Did The Washington Post publish a statement from President Donald Trump threatening sanctions against the government of Philippine President Bongbong Marcos over the arrest of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte? No, that's not true: No such report existed on the Washington Post's website at the time this was written and neither Trump nor the White House have made any statement or social media post threatening such sanctions. A viral image using the logo of The Washington Post falsely pretended to show a message from Trump about contacting President Xi of China to discuss "our good friend Rodrigo" and the false post had Trump calling the arrest "illegal" and "unlawful."
The fake appeared in a March 11, 2025, Facebook post (archived here) under the caption "Thank you So much Mr President Donald Trump for Your help". It read:
Dear Philippines, I am deeply saddened to hear the news today about my good friend Rodrigo.
I immediately contacted President Xi of China to discuss this serious matter concerning our food friend Rodrigo.
Do not worry, Filipinos - your leader is our good friend, and we stand behind him. We will protect Rodrigo and the Filipino people from the opression you are facing. I and the United States will not allow any of our allies and friends to suffer, and we will impose sanctions against the Marcos Administration for the unlawful act they did.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Mar 12 23:46:48 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories searched for the phrase "We will impose sanctions against the Marcos Administration for the unlawful act they did" on Google News and no evidence-based journalism containing such a Trump statement was returned (archived here), as shown below:
(Source: GoogleNews.com screenshot taken on Wed Mar 12 23:55:00 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories conducted a manual search of the March 11 and 12, 2025 Washington Post, as well as a search using the Post's ai-powered "Ask The Post" tool, using the same quote. No such report was found (archived here).
Trump's Truth, a website that archives Trump's Truth Social posts, did not include any posts about Duterte (archived here).
Lead Stories searched the website of the White House Press Office, which holds an archive of the President's official statements and acts. Searching for "Duterte" (archived here) at 8:40 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2025, generated zero White House statements in support of Duterte:
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