to sleep? When I fell asleep in nineteen the economy
was on fire. So by the time marcos Is third
term comes to an end, the Philippines is riddled with both,
you know, increasing economic problems and also a lot more
protesting and a lot of unrest. Many people in the
Philippines wanted to become a U S state rather than

(24:13):
chart and independent course, because they kind of had that right.
They were like, you do your thing for a while,
but like there will be ways you could potentially be
a state if you wanted to, and so there were
a lot of people who were like, well, I mean,
they look at them, they got all the money in nukes,
we should let's just be part of that. And then
there were a lot of people being like, no, let's
do our own thing. Marcos, being a nationalist, decides he
wants to take over and take more direct power over

(24:35):
the country. So he engineers a constitutional convention, which included
a lot of reforms and was meant to transition the
country away from U S style democracy and towards a
different system with like a prime minister that was supposed
to fit better and you know, have less of the inequalities.
The major sticking point came down to the fact that
there had to be an interim period between these two constitutions,
and during this interim period, the head of State, Marcos

(24:56):
would occupy the offices of president and Prime ministers simultane viously.
So there was a debate over how long this interim
period was going to be. Most people you would say, okay,
maybe a couple of days, while we like, you know
this thing, he wanted it to be indefinitely long. And
see why he would want you, I might want that,
So he instituted a scheme that sounds kind of like
an Info Wars conspiracy theory. I'm gonna quote again from

(25:19):
the Rise and Fall of fer nand Marcos. One by one,
the delegates to the convention were summoned by Intelligence chief
General ver, who reviewed with them their various failures to
pay taxes, occasions on which their security guards had killed
people under dubious circumstances, and other misdeeds which, according to
the General, the judicial system would of course have to
confront unless the delegate saw fit to serve their nation

(25:40):
by voting appropriately on the duration of the interim period.
The cream of the national political elite proved extraordinarily vulnerable
to personal pressures and frequently valid accusations of felony. So
basically everybody in power was so corrupt that when Marcos
was like, I'll investigate you just a little bit if
you don't vote with this, they were like, oh god, oh,
there is a lot to find where all the boys

(26:03):
are buried. All you need is a little bit and
our whole career will come crashing down. Yeah, And that
was apparently everybody in Congress. So, I mean, we laugh,
but yeah, it's just politics. So so Marcos got their
longer interim period, and during that period, Marcus's government carried
out a false flag attack on itself by shooting up

(26:25):
the Minister of Defenses empty Mercedes bins. This was announced
as a communist assassination attempt. The government also blew up
several power pylons around Manila and blame this as well
on the Commies. They used the terror attacks that the
government itself had carried out to justify implementing martial law
in nineteen seventy two. So this is the second time
in our story martial law has been declared in the Philippines.

(26:46):
They're kind of getting used to it at this point.
It's a great kind of law. If you're going to
have a law, right it be Marshal. Of course, I've
always said that, yeah, yeah, no. I went to law
school and I yea with an emphasis on Marshall. And
it hasn't really come up yet. I've really been out
of work for quite sometimes. See what I'm imagining when
I think of how that could be positive is just
the instructor from the karate Kit, just him enforcing all

(27:09):
of the laws, like which would legitimately be a better
system than we have, or like the retail chain. Is
that's their law, where there's just a martials martial law,
just just throw clothes on the ground and people. I
think no one else would say exactly. I guess that's
a positive spin on it. That might be worse. Actually,
I mean Marshal's law, Like if it's just law by

(27:32):
the most discounted, you know, that might be what we
have right now. Boy, I should go to Marshal's. I
need a torn yoga. I need a mug with the
handle broken off, partially open to pack of chips. Marshals, Marshals,

(27:53):
we have it. Probably there's no inventory system whatsoever. There's
no way to know what we have come in here
and checking it out, but we do have shelves with
things on them. Marshal's really taking some hits. Yeah, good,
it's about time or the t J Max lobby. Yeah,
so yeah, Marcos declares martial law, justifying that they've got

