Speaker 1: Mmm, Hello again everybody, and welcome to Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the show where we tell you everything you don't know
Speaker 1: about the very worst people in all of history. Now
Speaker 1: on this show, I read a story about someone terrible
Speaker 1: to a guest who is coming in cold and this
Speaker 1: week my guest is Blake Wexler, stand up comedian. You
Speaker 1: just had an album drop called Stuffed Boy. I got
Speaker 1: Stuffed Boy. You nailed this stuff Boy nailed it. Excellent, excellent.
Speaker 1: How are you doing today? I'm good man, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Yeah, I love this idea. It's so cool. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't know who we're talking about today. Um, does
Speaker 1: the name Rodrigo do Terte mean anything to you? It
Speaker 1: does not? Actually, Okay, yeah, this is good, fantastic. I
Speaker 1: just took a sip of something that's not derito, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give them a free ad. But
Speaker 1: you did you see me wolf down a significant chunk
Speaker 1: of a bag before we got into this, so you
Speaker 1: liquefied it with your mouth. I'm fired up and I'm
Speaker 1: ready to get into this, so let us start an
Speaker 1: episode that I'm I'm right now calling Rodrigo du Terte,
Speaker 1: the mayor of murder Town, this is a part one.
Speaker 1: He's a politician. Then oh yes, yes, oh is that true?
Speaker 1: Very successful politician, excellent title. Currently the President of the Philippines. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So early on in his presidency, Donald Trump congratulated Rodrigo Duterte,
Speaker 1: President of the Philippines, for doing a quote, unbelievable job
Speaker 1: on the drug problem. In February of two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: a senior administration official said this to the website Axios.
Speaker 1: Quote he Trump often jokes about killing drug dealers. He'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, the Chinese and Filipinos don't have a drug problem,
Speaker 1: they just killed them. Interestingly enough, large parts of both
Speaker 1: of those statements are accurate. It would be fair to
Speaker 1: call Dutertes drug war in the Philippines unbelievable. In the
Speaker 1: last two years, one hundred and eighteen thousand, two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty seven drug users or dealers have been arrested,
Speaker 1: and one point three million drug users have turned themselves
Speaker 1: into the authorities. More than twenty thousand people, many of
Speaker 1: them children, have been killed. Virtually all of them were murdered,
Speaker 1: often by mask in on motorcycles. This carnage was all
Speaker 1: explicitly promised to the people of the Philippines when they
Speaker 1: voted for Rodrigo Duterte. He's been fairly open about his
Speaker 1: desire to murder drug addicts, mostly users of shabu or methamphetamine.
Speaker 1: In September of two thousand and sixteen, President Arte said this,
Speaker 1: if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have and then
Speaker 1: he pointed at himself and continued, Hitler massacred three million Jews.
Speaker 1: There's three million drug addicts there are. I'd be happy
Speaker 1: to slaughter them. So that's who we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: Guy who became president promising to kill three percent of
Speaker 1: the country, and so far he's kept his promise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the guy will deliver on a promise. Now, I think
Speaker 1: he had promised to have killed a lot more by
Speaker 1: this point, so you could argue that he's I mean,
Speaker 1: every politician they've been to a little bit. He promised
Speaker 1: something like sixty thousand and six months or whatever, and
Speaker 1: he hasn't made that much. But how do you make
Speaker 1: up for that, Like, you know, like we need more
Speaker 1: masked men. Well, we ran out of masks, so we
Speaker 1: can't do Have you seen the mask shortage lately? It's
Speaker 1: there's just nothing left on the shelves. People stop using drugs. Now,
Speaker 1: we just have to kill regular people. We're just murdering people,
Speaker 1: which they are, they are. They also are killing petty criminals,
Speaker 1: pickpockets and stuff are also getting shot dead by by
Speaker 1: murder squads, like petty criminals and that like they're passive
Speaker 1: aggressive and like they like you interpreted that sentence differently
Speaker 1: than it usually is. Just major criminals who are really
Speaker 1: really passive aggressive. No, no, no, that's not what's happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair. They're just murdering poor people. Oh that's bad then, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's really terrible. So President dotterte Is drug war
Speaker 1: in the Philippines is now the greatest mass slaughter of
Speaker 1: civilians in Asia since the camer Rouge in Cambodia. But
Speaker 1: much of the death caused by the camar Rouge was
Speaker 1: accidental due to their insane and patently idiotic social experiments.
Speaker 1: What's happening the Philippines is entirely intentional, directed by a
Speaker 1: single man. So how did a man like Rodrigo do
Speaker 1: Tarte come to be and how did Filipino democracy allow
Speaker 1: for his rise to power? Ready for a history lesson,
Speaker 1: I'm very ready here's a quick Uh. Is Manny Pacio
Speaker 1: in the Philippines. Yeah, he's coming to the story. He's
Speaker 1: a member of Congress and a supporter of Day right, okay, cool? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he doesn't play a big role in this,
Speaker 1: but he actually is like very politically active in a
Speaker 1: supporter of the mayor's people agenda. God, that guy just
Speaker 1: gets worse and worse press over and over. Yet he's
Speaker 1: a homophobe, not good at boxing anymore, and he uh,
Speaker 1: he supports a murderer all right anyway, Yeah, just wondering murderer. Sorry,
Speaker 1: don't you dare take the mass away. Don't undercut this
Speaker 1: man's accomplishments. He earned that title. He did, Yes he did, Yes,
Speaker 1: yes he did, and yes he can have That was
Speaker 1: just shot in the streets. That was his campaign slogan,
Speaker 1: by the way, Yes, yes we can shoot pickpockets. Yes
Speaker 1: we can accidentally gun down children off of motorcycle. Back
Speaker 1: because it's hard to hit drug addicts when you're shooting
Speaker 1: at him from a motorcycle. It is, yeah it is. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: accidents are going to happen. You miss a hundred of
Speaker 1: the shots that you don't take. That's a really good
Speaker 1: way to look at gunning down people in the street. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been saying it for years in regards to that issue.
Speaker 1: I think American police could adopt that as a motto too.
Speaker 1: They definitely could, especially when they're well, I mean, we
Speaker 1: all live in Los Angeles, we were all there for
Speaker 1: the that's outside of the point the police firing at
Speaker 1: a trader Joe's. But oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: do get a lot of cases like that in in
Speaker 1: the Philippines right now, because there's just essentially guys on
Speaker 1: motorcycles roaming around killing people who have been the government
Speaker 1: has put on the list as drug pushers or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they're just kind of firing into crowds and stuff
Speaker 1: a lot of the time. Do they have a cool name? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually they do. I figured they'd have to write yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. There is a cool name. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: for sure. They even have like a patch and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's pretty sweet. Um. All right, So let's get in
Speaker 1: some history so we can understand sort of the context
Speaker 1: that Dot came to power, and so Spain was the
Speaker 1: first colonial power to take control in the Philippines. Their
Speaker 1: rule they're sort of began the fifteen twenties, when fernand
Speaker 1: Magellan successfully planted some flags and then got murdered. UH.
Speaker 1: Spanish domination nonetheless spread across the island chain, and for
Speaker 1: the next three hundred and something years they would be
Speaker 1: the dominant power in the archipelago. UH Spain brought many
Speaker 1: things to the Philippines, including the Catholic faith. This would
Speaker 1: prove to be a decidedly mixed bag, but that's coming
Speaker 1: in a little bit. So by the late eighteen hundred,
Speaker 1: Spanish power had started to fade. In eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: self declared president Emilio Aguinaldo led a local insurrectioning in Spain.
Speaker 1: By the time the Spanish American War kicked off and
Speaker 1: US forces reached the Philippines, Aguinaldo had conquered basically everything
Speaker 1: in the Philippines but the capital of Manila. So the
Speaker 1: Filipino rebels worked with the U. S. Navy to encircle
Speaker 1: the city, but the US refused direct support until her
Speaker 1: troops were able to land and replace the Filipinos around Manila. See,
Speaker 1: the US was actually communicating directly with Spain during this
Speaker 1: whole time, because even though we were actively at war
Speaker 1: with them and fighting alongside the insurgents trying to cast
Speaker 1: off Spanish control. We still considered Spain the rightful government
Speaker 1: of the Philippines. Um the fact that the Filipino people
Speaker 1: had actually already picked a president and fought and bled
Speaker 1: for a new government didn't really matter to us. So
Speaker 1: we sat down and we worked at a deal with
Speaker 1: the Spanish garrison commander. He agreed to surrender under the
Speaker 1: condition that the US make it look like there'd been
Speaker 1: a battle. So he was like, I'll surrender the city,
Speaker 1: but you gotta pretend that we fought for it. But
Speaker 1: people have to die in this surrender. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody died in the fighting. It was like a
Speaker 1: staged battle where they were just kind of like shooting.
