No, French President Emmanuel Macron did not call Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte a ‘role model’
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on June 21, 2018 at 17:50
- 1 min read
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
In this post from July 2017, Macron was quoted as saying: “The world may not agree, but let’s admit Duterte is a role model”.
The post claimed Macron said this in relation to supporting Duterte’s war on drugs and terrorism, and said he made the comments at a G20 summit in July 2017 in Germany.
Similar articles have been shared or liked thousands of times on Facebook and re-posted on other social media platforms.
A more recent example is this piece on a blog site.
However an extensive search online, including of major media outlets that reported on the G20 summit, shows no record of Macron describing Duterte as a “role model’.
An adviser to Macron’s office also told AFP the French president did not make such a comment.
“It is fake news,” the adviser told an AFP journalist in Paris on June 20.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us