(28:16):
to fight the communists, even though there were only about
eight hundred communist insurgents in the entire Philippines at that point.
But you know, you ever, you're gonna let the facts
get in the middle of a good martial lawby so
around this time, do Tarte had finished college in law school.
His bar exam was delayed because of the military takeover
of the country, which good reason to the lay at test.
Rodrigo actually wound up missing his graduation ceremony for a

(28:38):
completely different reason. He had ambushed and shot one of
his fellow students to teach him a lesson. Uh. Well,
the guy had mocked him for being from the South,
and so do te had ambushed him and shot him,
I think several times. But the guy did survive. So
that is an institution of higher learning. That is how
you teach a lot. Alright, we'll let you be a lawyer,

(28:58):
but you don't get to come to graduation because you
shot somebody. Fine, yeah, that's a fair punished rules. Yeah.
Um so Marcos ruled into the late nineteen eighties. Well,
the CIA had backed his rivals at first. They eventually
came around to the old lug and his communist slaughtering ways.
He and his wife, who stole an estimated ten billion

(29:19):
dollars from the Philippines, uh enjoyed the strong support of
the Reagan administration. The New York Times says that Ronald
quote genuinely cherished Ferdinand and his wife Amelda. Quote. In
nineteen sixty nine, Governor and Miss Reagan visited Manila, where
Emelda's opulent parties dazzled them from then on. Reagan, impressed
by Marcos's exaggerated stories of his exploits as an anti

(29:40):
Japanese guerrilla, counted him among the world's freedom fighters in
the struggle against communism. In Reagan's eyes. One of his
aids mused later Marcos was quote a hero on a
bubblegum card he had collected as a kid. So amazing. Yeah,
what kind of deck do those cards come in? By
the way, the bub will come Oh man, who else

(30:02):
would be on those cars? Like Joseph McCarthy's there, sure, yeah, Hitler, Hitler,
Yeah we can throw him on. That killed some communists,
that's for sure. A rookie Hitler card repeated where he
just got his bowl, weapon, his shorts. Right. I wonder
what a Hitler rookie cards worth these days? Hundreds? Yeah,

(30:25):
uh so. Yeah. One of the other people who helped
out Marcos stirring sort of the late eighties when he
was having increasing trouble over all of the people he
was He was torturing tens of thousands of people um,
how many years? Sorry, is this into his indefinite um years? Okay,
about years? Um? Well, I mean he only had about
fourteen years of martial law from eight six and during

(30:46):
a good chunk of that, one of the people who
represented him to the United States, who tried to help
get him additional funds from the government was a little
fellow you might not called Paul Manafort, and in fact
saying yeah, one of maniforts employees flew with Marcos when
he fled the mob that was taking over his palace
and went to Hawaii to go die. When one of
Manafort's employees flew with him on that flight, So that

(31:08):
was that's nice to The Marcus regime proved unpopular if
they only held on the power through the application of
brutal martial law. More than people were executed during his
time in power, and more than thirty four thousand were tortured.
Victims included student activists like the twenty three year old
Lily Hillo, who edited a student newspaper critical of the
Marcus regime. She was forced to commit suicide by drinking

(31:29):
myriatic acid. Yeah it's dark, is that suicide? Yeah? Yeah?
Because she was like she was tortured and assaulted a
bunch until she right right, yeah, semantics. Yeah. During this
period of martial law, a new drug introduce in the Philippines.
We know it as meth amphetamine. Now. Prior to Spanish colonization,
the Filipino people had had a fairly mild drug culture.