Speaker 1: So it looked like, Okay, we didn't just surrender Manillas.
Speaker 1: Like when your kids you just bang your swords together.
Speaker 1: You know, we're fighting with fake swords. That by the way,
Speaker 1: I was assuming that we've all had sword fights as children.
Speaker 1: Was yeah, but it's not an actual stabbing motion. You're
Speaker 1: just hitting. Yeah, I would love to watch a fake battle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it could have been a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there were other conditions to the surrender, no Filipino
Speaker 1: rebels could be allowed inside the city. So on August,
Speaker 1: the fake Battle of Manila was fake fought, and Americans
Speaker 1: took the city. Now, you might think that helping a
Speaker 1: captive people throw off the chains of colonial bondage would
Speaker 1: have been the US is thing, what with that being
Speaker 1: our history. Uh. But President William McKinley felt differently. He
Speaker 1: decided to annex the islands and reded a better quote,
Speaker 1: educate the Filipinos and uplift them and christianize them. He
Speaker 1: did not believe that they were capable of governing themselves.
Speaker 1: The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish American War,
Speaker 1: gave the US the option of buying the Philippines for
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars. By January of eighteen ninety nine, they
Speaker 1: were ours. Yeah. The assassinated got shot dead by an
Speaker 1: anarchist and kind of had it coming. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and say a fun funk, William McKinley, kind of
Speaker 1: a dick. Yeah. Uh. So, as you might have guessed,
Speaker 1: the army of free people who had just liberated themselves
Speaker 1: from a colonial oppressor, we're not happy with having another
Speaker 1: colonial oppressor. Land on top of them. In February, Aguinaldo
Speaker 1: and his army attacked the United States Forces. Conventional warfare
Speaker 1: was not successful for the Philippine rebels, what with the
Speaker 1: machine guns and such, so the Filipino Army turned into
Speaker 1: the Filipino and urgency in November of eighteen nine. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Army proved profoundly ill suited to guerrilla warfare, which is
Speaker 1: something that's never happened again in our history. Right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the first and the last time. First and
Speaker 1: last time. It's the uniforms. They're not breathable. You can't
Speaker 1: wear a minute jungle. No. And once we figured out
Speaker 1: under armour, we really had counterinsurgency down. That was the key.
Speaker 1: It turned out d Yeah, it was a hydration, Yeah
Speaker 1: it was. It was a hydration issue. But that's that
Speaker 1: was the problem. Uh So, after about a year of fighting,
Speaker 1: Major General Arthur McArthur took over the US forces and
Speaker 1: declared martial law over the entire Philippine Archipelago. He enacted
Speaker 1: General Order one hundred, which was an old Civil War
Speaker 1: directive that allowed the army to execute ununiformed combatants in
Speaker 1: their supporters. The goal was to isolate the guerrillas, and
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. Aguinaldo was captured in March of
Speaker 1: nineteen o one. Now at that point things degenerated into
Speaker 1: severe ugliness. General Franklin Bell forced three thousand Filipino civilians
Speaker 1: on deca centration camps, where a good number of them
Speaker 1: died of disease. In August of nineteen o one, there
Speaker 1: was a machete attack that wiped out most of an
Speaker 1: American garrison on an island called Samar. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Army responded by massacring every man above the age of ten,
Speaker 1: which you may note included a lot of children. I've
Speaker 1: never heard the phrase, oh I saw this eleven year
Speaker 1: old man the other day checking on. Okay, he's ten,
Speaker 1: But this this sounds a heart eleven, like you get
Speaker 1: him in the killing truck. There was a group of
Speaker 1: twelve year old men yelling at yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 1: was a different time. People died of cholera when they
Speaker 1: were fourteen usually, I guess, but still seems a little
Speaker 1: bit harsh. Um the average age of retirement. By the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did make the general who carried out the massacre retire,
Speaker 1: So that's a version of justice. It really is a
Speaker 1: shade of justice. Yeah. By February of nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: the insurgency finally ran out of steam. President Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: the bully guy, declared victory on the fourth of July
Speaker 1: nine two. They actually extended the length of the war
Speaker 1: so that he could declare victory on the fourth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a very Teddy Roosevelt thing to do. What's a
Speaker 1: few more days of war? Four? We'll save so much
Speaker 1: money on fireworks. Let's do this right. Uh. In total,
Speaker 1: four thousand, two hundred and thirty four Americans died during
Speaker 1: the fighting, along with twenty thousand Filipino insurgents and two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand civilians. So it's a bad time, bad time
Speaker 1: all around. Except for a three year occupation by the Japanese,
Speaker 1: the Philippines remained in US control until nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: when we gave the country back to itself and helped
Speaker 1: them build a wonderful democracy in our image. From nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty to nineteen sixty five, this worked pretty well. Average
Speaker 1: economic growth was higher in the Philippines than it was
Speaker 1: anywhere else in Southeast Asia, so a little bit of
Speaker 1: a rough start couple of hundred thousand dead, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a great start, right, but you can move on.
Speaker 1: But you can move on, and by the fifties you're
Speaker 1: making bank. Yeah. We use them as a base and
Speaker 1: so yeah, we used the ship out of them as
Speaker 1: a base. Man. We parked some planes on that fucking
Speaker 1: rock boats, all the damn boats, aircraft carriers going left
Speaker 1: and right. US soldiers getting real drunk in Manila. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. I mean, how many generations of now elderly
Speaker 1: Americans got their tattoos and Manila in that period. I
Speaker 1: would love if we can get that stat that exact
Speaker 1: stat how many staff infections from the tattoos? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: identical amount. By the way, it's the same number, the
Speaker 1: same number. Uh. Rodrigo Roa du Terte was born right
Speaker 1: on the cusp of this period on March ninety five,
Speaker 1: so right before the Philippines gets its independence. So like
Speaker 1: many Filipinos, he grew up Catholic, which I said before
Speaker 1: has been kind of a mixed bag for the people
Speaker 1: of the Philippines. Um, now the people of the United
Speaker 1: States as well, really the world people, yeah, really, for
Speaker 1: for everybody. In two thousand two, Archbishop Orlando Cuivado, president
Speaker 1: of the Catholic Bishop's Conference, admitted that two hundred of
Speaker 1: the seven thousand priests in the Philippines may have committed
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct over a twenty year period. I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: this means that actual abuse of Filipino children by Catholic
Speaker 1: priests goes back further than twenty years, probably to the
Speaker 1: beginning of Catholicism in the Philippines. One of the presumably
Speaker 1: many Filipino children molested by Catholic priests during this time
Speaker 1: was a fourteen year old school boy named Rodrigo do Tarte.
Speaker 1: Shortly after taking off as he called Pope Francis a
Speaker 1: son of a whore, uh, due to a traffic thing
Speaker 1: that the Pope had caused. And when this coused something
Speaker 1: of an out yeah, yeah, the yeah, thetly relatable thing,
Speaker 1: that defensible thing that he's done. Get piste off at traffic,
Speaker 1: piste off at traffic and calling the Pope the son
Speaker 1: of a horror of horror, this creates something of an outrage,
Speaker 1: and do Tarrte sort of talked because most of the
Speaker 1: Filipino people are Catholic, and so do Tarte sort of
Speaker 1: tried to walk this back by claiming that he had
Speaker 1: been abused by an American Jesuit priest, father Mark Falvey,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine when he was fourteen. Deuchart said, quote,
Speaker 1: it was a case of fondling, you know what he
Speaker 1: did during confession. That's how we lost our innocence early.
