When Donald Trump won the 2016 US election on November 9, one thing that everyone was curious about was who he would call first among the world leaders as the US President-elect. Turned out several blog sites were quick to give that honor to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has been compared a number of times with Trump during the Philippine election and the then upcoming US election.
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In fact, an article went viral online as it was shared by Duterte fan pages on Facebook, such as “Duterte Dedicated to SERVE – God’s WILL, No one can destroy,” “Rodrigo Duterte Support Page by Dr Eli Alegado FRCPC, FACP,” and “Duterte of Real Change,” among other pages.
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The article was posted by a website called tv-cnn.com. According to the article, Duterte became the first world leader that Trump called after he won the US elections. It also claimed that Trump made that call right after he gave his victory speech.
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The article also noted how Duterte’s case was the opposite of how other world leaders sent their congratulatory messages to Trump because it was Trump who called Duterte. The call allegedly consisted of talks about US-PH ties.
It claimed that Trump and Duterte met at the 71st UN General Assembly in New York in September 2016. However, this part of the article is already a lie, seeing as how Duterte sent Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. to the UN event instead.
We took a closer look at the source of the article. It claimed to be tv-cnn.com, with the name “Charles Nehemia Network.” If it were trying to pass itself off as a website affiliated to CNN, it failed because CNN is actually “Cable News Network” when spelled out.
Further research also led us to a tweet by American historian and Middle East Forum founder Daniel Pipes, which revealed who received Trump’s first call as a US President-elect. It was actually made to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
in 2008, Pres. #Obama‘s first phone call went to #MahmoudAbbas. In contrast, #Trump’s first call as Pres-elect went to #BenjaminNetanyahu.
— Daniel Pipes (@DanielPipes) November 12, 2016
As for a call between Trump and Duterte, it was actually Duterte who made a congratulatory phone call to Trump on December 2 and not the other way around, as the fake tv-cnn.com article claimed. And Duterte certainly was not the first world leader that Trump called after his win.
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Sources: (gmanetwork.com, barenakedislam.com, news.abs-cbn.com)
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