President Trump just sent a jolt through South America, and judging by the reaction online, a whole lot of people heard it loud and clear. With tensions rising between the United States and Venezuela, Trump issued a blunt warning to Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Get on board with the United States or, as he put it, “he’s going to be next!” In other words, once Washington is done dealing with Venezuela’s narco state, Colombia might want to think twice before picking a fight with the one country capable of shutting down the drug trade that fuels half the chaos in the region.
This is not coming out of nowhere. Colombia remains one of the largest producers of cocaine in the world, and what pours over our border continues to destroy communities from Appalachia to the Pacific coast. Instead of working with the United States to curb the flow, Petro has made a hobby out of criticizing Trump for taking action. When the U.S. military hit drug boats in the Caribbean, Petro cried foul. Just this week, he defended the narco traffickers killed in the operations by calling them “poor fishermen.” That is quite a creative way to describe men hauling cocaine for cartels.
Fox News highlighted the pattern. Petro has been a fierce critic of Trump’s strikes. In November, he even called Trump a “barbarian,” then ordered Colombia’s security forces to stop sharing intelligence with the United States until Washington halted its military operations. On Sunday, Petro doubled down and said those killed in the strikes were “poor fishermen, some who out of necessity make short cocaine trips for the narcos.” It takes a special kind of political spin to make drug runners sound like charity workers, but Petro always finds a way.
He also attacked Trump for pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years for cocaine trafficking. Petro clearly thinks shaming the United States will earn him points with the far left in Latin America. What he is forgetting is that Trump is not one of those past presidents who politely ignored the problem while overdose deaths in America skyrocketed.
This is the difference. Trump is not going to sit quietly while foreign leaders scold him for trying to protect American communities. He is not going to apologize for military strikes that take drug shipments off the water. And he is definitely not going to tolerate a partner nation siding with cartels over the United States.
The message is simple. You can join Trump’s mission to stop the flow of narcotics into America, or you can get run over by it.
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