If you’ve been squinting at the headlines lately and feeling like you’ve accidentally tuned into a rerun of somebody else’s nightmare, congratulations—you’re paying attention. Because what’s happening in America right now under Trump is not some original MAGA opera. It’s a remix, a familiar cover track. And for anyone who watched the Philippines slide into Duterte’s iron grip in 2016, the parallels aren’t just eerie—they’re practically a how-to manual, dog-eared and coffee-stained.
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t wear tinfoil hats, and I don’t believe lizard people run the DMV (though given my last license renewal, I could be convinced). But I do believe in reading the patterns. And the pattern here screams: when democracies start applauding strongmen for “telling it like it is,” the “like it is” quickly becomes a prison yard.
So let’s take a long, satirical stroll through the common playbook: Duterte’s Philippines then, Trump’s America now. Spoiler: it’s less “two nations separated by an ocean” and more “two guys sharing a fascist Pinterest board.”
Step One: Build the Cult of Personality
Duterte did it with the swagger of a foul-mouthed uncle at a wedding who never leaves the microphone. He branded himself the man who would “kill crime” (literally). He called journalists “sons of bitches.” He bragged about extrajudicial killings the way dads brag about their lawn care. And people ate it up, because nothing tastes better than a politician who says the quiet part loud.
Trump? Same dish, new seasoning. He built a brand as the anti-politician, the guy who would “drain the swamp” by filling it with bigger alligators in red ties. His rallies are less town halls and more revival tents, complete with chants, merch, and the occasional veiled death threat against his enemies. Like Duterte, Trump doesn’t just want followers—he wants believers. People who will rearrange their entire worldview around the gospel of his grievance.
Step Two: Weaponize Fear
Duterte sold a drug war. He painted addicts as less than human—cockroaches to be exterminated. And then he gave cops and vigilantes license to kill them. Between 2016 and 2022, thousands of people—many poor, many young—were gunned down in alleys or pulled from homes without trial. Fear became policy. If you weren’t scared of drugs, you were scared of being mistaken for a user.
Trump’s drug is immigration. He doesn’t say “cockroaches,” but “animals” and “invaders” are close enough for government work. He paints entire groups as existential threats: migrants, Muslims, trans kids, Antifa, take your pick. And then he gives the state permission to crush them: family separations, roving ICE patrols, banning books, banning health care, banning existence. The body count is quieter, bureaucratic, stretched across detention centers, suicides, and preventable deaths. But the effect is the same: keep people scared, and they’ll beg you to keep swinging the hammer.
Step Three: Attack the Press
Duterte called the media “spies,” “prostitutes,” and worse. Rappler, the investigative site led by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, became his favorite punching bag. Court cases piled up against journalists. The message was clear: ask too many questions, and you’ll find yourself in jail—or worse.
Trump, being Trump, slapped on some branding: “fake news.” It’s lazier but effective. Entire swaths of the population now treat The New York Times like Pravda and treat actual propaganda as gospel. His administration floated pulling press passes. His supporters harassed reporters live on camera. And now, in his second round at the wheel, his FCC chair openly pressures networks, his allies force Kimmel off the air, and comedians are treated like enemies of the state. Duterte silenced critics with bullets. Trump prefers subpoenas, advertisers, and mobs. Different methods, same chilling effect.
Step Four: Rewrite the Rulebook
Duterte talked openly about martial law, and in Mindanao, he made it real. Extended military rule became the “temporary” solution that lingered like a bad smell. Constitutional limits were treated as polite suggestions.
Trump’s rewrite is sneakier. He stacks courts. He pardons insurrectionists. He calls for Article II powers that sound less like constitutional interpretation and more like a Bond villain monologue. And now, he plays games with agencies—pressuring the Fed, gutting DOJ independence, and floating loyalty oaths. The Constitution isn’t a binding document to him; it’s a menu, and he’s ordering à la carte.
Step Five: Selective Empathy
In Duterte’s Philippines, victims of the drug war were invisible unless you knew their names. But when an ally was killed, the state responded with tears, flags, and ceremonies.