Speaker 1: Um Touchart claimed he was too afraid to file a
Speaker 1: complaint at the time, but he claims that Falby abused
Speaker 1: several other boys as well, and this is very likely true,
Speaker 1: um Fall. They returned to the United States I think
Speaker 1: in the mid fifties after his time with Ducharte in
Speaker 1: his classmates and set up shop on Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood, California,
Speaker 1: and was there for a couple of decades and allegedly
Speaker 1: abused a number of children in the United States, although
Speaker 1: none of this came out until he was already dead, right,
Speaker 1: It's interesting that this guy is such a pile of
Speaker 1: ship that even someone who like speaks out about his
Speaker 1: personal set, like you know, being sexually abused, is still
Speaker 1: not a sympathetic character, you know. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: claim to be made that maybe this guy is a
Speaker 1: worse person. This may have contributed to some of why
Speaker 1: he is the way he is. Sadly couldn't have helped,
Speaker 1: you know, no, no I would. Yeah, it certainly didn't
Speaker 1: make him a kinder person. Was not a positive thing.
Speaker 1: He has a major anti Catholic bias, and currently with
Speaker 1: all the fund up stuff as governance doing, the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church is fighting back against it, which in this case
Speaker 1: I think they're right to be fighting against murdering people
Speaker 1: in the street. But also he's got a real good
Speaker 1: reason to be angry with the Catholic Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is a real mess. So obviously, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say how this abuse impacted adult president
Speaker 1: you tete, but it undoubtedly had an impact on him.
Speaker 1: As a child, he repeatedly got in trouble for acting
Speaker 1: up in school. On one occasion, he got in trouble
Speaker 1: for shooting rocks at a priest with a homemade catapult.
Speaker 1: Now it is possible that the writer who related this
Speaker 1: story meant, uh sling shot. I didn't check up on
Speaker 1: that to see if that slang, because I want to
Speaker 1: believe that he fashioned and crude. That's that's imagine what
Speaker 1: the Oh you have to have a team as well,
Speaker 1: you have to have a team, and you have to
Speaker 1: be very good whittling that. That is a very funny word. Confusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I choose to believe that it was a catapult. He
Speaker 1: also got in trouble for shooting at a priest who
Speaker 1: was in like on all white outfit, some weird priest outfit,
Speaker 1: with a water gun filled with ink. He would know
Speaker 1: it was after a labor day in his that's cute,
Speaker 1: it's cute, that's it. It's fun so far. Of course,
Speaker 1: he was known to go truant for months at a time. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course all of his acting out was punished brutally.
Speaker 1: Rodrigo's mother, solid Dad Roa Gonzalez, was a harsh disciplinarian.
Speaker 1: She would flog him brutally for his misbehavior, like whipping
Speaker 1: him in the back and stuff. She was also a
Speaker 1: teacher known for forcing her students to stand out in
Speaker 1: the tropical sun for long periods of time when they misbehaved.
Speaker 1: So Jesus, he's got a rough childhood in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Um, he's also kind of a privileged kid
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Because Rodrigo's father was Vincent
Speaker 1: du Terte, prominent politician who became the governor of the
Speaker 1: de Vaux province. Now, Rodrigo and his three siblings grew
Speaker 1: up with a private cook, a driver, a boy, which
Speaker 1: I don't know that's how he's described as a boy.
Speaker 1: So I assume that's like a little girl for a
Speaker 1: runner or something. But just a kid in the house,
Speaker 1: just a child that we basically own, right, that is
Speaker 1: a rich thing. Yes, no, we uh you know. I
Speaker 1: was born with only one boy, but I've worked my
Speaker 1: ass off and now we have six boys. Six boys.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yeah, oh boy, there we go. He also
Speaker 1: had several bodyguards. Rodrigo was even given a bodyguard of
Speaker 1: his own, and since his parents were too busy to
Speaker 1: talk to him a lot of the time, the bodyguards
Speaker 1: who took care of Rodrigo did a lot of the raising. Now,
Speaker 1: this next quote comes from a book called Rodrigo de Tete,
Speaker 1: Fire and Fury in the Philippines by Jonathan Miller for
Speaker 1: British Correspondent, foreign correspondent who spent years and years living
Speaker 1: in and reporting on Philippine politics. Quote adopted the persona
Speaker 1: of a bugoy, the term for hoodlum in his local
Speaker 1: Bisaiah language. He developed what was to become a lifelong
Speaker 1: obsession with guns. He drank and smoked and slept around.
Speaker 1: Often he didn't come home at all, and if he did,
Speaker 1: he'd slip in at four am. He became increasingly nocturnal
Speaker 1: and remains so to this day. He holds press conferences
Speaker 1: that begin at one am. He appears groggy when he
Speaker 1: has to attend a morning function. Now this is not
Speaker 1: that the teritories a dictator, because he's not quite yet.
Speaker 1: But this is a thing that you will run into
Speaker 1: in dictators all throughout histories. They are all night owls,
Speaker 1: like interest all in Kaddafi, Saddam, the list goes on
Speaker 1: and on and on, like they all are famous for
Speaker 1: staying up really really late and usually have trouble getting
Speaker 1: up in the morning. They often are like watching movies
Speaker 1: late into the night and stuff like it's just kind
Speaker 1: of a dictator trope. Interesting, Yeah, I guess it makes
Speaker 1: sense because like, yeah, no, I don't need all like
Speaker 1: you know, the sun, you know, just anything. Not a
Speaker 1: lot of positive things happen at night after you get
Speaker 1: past a certain period of nights, like now I need
Speaker 1: to be up at four for all the wonderful things
Speaker 1: that happened at four am. It's very isolating and are
Speaker 1: you like that? I am like that. I like it,
Speaker 1: But I think that there's probably like a reason if
Speaker 1: you're the kind of person who is awake more often
Speaker 1: at night than you are in the day, you have
Speaker 1: a different perspective than everybody else does. And that's useful
Speaker 1: in a lot of things. But one thing that may
Speaker 1: be useful and is if you're trying to like manipulate
Speaker 1: a political structure, maybe having that different perspective on things
Speaker 1: helps you do that. Maybe the fact that these guys
Speaker 1: don't live in the same world as everyone else allows
Speaker 1: them to manipulate it better. Yeah, that makes sense. Why
Speaker 1: do these bats have feathers? Day bats? These day bats,
Speaker 1: these damn davits. Somebody get my boy to get rid
Speaker 1: of these day bats. Well, that's the boys, you found it.
Speaker 1: That's his job, getting rid of the day bats. Uh.
Speaker 1: So Miller, the guy just quote it who wrote Fire
Speaker 1: and Fury in the Philippines. That's a major source for
Speaker 1: this episode. It's like it's the first I think biography
Speaker 1: of Doutete that's been published at least for like a
Speaker 1: world audience so far, and it has a very clear
Speaker 1: anti Doutete bias. Um But the journalist writing it also
Speaker 1: has spent a lot of time talking to Rodrigo in
Speaker 1: person and a lot of figures in his life, his
Speaker 1: sisters and like other family members, people who knew him
Speaker 1: as kids. So the book is pretty indispensable, even though
Speaker 1: it is it does have a clear bias. He got
Speaker 1: a number of anecdotes about young Rodrigo. One of them
Speaker 1: from his sister Jocelyn, was about how when he was
Speaker 1: a teenager, Rodrigo would scare off her want to be
Speaker 1: boyfriends by when they would come over to the house
Speaker 1: waving a gun at them. That'll do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is what he's doing, is like, you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen or so, right, Um. Now, in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: when tar Te was twenty, Ferdinand Marcos was elected President
Speaker 1: of the Philippines. Do you know much about Marcos? Actually
Speaker 1: he was not a nice guy. No, no, no, no. Uh.
