Gustavo Petro responds to Trump saying Colombia’s president “will be next”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called Donald Trump “very misinformed” after the U.S. President threatened him in Washington’s war on drug cartels.

Trump on Wednesday told reporters that Colombia is “producing a lot of drugs” and that Petro had “better wise up or he’ll be next”. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is already under heavy military and diplomatic pressure from the Trump administration to quit and flee, with the White House accusing him of heading a drug cartel, which he denies.

“Trump is a very misinformed man when it comes to Colombia. It’s a shame, because he dismisses the country that knows the most about cocaine trafficking,” Petro said in a statement posted to X, originally in Spanish. “It seems his interlocutors deceive him completely.”

He added: “This terrible misinformation reaching the President of the United States leads him to make statements and take actions that cannot be directed at a president democratically elected by the majority of Colombian society. That is how Colombia is disrespected.”

Petro also rejected Trump’s drug boat strikes in the Caribbean, saying “it is not true that firing missiles at boat operators is fighting against narco-terrorists, when those boat operators are poor people, when there is no international sea in the Caribbean, and when the drug trafficking bosses live on yachts near Dubai, in Madrid, and elsewhere.”

The Colombian leader said the “main security problem in the Americas is the climate crisis”.

This is a developing article. Updates to follow.