(31:51):
I think battle nut was one of the big things
they'd use. I think marijuana was around, but it wasn't
super common. If you say battle nut three times, it appears,
so you know that's just the jew Oh, okay, I'm sorry.
I think what you spit out when you've been chewing
you're right, okay, Sorry, I'm a square. I don't know. Um. So,
prior to Spanish yeah, they had a fairly minor drug culture,

(32:12):
with no evidence of serious addiction to anything. Opium got
to the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period because the
East India Company would essentially drop it off during their
trading um, but the Philippines would not have a real
drug crisis until meth got its grips on the New Nation.
I found one account from a Filipino writer who claims
that he first became aware of the drug in nineteen

(32:32):
eighty one. Quote a neighbor excitedly asked, have you heard
about the new drug intown called Japanese coke. It was
called Japanese because the way they smoked it reminded people
of a Japanese hot pot uh style dish, which they
called a shabu shabu dish. So meth acquired the local
name shabu, and by the mid nineteen eighties it had
grown quite popular among a certain set, although it was

(32:53):
still fairly expensive at this point. So fernand Marcos was
forced out of office in nineteen eighty six by the
People Power Revolution. The new president, Corazon Aquino, made Rodrigo
du Tarte the acting vice mayor of Devou City, the
most populous city on the island of Mendano in the
third most populous city in the whole Philippines. In nine
eight he ran for election and one as mayor. Now

(33:13):
by this point, Devout City was one of the most
violent cities in the Philippines. Doutarte was elected as a
law and order candidate. He promised to stop street crime,
combat the use of shabu and other drugs, and he
was pretty straightaway a strict mayor. He instituted a series
of pretty harsh laws, including fines for jaywalking, a ten
pm curfew for all children, a nine pm ban on karaoke,

(33:36):
a ban on firecrackers, and a massive reduction in speed limits.
Rodrigo was known to patrol the streets himself on his
own Harley Davidson motorcycle, observing traffic and looking out for
rule breakers. So he's a hands on kind of feet
to the pedal, feet on the ground. And by the way,
the ten o'clock curfew for children, by the way, it
was just people four years old and younger. Yeah, no, no, no,

(34:00):
you're before you're an adult, right, yeah, you're that's yeah.
Nine year old adults like to do whatever the hell
they want. Well, I mean they'd better be getting to
work at the fact probably, right, a factory that builds
factories for smaller children to work in. And yes, I
don't actually know if that's a that's a big part
of the economy. Yeah, we're still just riffing on us
policy from right. Yeah, So, depending on your attitude towards

(34:24):
jaywalking in karaoke, that may sound reasonable, And in fact
I support an earlier curfew on anyone under eighteen. I
think they should be allowed out of the house from
like ten am to like two pm and locked indoors
the rest of the time. That's just that's your platform.
Harsh but fair, I think it. We can all agree.
So yeah. A few years into his merridom, do Tearte

(34:45):
basically for the first close to a decade he's a
harsh mayre and institute strict policies against petty crime, but
he doesn't really seem to have a huge amount of
focus on the drug war. On the radar, this becomes
more of a thing in the mid nineties and especially
by the late nineties, he really starts to ramp up
persecution of drug users and drug pushers, and in fact,

(35:06):
a few years into his mayordom in the mid nineties,
do Tete established what's now known as the Devou Death Squad,
which exists and existed to murder criminals. Quote. During the
seven terms of Mayor dou Teterte, the bodies of hundreds
of street kids and petty criminals, as well as addicts
and dealers of crystal meth or shabou as it is
known in the Philippines, were found dumped in devots back streets.
Often their corpses were discovered with their faces wrapped in

(35:28):
masking tape, their hands were tied, and handwritten signs were
hung around their necks addict pusher thief. The people of
Devout City came to realize that these murders would all
remain unsolved. So again, it's hard to say exactly when
the Devout Death Squad became active. UM. By nineteen ninety seven,
they were tied to around sixty five deaths. By two
thousand fifteen, they would be tied to well over a

(35:49):
thousand deaths. UM was that the like their official title, like,
did he call them the Devout Death everyone called death Squad?
He would usually call them a vigilante unknown vigilante killers
is usually how these guys are officially known to He would, yeah,
and most of these victims were killed. Their signature weapon
was a forty five caliber handgun, which was interestingly enough,

