US president says a military operation in Colombia ‘sounds good’ to him and warns Mexico ‘to get their act together’.
By Erin Hale*
Jan 5, 2026
United States President Donald Trump has threatened military action against 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 Venezuela and Colombia 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.
*Erin Hale, she is a Taipei-based freelance journalist who reports on politics, economics, and social trends across Asia.
Coverage: She has reported for major international outlets including The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Voice of America.
Specialization: Her work often focuses on Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, including extensive coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong protests.
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