Trump, too, has a hierarchy of grief. Police gunned down George Floyd? He shrugged, blamed the victim, and praised “law and order.” A Democratic politician assassinated? Radio silence. But Charlie Kirk is killed, and suddenly flags drop to half-mast nationwide. Selective mourning becomes a weapon. If your death doesn’t serve the narrative, it barely exists.
Step Six: Erode Institutions Until They Serve You
Duterte bent the judiciary, the legislature, the military—all slowly, all with the excuse of “efficiency.” Before long, checks and balances became rubber stamps.
Trump does the same, with an American twist: loyalty as the highest credential. He doesn’t just want appointees; he wants sycophants. Fire the generals, keep the Kash Patels. Gut civil service protections so he can fill agencies with cronies. And when it all collapses, shrug and say, “The deep state made me do it.”
Step Seven: Normalize the Absurd
The true genius of authoritarianism isn’t just repression—it’s fatigue. Duterte said outrageous things so often that outrage stopped working. When you call the Pope a “son of a whore,” what’s left to shock people?
Trump is a master of this. From suggesting disinfectant injections to demanding hurricanes be nuked, the absurd becomes background noise. He says something insane, the media explodes, his base laughs, and then the cycle resets. Exhaustion is the strategy. If people can’t keep up with the outrage, they stop caring.
Step Eight: Blur the Line Between Spectacle and State
Duterte’s public persona—tough guy, jokester, “everyman”—wasn’t separate from his governance. It was governance. The performance was the policy.
Trump is the same. The rally is the administration. The Truth Social post is the briefing. The meme is the message. Politics is reduced to vibes, trolling, and spectacle. The line between reality TV and reality dissolves, and suddenly the country is being run like an endless season of The Apprentice: National Security Edition.
Step Nine: Redefine Enemies
Duterte’s enemies were easy: drug users, critics, dissenters. Trump’s enemies are a revolving cast: immigrants, trans kids, Democrats, the Fed, Disney. The common denominator is always the same: pick a group, demonize it, rally the base. When the economy stumbles, when scandals hit, when the walls close in, point at the latest scapegoat.
It’s not just lazy politics; it’s survival. Keep people angry, keep them afraid, keep them watching the enemy of the week—so they never notice the power grab happening in the corner.
Step Ten: Make People Doubt Reality
Duterte mastered the art of denial. “The killings? Fake news. The corruption? Lies. The critics? Paid by foreigners.”
Trump, of course, turbocharges this. Everything is rigged. Every loss is fraud. Every investigation is a witch hunt. Every fact-checker is the enemy. Objective truth becomes optional. And when truth is optional, power is absolute.
Why This Matters
Here’s the cruel joke: neither Duterte nor Trump invented any of this. These are standard-issue tools from the authoritarian starter kit. But watching them applied in different contexts—Philippines in 2016, America in 2025—reminds us that democracy doesn’t die in one fell swoop. It rots, like wood eaten by termites.
And the termites don’t announce themselves. They joke, they bluster, they flatter. They make people feel seen, make them feel strong, make them feel like they’re finally “taking their country back.” Until the day they look around and realize the house is hollow.
Bottom Line
Duterte’s Philippines showed us what happens when a strongman wins the trust of a weary public: fear becomes law, blood becomes background, democracy becomes a punchline. Trump’s America is showing us what happens when that playbook gets imported wholesale, only this time with better branding and a reality TV spin.
It’s not about whether America can become the Philippines. It’s about how much of that journey we’ve already traveled.
And if you think it can’t happen here, I’ve got a half-built wall and a defunded public school system to sell you.
Authoritarianism, Copy-Pasted
Rodrigo Duterte’s rise in the Philippines wasn’t an accident—it was a case study in how democracies willingly hand the keys to strongmen when fear, spectacle, and fatigue collide. Donald Trump is running the same script in America: cult of personality, demonization of enemies, attacks on the press, selective empathy, institutional erosion, and an endless blurring of reality and performance.
The similarity isn’t coincidence—it’s the formula. And unless we recognize it for what it is, we’ll find ourselves debating the “cost of freedom” while freedom itself has already been pawned off for ratings and revenge.