Your post speaks volumes:
Trump is well aware of the general public’s and media’s belief here that – by his failure to clearly and totally denounce home-grown Neo-Nazis – he has no great issue with skinheads and such (with the inevitable fascist epithet springing from that).
By supporting Duterte politically and militarily, and Duterte labeling himself as a fascist, Trump can actually leverage off of Duterte’s US-funded “clean-up” work; what’s happening in the Philippines is a working showpiece of how it takes a strongman to get rid of the “bad guys”, and that plays to Trump’s base and for anyone in the GOP who see advantages there…and perhaps even beyond that by ‘normalizing’ fascism even if destroys democracy in the Philippines.
Trump is banking on US citizens not seeing the growing danger of Trumpism and its fascist overtones here because our lives and senses don’t extend to what’s effectively become a US-backed ‘experiment’ 8000 miles away, and that while the WH can cherry-pick, spin, and sell whatever comes out from the Philippines. They want to sell us fascism without having to use that f-word.