(36:10):
the forty five a CP handgun the Colton nineteen eleven
that was used by the U S from like World
War One, World War Two up until almost the modern day.
In the eighties is when they switched over that was
developed for the Philippines because before that they were using
a smaller bullet and the Filipino warriors were essentially so
imposing that like they felt like it didn't have enough

(36:30):
stopping powers. They needed a bigger round to clamp down
on the insurgency. So the forty five has a real
significant reputation in the Philippines and it has become now
the gun of the Mayor's Death Squad in Devout City.
So interesting little bit of history there. So yeah, Officially,
the murders committed by the Devout Death Squad were the
work of unknown vigilante killers, but the actual work was

(36:53):
often done by off duty police officers at the direct
urging of maryor Jutete. Several of these killers have now
come forward to confirm that Tape organize the Devout Death Squad.
Rodrigo himself denies this sometimes on the TV show he
hosted while mayor. Also he hosted a television show while
Mayor called on the Masses, he stated, quote, they say
I'm the death Squad. True, that is true. So he's

(37:18):
gone on to deny that again since and basically know
I was saying, they say that I'm the death Squad,
and it's true that they say, but I'm not the
death You have a death squad, have a death death
squad squad, and he wants to brag about it so
badly too, you know, like, how much does he love
having a death squad? I mean, who wouldn't want a
death squad? Yes, I would love a death squad. It

(37:39):
would be incredible just to handle neighbors, people who drive
too slow or too fast, mostly mostly those groups. Yeah,
he uh, this goes without saying, but it's very interesting
that his hatred for drug addicts and thieves goes way
beyond his hatred for murdering, Like he loves murder but

(38:01):
hates which on the crime scale is obviously generally a
most of us would say, Yeah, it's very interesting, like, no,
being dead is more noble than wasting the time that
you're alive by being addicted to And who has rejected
religion so thoroughly. That's a weirdly like almost fundamentalist religious

(38:21):
sort of attitude to take towards drug use, which is
interesting to me, very interesting. I will say, if I
had a death squad, I know who I would target first.
And there's so I go running in a coup and
we'll be right back. We're going to have that for
you in a moment. I'm just getting not my job. Well,
I like, there's a couple of neighborhoods I like to
run in Santa Monicchy one of them. The speed limit
in the neighborhood is thirty miles an hour, but people
have put out signs that say, my kids live here,

(38:44):
don't drive over twenty with that yellow fucking thing. I
get to make the speed limits just because you've got to.
That's who I target, trying to make the speed limits.
Oh that sucks. I know, it's just so obnoxious. What
a rich person thing too. You don't get to make
that choice. Anyway, We'll we'll be back not talking about

(39:04):
people who want to have murdered by death squads. But maybe,
but but maybe, but maybe. But I can guarantee who
doesn't use death squads is the people who support this
podcast with advertising. No death squads are related to the
operation of this podcast or its sponsors. And we should

(39:24):
have mentioned that earlier. We should have mentioned that earlier.
Zero death squads, maybe one eventually. All right, here's here's
the man's and we're back. We are talking about the
fact that my producer, Sophie had a seventy year old
Catholic priest teacher how to use her phone, which from

(39:46):
the Philippines. From the Philippines is fascinating. She's shaking her head.
We're not going to correct this, repair your phone even
more incredible. What a strange thing for priest to know
how to do this business called you broke it, he
fixed it and he is capitalized. So obviously the main

(40:06):
subject of this podcast is a Rodrigo dou Tarte, and
as we've gotten to this, he's become the mayor and
he's kind of sort of definitely started a death squad.
So in nine, which is the year that the death
squad really ramps up it's death squadding, Rodrigo's wife Elizabeth,
asks for an annulment of their marriage. Now it is
interesting because you can't get divorced in the Philippines. The

