The State Department on Friday laughed about reports that God advised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to stop swearing.
“I’m not going to take the bait,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said as he laughed.
Duterte’s rhetoric — he called President Obama a “son of a whore” and pledged to make a foreign policy “separation” from the United States in order to deepen ties with China — has created unease in the United States and among other allies. But the undiplomatic president has decided to change his tone due to hearing a voice tell him that if he didn’t stop swearing, his plane would crash.
“And I said, ‘Who is this?’ So, of course, ‘it’s God,'” Duterte told reporters, before promising “not [to] express slang, cuss words and everything. So you guys hear me right always because [a] promise to God is a promise to the Filipino people.”
A reporter asked Toner if that change of heart might make it easier to repair the U.S. relationship with Duterte’s administration, prompting the laughter. “He’s certainly entitled to his own views about his relationship with the Supreme Being,” Toner said.
