American President Donald Trump did not tell human rights organization Amnesty International to shut up and leave Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte alone, contrary to what some blogs claimed.
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Blog localhero.altervista.org’s article has been shared over 7,500 times, based on Facebook search results.
According to the article, Trump “silenced” Amnesty International when the organization pushed him to challenge Duterte.
The article also brought up what AI Philippine Director Butch Olano said about urging Trump to raise the issue of human rights abuses with Duterte. While trying to verify the statements quoted in the article that were attributed to Olano, we found that a large part of the article was copied from the Inquirer report “Amnesty Int’l urges Trump to bring up PH human rights issues during Summit” published on November 11.
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The blog copied five paragraphs from the Inquirer report and added their own story about how Trump allegedly said that he will only talk about “beautiful things” with Duterte to avoid destroying the “beautiful air” between them.
Trump was quoted saying this in the blog:
“I say I will only tell him beautiful things. The alleged human rights violations is not included in my agenda. I am not the right person to deal with such rumors. I come to discuss business with president Duterte, not to pick a fight.”
When we checked if other credible news sites carried the alleged Trump statement, the Google search engine results only showed one source, Okd2.com.
Of course, we made sure to check just how Okd2, known for its fake and satirical articles, have classified their story “Leave Pres. Duterte Alone, Trump Tells Amnesty International.” Just like our previous busts, Okd2 categorized this story under “Humor & Satire.”
It turned out Okd2 published its story first on November 11, while localhero posted theirs two days later.
This meant it was Okd2 that copied from Inquirer.
While Trump hailed his “great relationship” with Duterte, he did not tell Amnesty International to leave Duterte alone. It was something Okd2 made up as a “satirical” article, but was copied in full by another blog without the “satire” disclaimer, making the story all the more misleading.
In fact, it victimized thousands after it was shared by the Facebook page “President Rodrigo Duterte” twice, whose posts have been shared over 900 times.
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