(40:27):
Philippines is actually one of two nations on the planet.
The other is the Vatican, where divorce is illegal. So
again very Catholic. Yes, this will become more remarkable later
because du Terte, I'll give it to him. He doesn't
give a funk what people think about him. He's quite
a fellow. So during this annulment, a clinical psychologist was
asked to analyze Mayor Rodrigo dou Tarte. She wrote, quote,

(40:51):
he is suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder with aggressive features. Uh.
These features included quote his gross indifference in sensitivity and
self centeredness, his grandiose sense of self and entitlement, his
manipulative behaviors, his lies, and his deceits, as well as
his pervasive tendency to demean, humiliate others, and violate their
rights and feelings. So this is a clinical psychologist analyzing

(41:17):
the Mayor of devout narcissistic personality disorder, which our regular
listeners will notice. Alex Jones, who we just did a
big episode on, was also diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
All your guests probably as well. I think we all
probably have it. It is. It's probably like Spee of
Los Angeles, California. Yeah right, So some of Mayor do

(41:37):
Tartas most celebrated moments are clear evidence of all of
these things, his tendency to de mean, humiliate, and violate
other people's rights. One of his signature efforts as mayor
was an anti smoking campaign meant to wipe cigarettes off
the streets. Sounds fine, right, Yeah? Yeah, yeah, cigarettes bad.
That's probably the end of it, right, Probably nothing, nothing
ridiculous ever have now, of course not well during this time.

(41:59):
One of the most popular stories from Mayor do tarts
reign is that he spotted a tourist smoking outside. He
confronted the man, and the tourist refused to put out
his cigarette. So do Tarte quote pulled out a snub
nosed thirty eight revolver and poked it at the man's crotch.
He said, I'll give you these choices. I'll shoot your balls,
sid you to jail, or you eat your cigarette. But
the tourist is said to have apologized before swallowing the

(42:21):
cigarette butt. Stories like this, whether or not they're true,
are part of how rod Rigo earned the nickname do
Terte Harry, because like Dirty Harry, I like that exactly
the Philippines obviously we owned them for a long time.
There's a mix of resentment because we did a lot
of funked up things to the Philippines, but also really
deep love of American pop culture and music and stuff
like that. So people get a Dirty Harry reference. Um, yeah,

(42:44):
anyway they do. Now. It is worth noting that there's
some debate over the true nature of this story because
when questioned about it, do Tarte spokesman said that quote,
as far as he knew, the mayor had never pointed
a revolver at anyone, although he did specify a revolver,
which right, right, that's interesting. But he didn't even say pistol.

(43:06):
He said a very specific type handgun. It's also worth
noting and a little bit familiar to our own politics
that the same night, his spokesman said that this story
was bullshit. Do Tearte turned up on television to confirm
the anecdote and add that he had told the tourist,
I will make both your balls explode. So that's from
the mayor now president's mouth. He punched it up. He's like, no, no, no,

(43:28):
no, no no, I didn't just I told him I'm gonna
blow his balls up if he doesn't eat a cigarette.
Let me add some imagery for you. There are a
lot of stories like this, according to Fire and Fury
in the Philippines quote. And then there is the case
of a man who was caught selling fake land titles
forced him to eat them in front of TV cameras.
Reporters remember him instructing the cameraman to zoom in on
him chewing. So he's a character. You can see why

(43:56):
this guy got really popular because that's the kind of
stories people love about a political figure is being like
he's not just being tough. He's like this tourist came
in and thinks he can smoke in our city on
the street and throw at a cigarette. But no, the
mayor is gonna make him eat it, make him eat it,
and then the other guy eat is like, it's very
obsessed with making people eat their crimes, and it's not

(44:17):
that big of a deal. If you sell like a
stolen pizza, you know, it's like made meat. It's pizza.
A pizza thief in Devo City, that's the smart money.
That is the smart money. In two thousand one, Rodrigo
Guete got on local television and read out the names
of five hundred people on his watch list. Cash rewards
were offered to citizens who could provide information on drug