Speaker 1: It just so happens that this was at a time
Speaker 1: when the economy had started to level off. So Marcos
Speaker 1: comes to power in a in a time when sort
Speaker 1: of this fifteen year boom is coming to an end
Speaker 1: and starting to reverse a little and with less money
Speaker 1: coming in, the problems inheriting the system that the Philippines
Speaker 1: had inherited from the United States became more evident. I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote from the Rise and Fall of Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Marcos from the University of California Press quote. The US
Speaker 1: style judicial system, with an adversary process that emasculated the
Speaker 1: poor and complex procedures that endlessly delayed decisions, could not
Speaker 1: cope with injustice and crime. That doesn't sound yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds old. Private weapons were more widespread than in
Speaker 1: any country. That doesn't sound familiar either, and it was
Speaker 1: common for cars to be stopped and robbed in daylight
Speaker 1: on major streets. The democratic patronage system inhibited removal of
Speaker 1: corruption and incompetent civil leaders. Democracy directly inhibited measures designed
Speaker 1: to ameliorate some of the world's worst social inequality. A
Speaker 1: congress of elected landlords dragged its feet in passing land
Speaker 1: reform legislation and then funding it. A series of presidents
Speaker 1: who were landholders, including Ferdinand Marcos, initially refused to spend
Speaker 1: land reform funds. The landholders lawyers defeated the valid claims
Speaker 1: of peasants who could afford no lawyers, and exploited the
Speaker 1: complexity of US style court procedures to delay adverse judgments
Speaker 1: for a decade or more. So, basically, they handed the
Speaker 1: Philippines essentially the same sort of political system the US has,
Speaker 1: but the Philippines did not have one of the things
Speaker 1: that we have as a buffer against the very rich,
Speaker 1: at least we used to have, was a very large
Speaker 1: middle class. And so these people could get in court
Speaker 1: and could make their cases hurt, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: still stacked against them, but they had more power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just very poor people and then very rich people,
Speaker 1: which is what the Philippines inherited. So the problems that
Speaker 1: are becoming more obvious of our system now in a
Speaker 1: time of increasing inequality in the United States, where started
Speaker 1: to tear apart the Filipino national unity you know, in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. So that's essentially what's happened. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a fast forward version of America. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now they've passed us like that's future. They skipped right
Speaker 1: to the end. Right, We're going to get to the
Speaker 1: rest of Marcos term and what Rodrigo dou Tarte gets
Speaker 1: up to during that period of time and then his
Speaker 1: election as mayor of a city where he will. He'll
Speaker 1: murder people, that's what he does, right, But first it's
Speaker 1: something that won't murder you. And we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Rodrigo do Tarte and uh, well, actually we're talking
Speaker 1: about Ferdinand Marcos, who just became president of the Philippines,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about that and what do Tarte
Speaker 1: his life was like. In the narrative of this podcast,
Speaker 1: we're not breaking news, he's not. No. No. If this
Speaker 1: is news to you, you should read a little bit.
Speaker 1: Why is this the first thing that you listened to
Speaker 1: after coming out of your comma? Oh my god, shit?
Speaker 1: What else? A dictator in the Philippines from going back
Speaker 1: to sleep? When I fell asleep in nineteen the economy
Speaker 1: was on fire. So by the time marcos Is third
Speaker 1: term comes to an end, the Philippines is riddled with both,
Speaker 1: you know, increasing economic problems and also a lot more
Speaker 1: protesting and a lot of unrest. Many people in the
Speaker 1: Philippines wanted to become a U S state rather than
Speaker 1: chart and independent course, because they kind of had that right.
Speaker 1: They were like, you do your thing for a while,
Speaker 1: but like there will be ways you could potentially be
Speaker 1: a state if you wanted to, and so there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: they look at them, they got all the money in nukes,
Speaker 1: we should let's just be part of that. And then
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people being like, no, let's
Speaker 1: do our own thing. Marcos, being a nationalist, decides he
Speaker 1: wants to take over and take more direct power over
Speaker 1: the country. So he engineers a constitutional convention, which included
Speaker 1: a lot of reforms and was meant to transition the
Speaker 1: country away from U S style democracy and towards a
Speaker 1: different system with like a prime minister that was supposed
Speaker 1: to fit better and you know, have less of the inequalities.
Speaker 1: The major sticking point came down to the fact that
Speaker 1: there had to be an interim period between these two constitutions,
Speaker 1: and during this interim period, the head of State, Marcos
Speaker 1: would occupy the offices of president and Prime ministers simultane viously.
Speaker 1: So there was a debate over how long this interim
Speaker 1: period was going to be. Most people you would say, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of days, while we like, you know
Speaker 1: this thing, he wanted it to be indefinitely long. And
Speaker 1: see why he would want you, I might want that,
Speaker 1: So he instituted a scheme that sounds kind of like
Speaker 1: an Info Wars conspiracy theory. I'm gonna quote again from
Speaker 1: the Rise and Fall of fer nand Marcos. One by one,
Speaker 1: the delegates to the convention were summoned by Intelligence chief
Speaker 1: General ver, who reviewed with them their various failures to
Speaker 1: pay taxes, occasions on which their security guards had killed
Speaker 1: people under dubious circumstances, and other misdeeds which, according to
Speaker 1: the General, the judicial system would of course have to
Speaker 1: confront unless the delegate saw fit to serve their nation
Speaker 1: by voting appropriately on the duration of the interim period.
Speaker 1: The cream of the national political elite proved extraordinarily vulnerable
Speaker 1: to personal pressures and frequently valid accusations of felony. So
Speaker 1: basically everybody in power was so corrupt that when Marcos
Speaker 1: was like, I'll investigate you just a little bit if
Speaker 1: you don't vote with this, they were like, oh god, oh,
Speaker 1: there is a lot to find where all the boys
Speaker 1: are buried. All you need is a little bit and
Speaker 1: our whole career will come crashing down. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: was apparently everybody in Congress. So, I mean, we laugh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's just politics. So so Marcos got their
Speaker 1: longer interim period, and during that period, Marcus's government carried
Speaker 1: out a false flag attack on itself by shooting up
Speaker 1: the Minister of Defenses empty Mercedes bins. This was announced
Speaker 1: as a communist assassination attempt. The government also blew up
Speaker 1: several power pylons around Manila and blame this as well
Speaker 1: on the Commies. They used the terror attacks that the
Speaker 1: government itself had carried out to justify implementing martial law
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. So this is the second time
Speaker 1: in our story martial law has been declared in the Philippines.
Speaker 1: They're kind of getting used to it at this point.
Speaker 1: It's a great kind of law. If you're going to
Speaker 1: have a law, right it be Marshal. Of course, I've
Speaker 1: always said that, yeah, yeah, no. I went to law
Speaker 1: school and I yea with an emphasis on Marshall. And
Speaker 1: it hasn't really come up yet. I've really been out
Speaker 1: of work for quite sometimes. See what I'm imagining when
Speaker 1: I think of how that could be positive is just
Speaker 1: the instructor from the karate Kit, just him enforcing all
Speaker 1: of the laws, like which would legitimately be a better
Speaker 1: system than we have, or like the retail chain. Is
Speaker 1: that's their law, where there's just a martials martial law,
Speaker 1: just just throw clothes on the ground and people. I
Speaker 1: think no one else would say exactly. I guess that's
Speaker 1: a positive spin on it. That might be worse. Actually,
Speaker 1: I mean Marshal's law, Like if it's just law by
Speaker 1: the most discounted, you know, that might be what we
Speaker 1: have right now. Boy, I should go to Marshal's. I
Speaker 1: need a torn yoga. I need a mug with the
Speaker 1: handle broken off, partially open to pack of chips. Marshals, Marshals,
Speaker 1: we have it. Probably there's no inventory system whatsoever. There's
Speaker 1: no way to know what we have come in here
Speaker 1: and checking it out, but we do have shelves with
Speaker 1: things on them. Marshal's really taking some hits. Yeah, good,
Speaker 1: it's about time or the t J Max lobby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, Marcos declares martial law, justifying that they've got
Speaker 1: to fight the communists, even though there were only about
Speaker 1: eight hundred communist insurgents in the entire Philippines at that point.
Speaker 1: But you know, you ever, you're gonna let the facts
Speaker 1: get in the middle of a good martial lawby so
Speaker 1: around this time, do Tarte had finished college in law school.
Speaker 1: His bar exam was delayed because of the military takeover
Speaker 1: of the country, which good reason to the lay at test.
Speaker 1: Rodrigo actually wound up missing his graduation ceremony for a
Speaker 1: completely different reason. He had ambushed and shot one of
Speaker 1: his fellow students to teach him a lesson. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: the guy had mocked him for being from the South,
Speaker 1: and so do te had ambushed him and shot him,
Speaker 1: I think several times. But the guy did survive. So
Speaker 1: that is an institution of higher learning. That is how
Speaker 1: you teach a lot. Alright, we'll let you be a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but you don't get to come to graduation because you
Speaker 1: shot somebody. Fine, yeah, that's a fair punished rules. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so Marcos ruled into the late nineteen eighties. Well,
Speaker 1: the CIA had backed his rivals at first. They eventually
Speaker 1: came around to the old lug and his communist slaughtering ways.
