FACT CHECK: Macron did not call Duterte a ‘role model’

Claim: The blog thedailypedianow.com published a post on Sunday, June 3 claiming French President Emmanuel Macron called President Rodrigo Duterte a “real role model of the world.”

It ran the post with the  headline, “French Macron: The World May Not Agree, But Let’s Admit Duterte Is A Role Model.”

The post has been shared by 3 Facebook groups which have a combined 430,557 followers. Within these groups, the post has generated a total of 1,097 interactions as of June 5.

The same claim was also published by trendolizer.com, laonlaan.blogspot.com, chinitapadilla.wordpress.com, and the now defunct newsfoxchannel.com. All were published in 2017, except for chinitapadilla.wordpress.com.

Rating: FALSE

The Facts: Rappler checked credible news organizations and found no news reports or public statements from Macron where he called Duterte a “real role model of the world.”

The post contained an image of the French president and a word-for-word copy of a March 12 post titled “TWO ‘WORLD’ LEADERS IN DIFFERENT TIMES” from the Facebook page “The Untold History of the Philippines.”

The post discussed the “parallelism” between President Duterte and the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in battling criminality and terrorism.

It only mentioned Macron one time as it said, “Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, a nation that also battles terrorism, has declared Duterte as a real role model of the world.”

In addition to this, the claim published by thedailypedianow.blog is a rehash of a 2017 blog post. It has already been debunked by memebuster.net – a website that “busts” misleading memes ad news – in a July 12 report last year.

The blog also does not have a company and author profile and a masthead. Most of the blog’s posts do not contain bylines and are written by an “admin” instead. – Miguel Imperial/Rappler.com

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