(44:39):
labs or dealers. A few days after this, he sat
down for an interview and was asked how he felt
about being called the godfather of the Devout Death Squad.
He replied, quote, I don't give a damn. I don't
give a ship what I should do now is honor
my commitment to be really truthful and honest about it.
I would rather see criminals dead than innocent victims die
being killed senselessly. Now, when he said of those words,

(45:00):
four of the people on his list had already been murdered.
Seventeen more died before the article was published. The victims
were all either drug dealers or mobile phone pickpockets. Four
were children. In less than three weeks, twenty six people
on the list had been killed, including quote marketplace vendors,
construction workers, a housewife, and two members of a leftist
political party. Now in two thousand three, June Paula, a

(45:22):
shock jock radio guy in Davao City, made fun of
Rodrigo's son Paolo for beating up a hotel security guard.
He repeated persistent rumors that Paulo was addicted himself to
crystal meth. Uh This Piste Rodrigo du terte off, and
in September of that year, June Paula was ambushed and
gunned down in the streets. His murder is officially unsolved,
although in February of two thousand seventeen, are Touro las

(45:45):
Kanyes confessed to having been a leading member of the
Devout Death Squad and claimed under oath that he'd been
paid twenty thou dollars to murder this guy. So well,
he's making jobs. He's making jobs exactly. Las Kanyees is
able to feed his family off of the money he
got murdering the radio personality for making fun of the
fact that Rodrigo's son beat up a guy at a hotel. Amazing, amazing,

(46:09):
He's he's quite the man. Yeah, um so. In Rodrigo's
last year as mayor, he was nominated for the World
Mayor Award, something that apparently exists, which is the opposite
of local government, which is what a mayor is. The
executive of World Mayor Award the worst. Yeah, I'm the

(46:32):
best mayor in the world. Are you talking about? I
don't even I maybe like twice in my life I
have known the mayor of wherever it is I happen
to live. Yeah. It's hard. Yeah, I mean the only
reason I knew it for a while in l A
is because in the fucking elevators you've got the mayor's
name on like the little like the thing, and so
it's like, Okay, it's the worst when it's the previous mayor.
It's like, good God is the ship. It doesn't work, boy. Yeah.

(47:01):
So he was nominated for the World may Award. He
turned down the nomination, saying of his time in office,
I did it not for my own glory, but because
that was what the people expected me to do. So
that's that some humility right there. But the World Murder
Award he happily accepted. And one he earned that World
Murder Award. And it's an objective thing. Yeah, of course. Um.

(47:21):
It was all but a foregone conclusion that Rodrigo dou
Tarte would run for President of the Philippines in two
thousand sixteen. Eight months before he announced his candidacy, he
did an interview with Esquire Philippines. In it, he claimed
to have first killed a man when he was seventeen
by maybe stabbing him to death in a drunken beach brawl,
but maybe not, maybe not because he was drunk. He

(47:44):
self admitted he was drunk when he probably stabbed again death.
Yeah uh, he did, add I have never in my
life killed an innocent person. So he was just saying,
like anyone I got into a drunken beach bro with
has coming, I'll tell you that much. Who fights at
the beach, you know, the tired how president. So from

(48:06):
two fifteen, the Devout Death Squad killed more than fourteen
hundred people by some estimates, including roughly one hundred and
thirty children. Other estimates will say just like a thousand
eleven hundred. It's unclear the exact number, but somewhere between
a thousand and fourteen hundred's probably pretty fair. For Also
a pad on the back to us for stopping the
children age bit that we've been doing throughout. It's the

(48:28):
amount of self discipline I've had the exercise to not
keep that going is a lot. It is one of
those things when you read old books that gives you
a real insight into how different things were. Was like
what they included a child because like in Germany hundreds
it was like you're twelve year old enough to work,
get a job? Yeah, or if they're talking about like
a woman from like you know, like back in that time,

(48:49):
it was again and she was eventually married at the
age of thirteen when yeah, she was out to pasture.
But then real spinster, fourteen years old, spinster, she's got
another what for at most? Oh boy, history is just
a pile of nightmares wrapped up in a pile ship.