Speaker 1: He and his wife, who stole an estimated ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars from the Philippines, uh enjoyed the strong support of
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration. The New York Times says that Ronald
Speaker 1: quote genuinely cherished Ferdinand and his wife Amelda. Quote. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, Governor and Miss Reagan visited Manila, where
Speaker 1: Emelda's opulent parties dazzled them from then on. Reagan, impressed
Speaker 1: by Marcos's exaggerated stories of his exploits as an anti
Speaker 1: Japanese guerrilla, counted him among the world's freedom fighters in
Speaker 1: the struggle against communism. In Reagan's eyes. One of his
Speaker 1: aids mused later Marcos was quote a hero on a
Speaker 1: bubblegum card he had collected as a kid. So amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what kind of deck do those cards come in? By
Speaker 1: the way, the bub will come Oh man, who else
Speaker 1: would be on those cars? Like Joseph McCarthy's there, sure, yeah, Hitler, Hitler,
Speaker 1: Yeah we can throw him on. That killed some communists,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. A rookie Hitler card repeated where he
Speaker 1: just got his bowl, weapon, his shorts. Right. I wonder
Speaker 1: what a Hitler rookie cards worth these days? Hundreds? Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so. Yeah. One of the other people who helped
Speaker 1: out Marcos stirring sort of the late eighties when he
Speaker 1: was having increasing trouble over all of the people he
Speaker 1: was He was torturing tens of thousands of people um,
Speaker 1: how many years? Sorry, is this into his indefinite um years? Okay,
Speaker 1: about years? Um? Well, I mean he only had about
Speaker 1: fourteen years of martial law from eight six and during
Speaker 1: a good chunk of that, one of the people who
Speaker 1: represented him to the United States, who tried to help
Speaker 1: get him additional funds from the government was a little
Speaker 1: fellow you might not called Paul Manafort, and in fact
Speaker 1: saying yeah, one of maniforts employees flew with Marcos when
Speaker 1: he fled the mob that was taking over his palace
Speaker 1: and went to Hawaii to go die. When one of
Speaker 1: Manafort's employees flew with him on that flight, So that
Speaker 1: was that's nice to The Marcus regime proved unpopular if
Speaker 1: they only held on the power through the application of
Speaker 1: brutal martial law. More than people were executed during his
Speaker 1: time in power, and more than thirty four thousand were tortured.
Speaker 1: Victims included student activists like the twenty three year old
Speaker 1: Lily Hillo, who edited a student newspaper critical of the
Speaker 1: Marcus regime. She was forced to commit suicide by drinking
Speaker 1: myriatic acid. Yeah it's dark, is that suicide? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because she was like she was tortured and assaulted a
Speaker 1: bunch until she right right, yeah, semantics. Yeah. During this
Speaker 1: period of martial law, a new drug introduce in the Philippines.
Speaker 1: We know it as meth amphetamine. Now. Prior to Spanish colonization,
Speaker 1: the Filipino people had had a fairly mild drug culture.
Speaker 1: I think battle nut was one of the big things
Speaker 1: they'd use. I think marijuana was around, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: super common. If you say battle nut three times, it appears,
Speaker 1: so you know that's just the jew Oh, okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I think what you spit out when you've been chewing
Speaker 1: you're right, okay, Sorry, I'm a square. I don't know. Um. So,
Speaker 1: prior to Spanish yeah, they had a fairly minor drug culture,
Speaker 1: with no evidence of serious addiction to anything. Opium got
Speaker 1: to the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period because the
Speaker 1: East India Company would essentially drop it off during their
Speaker 1: trading um, but the Philippines would not have a real
Speaker 1: drug crisis until meth got its grips on the New Nation.
Speaker 1: I found one account from a Filipino writer who claims
Speaker 1: that he first became aware of the drug in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one. Quote a neighbor excitedly asked, have you heard
Speaker 1: about the new drug intown called Japanese coke. It was
Speaker 1: called Japanese because the way they smoked it reminded people
Speaker 1: of a Japanese hot pot uh style dish, which they
Speaker 1: called a shabu shabu dish. So meth acquired the local
Speaker 1: name shabu, and by the mid nineteen eighties it had
Speaker 1: grown quite popular among a certain set, although it was
Speaker 1: still fairly expensive at this point. So fernand Marcos was
Speaker 1: forced out of office in nineteen eighty six by the
Speaker 1: People Power Revolution. The new president, Corazon Aquino, made Rodrigo
Speaker 1: du Tarte the acting vice mayor of Devou City, the
Speaker 1: most populous city on the island of Mendano in the
Speaker 1: third most populous city in the whole Philippines. In nine
Speaker 1: eight he ran for election and one as mayor. Now
Speaker 1: by this point, Devout City was one of the most
Speaker 1: violent cities in the Philippines. Doutarte was elected as a
Speaker 1: law and order candidate. He promised to stop street crime,
Speaker 1: combat the use of shabu and other drugs, and he
Speaker 1: was pretty straightaway a strict mayor. He instituted a series
Speaker 1: of pretty harsh laws, including fines for jaywalking, a ten
Speaker 1: pm curfew for all children, a nine pm ban on karaoke,
Speaker 1: a ban on firecrackers, and a massive reduction in speed limits.
Speaker 1: Rodrigo was known to patrol the streets himself on his
Speaker 1: own Harley Davidson motorcycle, observing traffic and looking out for
Speaker 1: rule breakers. So he's a hands on kind of feet
Speaker 1: to the pedal, feet on the ground. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the ten o'clock curfew for children, by the way, it
Speaker 1: was just people four years old and younger. Yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're before you're an adult, right, yeah, you're that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Nine year old adults like to do whatever the hell
Speaker 1: they want. Well, I mean they'd better be getting to
Speaker 1: work at the fact probably, right, a factory that builds
Speaker 1: factories for smaller children to work in. And yes, I
Speaker 1: don't actually know if that's a that's a big part
Speaker 1: of the economy. Yeah, we're still just riffing on us
Speaker 1: policy from right. Yeah, So, depending on your attitude towards
Speaker 1: jaywalking in karaoke, that may sound reasonable, And in fact
Speaker 1: I support an earlier curfew on anyone under eighteen. I
Speaker 1: think they should be allowed out of the house from
Speaker 1: like ten am to like two pm and locked indoors
Speaker 1: the rest of the time. That's just that's your platform.
Speaker 1: Harsh but fair, I think it. We can all agree.
Speaker 1: So yeah. A few years into his merridom, do Tearte
Speaker 1: basically for the first close to a decade he's a
Speaker 1: harsh mayre and institute strict policies against petty crime, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't really seem to have a huge amount of
Speaker 1: focus on the drug war. On the radar, this becomes
Speaker 1: more of a thing in the mid nineties and especially
Speaker 1: by the late nineties, he really starts to ramp up
Speaker 1: persecution of drug users and drug pushers, and in fact,
Speaker 1: a few years into his mayordom in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: do Tete established what's now known as the Devou Death Squad,
Speaker 1: which exists and existed to murder criminals. Quote. During the
Speaker 1: seven terms of Mayor dou Teterte, the bodies of hundreds
Speaker 1: of street kids and petty criminals, as well as addicts
Speaker 1: and dealers of crystal meth or shabou as it is
Speaker 1: known in the Philippines, were found dumped in devots back streets.
Speaker 1: Often their corpses were discovered with their faces wrapped in
Speaker 1: masking tape, their hands were tied, and handwritten signs were
Speaker 1: hung around their necks addict pusher thief. The people of
Speaker 1: Devout City came to realize that these murders would all
Speaker 1: remain unsolved. So again, it's hard to say exactly when
Speaker 1: the Devout Death Squad became active. UM. By nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: they were tied to around sixty five deaths. By two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, they would be tied to well over a
Speaker 1: thousand deaths. UM was that the like their official title, like,
Speaker 1: did he call them the Devout Death everyone called death Squad?
