US President
Donald Trump on Sunday openly threatened possible military action against Colombia, saying such a move “sounds good to me”.
His comments come just a day after the United States carried out an operation in Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and transporting them to New York to face federal charges.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump launched a sharp attack on Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, accusing his government of producing and exporting cocaine to the United States.
“Colombia is very sick, too, run by a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long,” Trump said.
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According to an audio recording of the interaction with reporters, Trump’s remarks were made during a conversation about US efforts to counter drug trafficking in the region.
Maduro and Flores were removed from Caracas by US forces, flown aboard the USS Iwo Jima in the Caribbean and later taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. They face charges in the Southern District of New York, including conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, cocaine importation and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.
Trump’s latest remarks on Colombia follow months of rising tensions between Washington and Bogotá, amid a US military build-up in the Caribbean and the administration’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Latin American governments accused of enabling drug trafficking, according to Reuters.
Last month, Trump issued a sharp warning to Petro from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, accusing Colombia of allowing cocaine production and exports to the US. “He has to watch because he’s got drug factories. He’s no friend to the United States,” Trump said at the time.
In another statement, Trump said, “We love the Colombian people, but their new leader is a troublemaker, and he better watch it.” Claiming that Colombia has at least three major cocaine manufacturing facilities, he added, “We know where they are. He better close them up fast.”
The warnings marked an escalation in a months-long feud between the two leaders, with Trump repeatedly suggesting that countries sending illegal drugs into the US could face military strikes. During a cabinet meeting earlier this month, he said, “Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.”
Colombia has historically been one of Washington’s closest allies in Latin America, but relations have deteriorated since Petro, the country’s first leftist president, took office in 2022.
Petro has strongly rejected Trump’s accusations, saying that his government has been seizing cocaine at unprecedented rates and destroying drug-production laboratories without foreign military intervention. Last month, he even invited Trump to visit Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, to see the government’s efforts firsthand.
“Come to Colombia, Mr. Trump… but do not threaten our sovereignty, because you will awaken the Jaguar,” Petro wrote in a post on X. He warned that any attack on Colombia would amount to a declaration of war and accused the US of violating international norms.
Petro also condemned the US operation in Venezuela, calling it an “assault on the sovereignty” of Latin America that could lead to a humanitarian crisis.