(49:10):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. Las Kanye is the hitman who
later confessed to being one of the devout death squads leaders.
Says that his extra murdering money came from the combined
wages of ten to twelve ghost employees, which are fake
government employees who existed just as money funnels for the
Mayor's murder team. The salaries for countless ghost workers had
been pulled into the Mayor's intelligence fund. What's head paid

(49:31):
for all of the murders. So this is in case
you were wondering fiscally, how does this death squad work out?
There's a lot of data. Was very responsible. It was
very fiscally responsible death squad. Right, they've got receipts, which
is critical with a death squad, which is rare. This
is what people got onto the Nazis for not enough receipts.

(49:52):
And now the Nazis were great at receipts. I'm sure
they were diligent. They were really really good at receipts.
So Las Kanye's claimed to have been paid between four
hundred and two thousand dollars per execution, depending on the
status of the target. It's got to be a bummer
if you like you and your friend get hit and
like he's a two thousand your I know, I know
that would hurt more than the death. I don't think

(50:12):
my ego could take that. No, No, you just don't
want to even ask, right, Les Kanye has also received
a two thousand dollar monthly allowance that went on top
of his police salary. The money was paid by Sunny Buenaventura,
the mayor's bodyguard. Let's Kanye's claims quote do Tartes office
supplied everything cars, guns, ammo, food and money. His hitman

(50:32):
were a mix of former Communist Party n P, a
assassin's that's along with well, no, actually a dotterte is
kind of a leftist. Oh I'm sorry, I U confusing
with for the other guy at the previous never mind, Yeah,
you know it's it's it is a little bit like
and it's it's not even fair to call him a leftist.
He definitely has come to power as a socialist, but
he's also more of a do Tertist than anything. Like.

(50:54):
He's tough to classify who he is, right, but yeah,
his hitman were a mix of former Communist Party assassins
long with police officers and of course, run of the
mill contract killers. Here's another quote from Fire and Fury.
In the Philippines, the former n p A killers targeted
glue sniffers and alleged petty thieves, while the police and
their contractors went after bigger fish, kidnappers and drug lords.

(51:14):
As Kanye Is also confirmed the use of the Loud
Quarry as an execution ground, and when questions said he
could point to burial sites. These included those of an
entire family killed with the silence to twenty two caliber pistol,
a suspected kidnapper, his Muslim convert wife who was seven
months pregnant, their four year old son, her seventy year
old father, an elderly male relative, and the family made
having abducted them from a neighboring town. The Devout death

(51:37):
squad held them for hours in the building inside the
quarry before their executions. The personal belongings were removed and burned,
including their wife's koran, he said, adding that the bodies
were then stripped and buried so their boy was spared No,
because they I mean they killed the maid in the
four year which which I means it's a double tragedy

(51:58):
because that means this family didn't have a boy. Yes,
so that's what we should take away that that's what
we should take away from a classic double tragedy situation.
Oh boy, got you got yourself? Yeah, I didn't expect
this to be so focused on the boy, but well
you booked the wrong person. That was so les Kanye

(52:19):
testified about all of this in two thousand seventeen when
you Tete was actually president. Um it didn't have a
huge impact on his popularity as president, and it possibly
that it wouldn't have made any difference at all if
it had come out during the election itself. Part of
Rodrigue's appeal was that he's du terte Harry. He's the
violent son of a bit She doesn't play by the
rules but gets results. His detractors could point to an

(52:40):
enormous pile of corpses, but all do Tarte had to
say is look at the vow I cleaned up one
of the biggest cities in the Philippines. And this is
where it gets kind of tricky, because it is true
that overall crime has plummeted in de Vous City and
across the island of Mendano. This may not be due
to Terte. The crime rate rose from eight most of

(53:03):
that was during his second term as mayor, and while
Devous city has seen massive drops in crime in the
last couple of years, it remains the murder capital of
the Philippines. It's overall murder rate is fourth in the nation,
So Devots by no means the most dangerous city in
the country. But it certainly is not an oasis of peace.
So basically they've traded in less other crime way more murder.