Speaker 1: He would usually call them a vigilante unknown vigilante killers
Speaker 1: is usually how these guys are officially known to He would, yeah,
Speaker 1: and most of these victims were killed. Their signature weapon
Speaker 1: was a forty five caliber handgun, which was interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: the forty five a CP handgun the Colton nineteen eleven
Speaker 1: that was used by the U S from like World
Speaker 1: War One, World War Two up until almost the modern day.
Speaker 1: In the eighties is when they switched over that was
Speaker 1: developed for the Philippines because before that they were using
Speaker 1: a smaller bullet and the Filipino warriors were essentially so
Speaker 1: imposing that like they felt like it didn't have enough
Speaker 1: stopping powers. They needed a bigger round to clamp down
Speaker 1: on the insurgency. So the forty five has a real
Speaker 1: significant reputation in the Philippines and it has become now
Speaker 1: the gun of the Mayor's Death Squad in Devout City.
Speaker 1: So interesting little bit of history there. So yeah, Officially,
Speaker 1: the murders committed by the Devout Death Squad were the
Speaker 1: work of unknown vigilante killers, but the actual work was
Speaker 1: often done by off duty police officers at the direct
Speaker 1: urging of maryor Jutete. Several of these killers have now
Speaker 1: come forward to confirm that Tape organize the Devout Death Squad.
Speaker 1: Rodrigo himself denies this sometimes on the TV show he
Speaker 1: hosted while mayor. Also he hosted a television show while
Speaker 1: Mayor called on the Masses, he stated, quote, they say
Speaker 1: I'm the death Squad. True, that is true. So he's
Speaker 1: gone on to deny that again since and basically know
Speaker 1: I was saying, they say that I'm the death Squad,
Speaker 1: and it's true that they say, but I'm not the
Speaker 1: death You have a death squad, have a death death
Speaker 1: squad squad, and he wants to brag about it so
Speaker 1: badly too, you know, like, how much does he love
Speaker 1: having a death squad? I mean, who wouldn't want a
Speaker 1: death squad? Yes, I would love a death squad. It
Speaker 1: would be incredible just to handle neighbors, people who drive
Speaker 1: too slow or too fast, mostly mostly those groups. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he uh, this goes without saying, but it's very interesting
Speaker 1: that his hatred for drug addicts and thieves goes way
Speaker 1: beyond his hatred for murdering, Like he loves murder but
Speaker 1: hates which on the crime scale is obviously generally a
Speaker 1: most of us would say, Yeah, it's very interesting, like, no,
Speaker 1: being dead is more noble than wasting the time that
Speaker 1: you're alive by being addicted to And who has rejected
Speaker 1: religion so thoroughly. That's a weirdly like almost fundamentalist religious
Speaker 1: sort of attitude to take towards drug use, which is
Speaker 1: interesting to me, very interesting. I will say, if I
Speaker 1: had a death squad, I know who I would target first.
Speaker 1: And there's so I go running in a coup and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. We're going to have that for
Speaker 1: you in a moment. I'm just getting not my job. Well,
Speaker 1: I like, there's a couple of neighborhoods I like to
Speaker 1: run in Santa Monicchy one of them. The speed limit
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood is thirty miles an hour, but people
Speaker 1: have put out signs that say, my kids live here,
Speaker 1: don't drive over twenty with that yellow fucking thing. I
Speaker 1: get to make the speed limits just because you've got to.
Speaker 1: That's who I target, trying to make the speed limits.
Speaker 1: Oh that sucks. I know, it's just so obnoxious. What
Speaker 1: a rich person thing too. You don't get to make
Speaker 1: that choice. Anyway, We'll we'll be back not talking about
Speaker 1: people who want to have murdered by death squads. But maybe,
Speaker 1: but but maybe, but maybe. But I can guarantee who
Speaker 1: doesn't use death squads is the people who support this
Speaker 1: podcast with advertising. No death squads are related to the
Speaker 1: operation of this podcast or its sponsors. And we should
Speaker 1: have mentioned that earlier. We should have mentioned that earlier.
Speaker 1: Zero death squads, maybe one eventually. All right, here's here's
Speaker 1: the man's and we're back. We are talking about the
Speaker 1: fact that my producer, Sophie had a seventy year old
Speaker 1: Catholic priest teacher how to use her phone, which from
Speaker 1: the Philippines. From the Philippines is fascinating. She's shaking her head.
Speaker 1: We're not going to correct this, repair your phone even
Speaker 1: more incredible. What a strange thing for priest to know
Speaker 1: how to do this business called you broke it, he
Speaker 1: fixed it and he is capitalized. So obviously the main
Speaker 1: subject of this podcast is a Rodrigo dou Tarte, and
Speaker 1: as we've gotten to this, he's become the mayor and
Speaker 1: he's kind of sort of definitely started a death squad.
Speaker 1: So in nine, which is the year that the death
Speaker 1: squad really ramps up it's death squadding, Rodrigo's wife Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: asks for an annulment of their marriage. Now it is
Speaker 1: interesting because you can't get divorced in the Philippines. The
Speaker 1: Philippines is actually one of two nations on the planet.
Speaker 1: The other is the Vatican, where divorce is illegal. So
Speaker 1: again very Catholic. Yes, this will become more remarkable later
Speaker 1: because du Terte, I'll give it to him. He doesn't
Speaker 1: give a funk what people think about him. He's quite
Speaker 1: a fellow. So during this annulment, a clinical psychologist was
Speaker 1: asked to analyze Mayor Rodrigo dou Tarte. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: he is suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder with aggressive features. Uh.
Speaker 1: These features included quote his gross indifference in sensitivity and
Speaker 1: self centeredness, his grandiose sense of self and entitlement, his
Speaker 1: manipulative behaviors, his lies, and his deceits, as well as
Speaker 1: his pervasive tendency to demean, humiliate others, and violate their
Speaker 1: rights and feelings. So this is a clinical psychologist analyzing
Speaker 1: the Mayor of devout narcissistic personality disorder, which our regular
Speaker 1: listeners will notice. Alex Jones, who we just did a
Speaker 1: big episode on, was also diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
Speaker 1: All your guests probably as well. I think we all
Speaker 1: probably have it. It is. It's probably like Spee of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, California. Yeah right, So some of Mayor do
Speaker 1: Tartas most celebrated moments are clear evidence of all of
Speaker 1: these things, his tendency to de mean, humiliate, and violate
Speaker 1: other people's rights. One of his signature efforts as mayor
Speaker 1: was an anti smoking campaign meant to wipe cigarettes off
Speaker 1: the streets. Sounds fine, right, Yeah? Yeah, yeah, cigarettes bad.
Speaker 1: That's probably the end of it, right, Probably nothing, nothing
Speaker 1: ridiculous ever have now, of course not well during this time.
Speaker 1: One of the most popular stories from Mayor do tarts
Speaker 1: reign is that he spotted a tourist smoking outside. He
Speaker 1: confronted the man, and the tourist refused to put out
Speaker 1: his cigarette. So do Tarte quote pulled out a snub
Speaker 1: nosed thirty eight revolver and poked it at the man's crotch.
Speaker 1: He said, I'll give you these choices. I'll shoot your balls,
Speaker 1: sid you to jail, or you eat your cigarette. But
Speaker 1: the tourist is said to have apologized before swallowing the
Speaker 1: cigarette butt. Stories like this, whether or not they're true,
Speaker 1: are part of how rod Rigo earned the nickname do
Speaker 1: Terte Harry, because like Dirty Harry, I like that exactly
Speaker 1: the Philippines obviously we owned them for a long time.
Speaker 1: There's a mix of resentment because we did a lot
Speaker 1: of funked up things to the Philippines, but also really
Speaker 1: deep love of American pop culture and music and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So people get a Dirty Harry reference. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: anyway they do. Now. It is worth noting that there's
Speaker 1: some debate over the true nature of this story because
Speaker 1: when questioned about it, do Tarte spokesman said that quote,
Speaker 1: as far as he knew, the mayor had never pointed
Speaker 1: a revolver at anyone, although he did specify a revolver,
Speaker 1: which right, right, that's interesting. But he didn't even say pistol.
