Rodrigo Duterte reportedly said he took it upon himself to kill Philippine drug suspects to show police officers “if I can do it, why can’t you?”
The president of the Philippines said during a speech Monday that he personally killed drug suspects when he was mayor of his home city of Davao, according to The Guardian.
Duterte described that moment as a time when he would go cruising through the streets on a motorcycle “looking for trouble.”
“In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys [police officers] that if I can do it, why can’t you,” he said late Monday while talking about his two decades spent as mayor of Davao, which has a population of about 1.5 million people, The Guardian noted.
“And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also,” Duterte added. “I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”
These comments came during Duterte’s speech where he discussed his campaign to abolish illegal drugs.
Some 5,000 people have been killed by police and unknown assailants since Duterte became president in June, according to CNN.
World leaders have criticized Duterte for his “violent extrajudicial campaign,” and the Philippines president responded to those critics on Monday, according to the Daily Beast, saying, “If they say that I am afraid to stop because of the human rights and guys…including Obama, sorry, I am not about to do that.”
While speaking at the Wallace Business Forum in Manila Monday night, Duterte also spoke about the medicine he’s been taking to reveal the pain he’s been in ever since he had a “bad slip.”
“I have this migraine every day,” he said, per CNN. “I had a bad slip…I hit my head on the cement. I have a lot of issues with my spine.”
Duterte said he had been taking a larger dosage of painkillers than approved by his doctor until that was stopped.
“I was only given a fourth of (the whole patch), but no more, because of course my doctor learned that I was using the whole patch because I felt better,” he said. “When he knew it, he made me stop and he said, ‘The first thing you would lose is your cognitive ability.’”
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.