United States President Donald Trump has threatened his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, following Washington’s abduction of Venezuela’s leader, and said he believed the government in Cuba, too, was likely to fall soon.
Trump’s comments on Sunday came amid a growing outcry over the brazen abduction of Nicolas Maduro, with Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain condemning the US action as a “dangerous precedent for peace and regional security”.
Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that Colombia and Venezuela were “very sick” and that the government in Bogota was 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. Let me tell you,” Trump said, referring to Petro.
When asked if he meant a US operation against Colombia, Trump said, “Sounds good to me.”
The remarks prompted a sharp rebuke from Petro, who told Trump to “stop slandering” him while also calling on Latin American countries to unite or risk being “treated as a servant and slave”.
In a series of lengthy posts on X, Petro noted that “the US is the first country in the world to bomb a South American capital in all of human history”. But he said revenge was not the answer.
Instead, Latin America must unite, Petro said, and become a region “with the capacity to understand, trade, and join together with the whole world”.
“We do not look only to the north, but in all directions,” he said.
US forces seized Maduro in Caracas early on Saturday in what Washington described as a law enforcement operation to bring him to trial on “narcoterrorism” charges.
Maduro denies the allegations, and critics say the US’s toppling of the Venezuelan leader was aimed at taking control of the country’s vast oil reserves.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump insisted that the US remains “in charge” of Venezuela, even though the country’s Supreme Court has appointed Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as interim leader.
He also reiterated threats to send the US military back to Venezuela if it “doesn’t behave”.
Trump said a lot of Cubans were killed in the US raid on Caracas, adding that an American military intervention in Cuba was unnecessary because the island appears ready to fall on its own.
“Cuba is ready to fall,” he said. “Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. They’re not getting any of it. Cuba literally is ready to fall.”
Trump went on to warn Mexico, saying the country “has to get their act together because they’re [drugs] pouring through Mexico and we’re going to have to do something”.
He described Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum as a “terrific person” and said he has offered to send US troops to Mexico every time he spoke to her.
The Mexican government is capable of addressing the issue, “but unfortunately, the cartels are very strong in Mexico”, he said.
Trump has made no secret of his ambitions to expand the US presence in the Western Hemisphere and revive the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which states that Latin America falls under Washington’s sphere of influence.
Trump has called his 21st-century version the “Don-roe Doctrine”.
His comments on Sunday were not his first warnings to Latin American nations.
In the immediate aftermath of Maduro’s abduction, Trump said Petro has to “watch his a**” and that the political situation in Cuba was “something we’ll end up talking about, because Cuba is a failing nation”.
The US attack on Venezuela meanwhile continued to draw international condemnation.
The governments of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain expressed their “profound concern” in a joint statement and said they “firmly reject the military actions undertaken unilaterally in Venezuelan territory”.
“These actions contravene fundamental principles of international law, particularly the prohibition on the use or threat of force. They constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and endanger the civilian population,” they said.
Analysts said it remained unclear whether Trump would act on his threats or whether he was aiming to coerce them into cooperating with Washington.
Al Jazeera