Speaker 1: He said a very specific type handgun. It's also worth
Speaker 1: noting and a little bit familiar to our own politics
Speaker 1: that the same night, his spokesman said that this story
Speaker 1: was bullshit. Do Tearte turned up on television to confirm
Speaker 1: the anecdote and add that he had told the tourist,
Speaker 1: I will make both your balls explode. So that's from
Speaker 1: the mayor now president's mouth. He punched it up. He's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, I didn't just I told him I'm gonna
Speaker 1: blow his balls up if he doesn't eat a cigarette.
Speaker 1: Let me add some imagery for you. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of stories like this, according to Fire and Fury
Speaker 1: in the Philippines quote. And then there is the case
Speaker 1: of a man who was caught selling fake land titles
Speaker 1: forced him to eat them in front of TV cameras.
Speaker 1: Reporters remember him instructing the cameraman to zoom in on
Speaker 1: him chewing. So he's a character. You can see why
Speaker 1: this guy got really popular because that's the kind of
Speaker 1: stories people love about a political figure is being like
Speaker 1: he's not just being tough. He's like this tourist came
Speaker 1: in and thinks he can smoke in our city on
Speaker 1: the street and throw at a cigarette. But no, the
Speaker 1: mayor is gonna make him eat it, make him eat it,
Speaker 1: and then the other guy eat is like, it's very
Speaker 1: obsessed with making people eat their crimes, and it's not
Speaker 1: that big of a deal. If you sell like a
Speaker 1: stolen pizza, you know, it's like made meat. It's pizza.
Speaker 1: A pizza thief in Devo City, that's the smart money.
Speaker 1: That is the smart money. In two thousand one, Rodrigo
Speaker 1: Guete got on local television and read out the names
Speaker 1: of five hundred people on his watch list. Cash rewards
Speaker 1: were offered to citizens who could provide information on drug
Speaker 1: labs or dealers. A few days after this, he sat
Speaker 1: down for an interview and was asked how he felt
Speaker 1: about being called the godfather of the Devout Death Squad.
Speaker 1: He replied, quote, I don't give a damn. I don't
Speaker 1: give a ship what I should do now is honor
Speaker 1: my commitment to be really truthful and honest about it.
Speaker 1: I would rather see criminals dead than innocent victims die
Speaker 1: being killed senselessly. Now, when he said of those words,
Speaker 1: four of the people on his list had already been murdered.
Speaker 1: Seventeen more died before the article was published. The victims
Speaker 1: were all either drug dealers or mobile phone pickpockets. Four
Speaker 1: were children. In less than three weeks, twenty six people
Speaker 1: on the list had been killed, including quote marketplace vendors,
Speaker 1: construction workers, a housewife, and two members of a leftist
Speaker 1: political party. Now in two thousand three, June Paula, a
Speaker 1: shock jock radio guy in Davao City, made fun of
Speaker 1: Rodrigo's son Paolo for beating up a hotel security guard.
Speaker 1: He repeated persistent rumors that Paulo was addicted himself to
Speaker 1: crystal meth. Uh This Piste Rodrigo du terte off, and
Speaker 1: in September of that year, June Paula was ambushed and
Speaker 1: gunned down in the streets. His murder is officially unsolved,
Speaker 1: although in February of two thousand seventeen, are Touro las
Speaker 1: Kanyes confessed to having been a leading member of the
Speaker 1: Devout Death Squad and claimed under oath that he'd been
Speaker 1: paid twenty thou dollars to murder this guy. So well,
Speaker 1: he's making jobs. He's making jobs exactly. Las Kanyees is
Speaker 1: able to feed his family off of the money he
Speaker 1: got murdering the radio personality for making fun of the
Speaker 1: fact that Rodrigo's son beat up a guy at a hotel. Amazing, amazing,
Speaker 1: He's he's quite the man. Yeah, um so. In Rodrigo's
Speaker 1: last year as mayor, he was nominated for the World
Speaker 1: Mayor Award, something that apparently exists, which is the opposite
Speaker 1: of local government, which is what a mayor is. The
Speaker 1: executive of World Mayor Award the worst. Yeah, I'm the
Speaker 1: best mayor in the world. Are you talking about? I
Speaker 1: don't even I maybe like twice in my life I
Speaker 1: have known the mayor of wherever it is I happen
Speaker 1: to live. Yeah. It's hard. Yeah, I mean the only
Speaker 1: reason I knew it for a while in l A
Speaker 1: is because in the fucking elevators you've got the mayor's
Speaker 1: name on like the little like the thing, and so
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, it's the worst when it's the previous mayor.
Speaker 1: It's like, good God is the ship. It doesn't work, boy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he was nominated for the World may Award. He
Speaker 1: turned down the nomination, saying of his time in office,
Speaker 1: I did it not for my own glory, but because
Speaker 1: that was what the people expected me to do. So
Speaker 1: that's that some humility right there. But the World Murder
Speaker 1: Award he happily accepted. And one he earned that World
Speaker 1: Murder Award. And it's an objective thing. Yeah, of course. Um.
Speaker 1: It was all but a foregone conclusion that Rodrigo dou
Speaker 1: Tarte would run for President of the Philippines in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen. Eight months before he announced his candidacy, he
Speaker 1: did an interview with Esquire Philippines. In it, he claimed
Speaker 1: to have first killed a man when he was seventeen
Speaker 1: by maybe stabbing him to death in a drunken beach brawl,
Speaker 1: but maybe not, maybe not because he was drunk. He
Speaker 1: self admitted he was drunk when he probably stabbed again death.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh, he did, add I have never in my
Speaker 1: life killed an innocent person. So he was just saying,
Speaker 1: like anyone I got into a drunken beach bro with
Speaker 1: has coming, I'll tell you that much. Who fights at
Speaker 1: the beach, you know, the tired how president. So from
Speaker 1: two fifteen, the Devout Death Squad killed more than fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred people by some estimates, including roughly one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty children. Other estimates will say just like a thousand
Speaker 1: eleven hundred. It's unclear the exact number, but somewhere between
Speaker 1: a thousand and fourteen hundred's probably pretty fair. For Also
Speaker 1: a pad on the back to us for stopping the
Speaker 1: children age bit that we've been doing throughout. It's the
Speaker 1: amount of self discipline I've had the exercise to not
Speaker 1: keep that going is a lot. It is one of
Speaker 1: those things when you read old books that gives you
Speaker 1: a real insight into how different things were. Was like
Speaker 1: what they included a child because like in Germany hundreds
Speaker 1: it was like you're twelve year old enough to work,
Speaker 1: get a job? Yeah, or if they're talking about like
Speaker 1: a woman from like you know, like back in that time,
Speaker 1: it was again and she was eventually married at the
Speaker 1: age of thirteen when yeah, she was out to pasture.
Speaker 1: But then real spinster, fourteen years old, spinster, she's got
Speaker 1: another what for at most? Oh boy, history is just
Speaker 1: a pile of nightmares wrapped up in a pile ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. Las Kanye is the hitman who
Speaker 1: later confessed to being one of the devout death squads leaders.
Speaker 1: Says that his extra murdering money came from the combined
Speaker 1: wages of ten to twelve ghost employees, which are fake
Speaker 1: government employees who existed just as money funnels for the
Speaker 1: Mayor's murder team. The salaries for countless ghost workers had
Speaker 1: been pulled into the Mayor's intelligence fund. What's head paid
Speaker 1: for all of the murders. So this is in case
Speaker 1: you were wondering fiscally, how does this death squad work out?
Speaker 1: There's a lot of data. Was very responsible. It was
Speaker 1: very fiscally responsible death squad. Right, they've got receipts, which
Speaker 1: is critical with a death squad, which is rare. This
Speaker 1: is what people got onto the Nazis for not enough receipts.
Speaker 1: And now the Nazis were great at receipts. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they were diligent. They were really really good at receipts.
