‘A fart away from disaster’: Duterte attacks senate critic over his excessive weight

He walks like a penguin and won’t even fit into an ambulance due to excessive weight, Philippines champion of controversy, President Rodrigo Duterte, said of a local senator who dared to criticize his government appointments.

“My brain stays in my head. Your brain, Dick, is melting and goes to your stomach. You are a fart away from disaster,” Duterte warned Senator Dick Gordon at the Bureau of Fire Protection on Thursday.

You are just a fart away. Your body cannot fit in an ambulance. Place him in your firetrucks.

Duterte also said that Gordon “walks like a penguin” and labeled his rival “a fool,” claiming that he wasn’t “really a Filipino” because he was half-white. Gordon’s father is a local politician with American-Jewish roots, who used to be the mayor of the southern city of Olongapo.

The outburst was prompted by the senator’s criticism of the latest government appointments, which were made by Duterte. Gordon said that putting former military officers in high positions was “dangerous” for civilian authority and blamed the president for not knowing enough qualified people in the capital, Manila, due to his provincial origins.

Gordon responded to the attack on his weight by saying that he wasn’t at all offended by Duterte’s words. “As I have said, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and we cannot be onion-skinned about such things,” the 73-year-old wrote on Facebook.

“I am happy that the president is concerned about my waistline, but he need not worry about that. My wife has seen to it that I have reduced it significantly of late. But I appreciate that he is concerned about my health as I am about his.”

Duterte is well-known for his outrageous statements, which he produces on a regular basis. In recent months, he invited the US to bring its Navy to the disputed South China Sea and “fire the first shot” at the Chinese instead of pitting Manila against Beijing. He also defended his brutal war on drugs by saying that Iceland had killed more people with abortions; and confessed to being “gay” in the past, before “curing himself.”

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