In a previous column, I said Trump was starting to make Duterte look good.
But as Trump likes to say, I misspoke.
At this point, with the Russia probe clearly not a matter of a witch hunt, but rather a painstaking gathering of evidence in a complex case, you can bet Trump really wishes America was a lot more like the Philippines, a country that has the kind of president he wants to be.
Rodrigo Duterte. With an orange comb-over.
That’s what I see when Trump (or rather, the White House) does something like ban a pool reporter from a White House event. A pool reporter, this one was a CNN reporter, covers routine events and provides information to all accredited media. But when the reporter asked tough questions of Trump, she was barred from a later event.
Just another attack on the press in a free democracy. It all adds up. And it’s every bit as bad as Trump trusting Putin’s words over his own U.S. intelligence agents.
Now if Trump could be more like Duterte, none of it would be a problem. Whatever the latter says goes.
W’ere not quite there yet, fortunately. But Trump is trying hard.
Duterte’s roundups
I’m sure Trump would love to do what Duterte is doing right now–rounding up drunks and loiterers and locking them up.
This is the real low hanging fruit. They’re not even reporters. Duterte’s used to going after drug dealers and addicts and shooting them dead in extrajudicial actions. That’s much harder since you have to cover up your tracks.
Going after innocent drunks BEFORE they do anything really illegal is uncanny. It can be sold as a public service. Government in its efficiency is being preemptive and going after “the bad guys” before they commit violent crimes.
So here’s minor things like public drunkenness, public urination, or even going bare chested a la Vladimir Putin. All that is enough to get you arrested these days in the Philippines, according to a story in last Sunday’s New York Times.
In just a month, the report said that being Filipino in public has resulted in more than 50,000 arrests.
And now it’s an established pretext for making people disappear in the prison system. It’s a great way to get rid of people, especially your political enemies. You just make up a case for being drunk and shirtless in public. Or loitering.
Fifty thousand arrests in a month is a lot of loiterers. Trump can’t do that. Not yet.
He can separate children and lose a few hundred kids. But he can’t lock people up, and throw away the key. He can’t even fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
There’s still a U.S. Constitution that protects all that. So you got to figure Trump is salivating at Duterte’s power.
As the Times reported, people in the Philippines are scared.
“They’re plucking people off the street,” said Amy Jane Pablo, who lives in Tondo.
Worse yet, the whole thing is reminiscent of martial law, a fact that the story by Aurora Almendral, mentions in the body of the piece, as hardly a farfetched notion.
There still is partial martial in Mindanao. But this is the slippery slope.
What’s happening is not exactly tantamount to martial law, which has comes with a military takeover.
But Jose Manuel Diokno of De La Sale University College of the Law is quoted as saying the comparisons to ML are “very apt.”
Oh, if Donald Trump could only round up his drunken enemies.
I wish this were some irrational fear, but there are legions of Americans who see Donald Trump and blindly trust him. No matter how far off he is from the norms of democracy.
Freedom of the press? Rule of law? Rule of Trump is much more to all their liking.
And it starts with encouraging people’s blind trust in Trump. Or people’s unwillingness to see the truth.
Are they being gaslit?
Gaslighting
This is the column for you if your Manang Baby watches the news and asks, “What is this gaslight, people keep talking about? Is Washington, DC PG&E?”
Right now the gaslight moments are coming fast and furiously in America, making it all crystal clear what’s going on.
That is unless you’re a gaslit Filipino American, trying to hang on to your sanity. Then you really need help.
The gaslight idea refers to the 1944 movie where Charles Boyer plays a criminal trying to keep a secret from Ingrid Bergman.
Boyer lies so convincingly about the truth Bergman sees, that he has her convinced she’s crazy. Bergman was so convincing, she won an Oscar.
Which part describes you in our democracy?
WATCH: “Gaslight” trailer
And then watch the TV news from the last two weeks starting with the Helsinki summit, and then on through the would/wouldn’t, yes/no walk-backs. For good measure, throw in the “wasn’t that fun, maybe let’s do Trumputin Summit II,” and the walk-back of that after Putin dissed Trump by showing little interest.
That would be enough for a single presidency let alone a single week, but this is the president who defies the norms. So, of course, let us not forgot the airing of the secret playmate payoff tapes.
Still wearing your MAGA hat forward?
If so, then simply replay a clip of Trump at the VFW meeting from Tuesday and let the president’s words really sink in. The part where he says: “Just remember what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
His warning could apply to his own deceptive words.
But the metaphor should be clear. The gaslight is the twilight of American democracy.
Instead of upholding the values we hold dear as Americans, you know, truth and freedom, things like that, we have a president who continues to attack the media by casting doubt on everything journalists report.
Shooting the watchdog works in authoritarian countries, like China and Russia. But Trump is going even further by threatening his critics with the revocation of security clearances
Trump already has most all the Republicans, fearful of losing their jobs, in lockstep.
Chances are that hold on Congress will keep a resolution from coming before the House lambasting Trump for having shamelessly “sold out America.”
That was House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s words on Monday night, condemning how Trump ignored U.S. intelligence and took the word of Putin that there was no election meddling by Russia.
Uhh, which side are you on, Mr. President?
Pelosi has suggested that Putin must have some kind of “blackmail” on Trump from all his business deals in Russia, most of which cannot be uncovered because the president has withheld his tax records.
Why doesn’t the president just come clean and tell the truth?
Why didn’t Charles Boyer?
The least a commander-in-chief can do is stand up for the great American values of our democracy, like freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Not to mention, uphold and defend our electoral process, which his own intelligence agencies concur has been and continues to be under attack by Russia.
It’s not “other people,” like Trump’s mythical bad guy hacker, some 400-pound guy sitting in his underwear somewhere.
But such is Trump’s hold on America, he simply has to say “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” And everything goes away.
Trumpy Filipinos in America beware.
The way he’s attacking the free press, the next thing to go may be what makes America great.
Regardless what Trump says, what you’re reading and seeing really is happening.
Wake up and smell the gas.
Emil Guillermo is a veteran journalist and commentator. He writes a column for the Inquirer’s North American Bureau. Listen to him on Apple Podcasts. Twitter @emilamok.