(53:24):
That's what you get with Rodrigo do terrte Let's stolen
cell phones, more people gunned down on the street. So well,
the less people there are, the less crime there exactly,
whether they're committing they can't be crimed upon because they're
dead people. It's a double victory there, right, that's efficient.
So November one, two thousand and fifteen, Rodrigo dou Tarte

(53:46):
announced that he was running to be President of the Philippines.
He called himself a socialist, but ideology was not really
his focus. Dotterte ran as a populist who promised to
take out the bad guys and be a tough guy,
badass president to ass I like that tough, fast son
of a bitch. I am your last card, he told
a group of supporters at a rally. I promise you,
I will get down and dirty just to get things done.

(54:08):
All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches,
I will really kill you. I have no patience, I
have no middle ground. Either you kill me or I
will kill you idiots. So one thing you can say
for Rodrigudu Tearte is that he was always remarkably honest
with what his reign would bring to the Philippines. He
does sound like a drunk person at a bar, like
about to get enough fight, Like I'll kill you. Yeah,

(54:28):
you kill me first, you idiots, you know, because you
don't come up with the most intelligent insult when you're
in the moment, like about to fight. I'd imagine he's
like a drunk guy in a fight with you, but
trying to get you to vote for him. Yeah yeah, right,
right right. But also he's handing the ballot, the ballot
over to you. I'm gonna fucking kill some people. Yeah,
vote from here, just right there, if you mark right there. Yeah.

(54:50):
While campaigning, he would regularly lament the drug dealing sons
of whores who are destroying our children. He promised to
make the fish in Manila Bay fat with their flesh.
While most politicians in a democratic country run on promises
of how they can improve lives and protect people, do
Tete offered something else. He may be the only politician
to ever say, God will weep if I become president? Amazing. Yeah,

(55:13):
he is not a liar. Not a liar, Yeah, no, no,
not a liar. He promised to make God cry with
the amount of corps He promised to fill the morgues
like that's bold, promised to make his president. There will
be so many more corpses and I become president, and

(55:33):
by sons of horrors, he meant popes. By the way,
when he said that, that's just his word for pope. Yeah,
that's just his word for pope. Yeah. Yeah, Okay. So
that's part one. Rodrigu du Terte, the mayor of Murder Town.
Part two will of course be Rodrigue du Terte, President
of the Kilippines. I'm proud of Yeah. That really all
came together, of course, seamlessly. So you want to plug

(55:55):
your plug doubles, Oh yeah please? Uh stuffed boy, actually,
um is my newest album on iTunes. Uh, my first
album is up there to the Blake album. And then
there's another album I released with a comedian, Todd Glass,
where I saved voicemails from him for twelve years and
we released it as an album. It's called twelve Years
of Voicemails from Toad Guys to play Baxler so yea

(56:18):
of honesty. I know, yeah, I know. And then Blake
Baxler dot com. Cool, Blake Wexler dot com. I am
Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay.
You can find this podcast on the internet at behind
the Bastards dot com. You can find us on Twitter
and Instagram at at Bastards pod. And we we sell
t shirts on a T public, so look at tea
public Behind the Bastards a lot of great T shirts,

(56:39):
including a lot of great Dorrito's themed T shirts. Dorrito's
about Dictators, Nachos, not Nazis. By them, you support the show,
money goes to me, and also you get a pretty
cool shirt out of the deal. So it's uh, it's
it's great. All right, Well that'll do it for us
for now. We're gonna get into part two about Rodrigo
do tear te on the day, so please tune back

(57:02):
in then, although you don't have to tune anything because
this is not old time radio, and just do whatever
you want. Just download us, listen to us when you're
you know, at the kickboxing gym, boxing and kicking and
whatever it is. I'm gonna it's over. The episode is
over now and I yeah bye. I love about h