Speaker 1: So Las Kanye's claimed to have been paid between four
Speaker 1: hundred and two thousand dollars per execution, depending on the
Speaker 1: status of the target. It's got to be a bummer
Speaker 1: if you like you and your friend get hit and
Speaker 1: like he's a two thousand your I know, I know
Speaker 1: that would hurt more than the death. I don't think
Speaker 1: my ego could take that. No, No, you just don't
Speaker 1: want to even ask, right, Les Kanye has also received
Speaker 1: a two thousand dollar monthly allowance that went on top
Speaker 1: of his police salary. The money was paid by Sunny Buenaventura,
Speaker 1: the mayor's bodyguard. Let's Kanye's claims quote do Tartes office
Speaker 1: supplied everything cars, guns, ammo, food and money. His hitman
Speaker 1: were a mix of former Communist Party n P, a
Speaker 1: assassin's that's along with well, no, actually a dotterte is
Speaker 1: kind of a leftist. Oh I'm sorry, I U confusing
Speaker 1: with for the other guy at the previous never mind, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's it is a little bit like
Speaker 1: and it's it's not even fair to call him a leftist.
Speaker 1: He definitely has come to power as a socialist, but
Speaker 1: he's also more of a do Tertist than anything. Like.
Speaker 1: He's tough to classify who he is, right, but yeah,
Speaker 1: his hitman were a mix of former Communist Party assassins
Speaker 1: long with police officers and of course, run of the
Speaker 1: mill contract killers. Here's another quote from Fire and Fury.
Speaker 1: In the Philippines, the former n p A killers targeted
Speaker 1: glue sniffers and alleged petty thieves, while the police and
Speaker 1: their contractors went after bigger fish, kidnappers and drug lords.
Speaker 1: As Kanye Is also confirmed the use of the Loud
Speaker 1: Quarry as an execution ground, and when questions said he
Speaker 1: could point to burial sites. These included those of an
Speaker 1: entire family killed with the silence to twenty two caliber pistol,
Speaker 1: a suspected kidnapper, his Muslim convert wife who was seven
Speaker 1: months pregnant, their four year old son, her seventy year
Speaker 1: old father, an elderly male relative, and the family made
Speaker 1: having abducted them from a neighboring town. The Devout death
Speaker 1: squad held them for hours in the building inside the
Speaker 1: quarry before their executions. The personal belongings were removed and burned,
Speaker 1: including their wife's koran, he said, adding that the bodies
Speaker 1: were then stripped and buried so their boy was spared No,
Speaker 1: because they I mean they killed the maid in the
Speaker 1: four year which which I means it's a double tragedy
Speaker 1: because that means this family didn't have a boy. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that's what we should take away that that's what
Speaker 1: we should take away from a classic double tragedy situation.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, got you got yourself? Yeah, I didn't expect
Speaker 1: this to be so focused on the boy, but well
Speaker 1: you booked the wrong person. That was so les Kanye
Speaker 1: testified about all of this in two thousand seventeen when
Speaker 1: you Tete was actually president. Um it didn't have a
Speaker 1: huge impact on his popularity as president, and it possibly
Speaker 1: that it wouldn't have made any difference at all if
Speaker 1: it had come out during the election itself. Part of
Speaker 1: Rodrigue's appeal was that he's du terte Harry. He's the
Speaker 1: violent son of a bit She doesn't play by the
Speaker 1: rules but gets results. His detractors could point to an
Speaker 1: enormous pile of corpses, but all do Tarte had to
Speaker 1: say is look at the vow I cleaned up one
Speaker 1: of the biggest cities in the Philippines. And this is
Speaker 1: where it gets kind of tricky, because it is true
Speaker 1: that overall crime has plummeted in de Vous City and
Speaker 1: across the island of Mendano. This may not be due
Speaker 1: to Terte. The crime rate rose from eight most of
Speaker 1: that was during his second term as mayor, and while
Speaker 1: Devous city has seen massive drops in crime in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, it remains the murder capital of
Speaker 1: the Philippines. It's overall murder rate is fourth in the nation,
Speaker 1: So Devots by no means the most dangerous city in
Speaker 1: the country. But it certainly is not an oasis of peace.
Speaker 1: So basically they've traded in less other crime way more murder.
Speaker 1: That's what you get with Rodrigo do terrte Let's stolen
Speaker 1: cell phones, more people gunned down on the street. So well,
Speaker 1: the less people there are, the less crime there exactly,
Speaker 1: whether they're committing they can't be crimed upon because they're
Speaker 1: dead people. It's a double victory there, right, that's efficient.
Speaker 1: So November one, two thousand and fifteen, Rodrigo dou Tarte
Speaker 1: announced that he was running to be President of the Philippines.
Speaker 1: He called himself a socialist, but ideology was not really
Speaker 1: his focus. Dotterte ran as a populist who promised to
Speaker 1: take out the bad guys and be a tough guy,
Speaker 1: badass president to ass I like that tough, fast son
Speaker 1: of a bitch. I am your last card, he told
Speaker 1: a group of supporters at a rally. I promise you,
Speaker 1: I will get down and dirty just to get things done.
Speaker 1: All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches,
Speaker 1: I will really kill you. I have no patience, I
Speaker 1: have no middle ground. Either you kill me or I
Speaker 1: will kill you idiots. So one thing you can say
Speaker 1: for Rodrigudu Tearte is that he was always remarkably honest
Speaker 1: with what his reign would bring to the Philippines. He
Speaker 1: does sound like a drunk person at a bar, like
Speaker 1: about to get enough fight, Like I'll kill you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you kill me first, you idiots, you know, because you
Speaker 1: don't come up with the most intelligent insult when you're
Speaker 1: in the moment, like about to fight. I'd imagine he's
Speaker 1: like a drunk guy in a fight with you, but
Speaker 1: trying to get you to vote for him. Yeah yeah, right,
Speaker 1: right right. But also he's handing the ballot, the ballot
Speaker 1: over to you. I'm gonna fucking kill some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: vote from here, just right there, if you mark right there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: While campaigning, he would regularly lament the drug dealing sons
Speaker 1: of whores who are destroying our children. He promised to
Speaker 1: make the fish in Manila Bay fat with their flesh.
Speaker 1: While most politicians in a democratic country run on promises
Speaker 1: of how they can improve lives and protect people, do
Speaker 1: Tete offered something else. He may be the only politician
Speaker 1: to ever say, God will weep if I become president? Amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is not a liar. Not a liar, Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: not a liar. He promised to make God cry with
Speaker 1: the amount of corps He promised to fill the morgues
Speaker 1: like that's bold, promised to make his president. There will
Speaker 1: be so many more corpses and I become president, and
Speaker 1: by sons of horrors, he meant popes. By the way,
Speaker 1: when he said that, that's just his word for pope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just his word for pope. Yeah. Yeah, Okay. So
Speaker 1: that's part one. Rodrigu du Terte, the mayor of Murder Town.
Speaker 1: Part two will of course be Rodrigue du Terte, President
Speaker 1: of the Kilippines. I'm proud of Yeah. That really all
Speaker 1: came together, of course, seamlessly. So you want to plug
Speaker 1: your plug doubles, Oh yeah please? Uh stuffed boy, actually,
Speaker 1: um is my newest album on iTunes. Uh, my first
Speaker 1: album is up there to the Blake album. And then
Speaker 1: there's another album I released with a comedian, Todd Glass,
Speaker 1: where I saved voicemails from him for twelve years and
Speaker 1: we released it as an album. It's called twelve Years
Speaker 1: of Voicemails from Toad Guys to play Baxler so yea
Speaker 1: of honesty. I know, yeah, I know. And then Blake
Speaker 1: Baxler dot com. Cool, Blake Wexler dot com. I am
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay.
Speaker 1: You can find this podcast on the internet at behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards dot com. You can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at at Bastards pod. And we we sell
Speaker 1: t shirts on a T public, so look at tea
Speaker 1: public Behind the Bastards a lot of great T shirts,
Speaker 1: including a lot of great Dorrito's themed T shirts. Dorrito's
Speaker 1: about Dictators, Nachos, not Nazis. By them, you support the show,
Speaker 1: money goes to me, and also you get a pretty
Speaker 1: cool shirt out of the deal. So it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's great. All right, Well that'll do it for us
Speaker 1: for now. We're gonna get into part two about Rodrigo
Speaker 1: do tear te on the day, so please tune back
Speaker 1: in then, although you don't have to tune anything because
Speaker 1: this is not old time radio, and just do whatever
Speaker 1: you want. Just download us, listen to us when you're
Speaker 1: you know, at the kickboxing gym, boxing and kicking and
Speaker 1: whatever it is. I'm gonna it's over. The episode is
Speaker 1: over now and I yeah bye. I love about h