The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, reacted this Wednesday to a new attack from his American counterpart, Donald Trump. Minutes after the American accused him of being “a bully (to thugin English)” and “a bad person”, the South American president has announced that he will defend himself against “slander” in the US justice system. “I will always be against genocides and assassinations by those in power in the Caribbean,” he declared in X, in reference to the United States attacks on vessels that he claims are transporting drugs.
Of the slander that high officials have hurled at me in the territory of the United States; I will defend myself judicially with American lawyers in the American justice system.
I will always be against genocides and assassinations by those in power in the Caribbean.
When they require our… https://t.co/EQbXYRRQeB
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) October 22, 2025
Minutes earlier, Trump insulted Petro again during a conversation with journalists at the White House. After calling him “a drug trafficking leader” over the weekend, he insisted Wednesday that “he produces a lot of drugs.” “He better be careful, or we will take very severe action against him and his country,” he declared. Likewise, he announced that since this Wednesday payments and subsidies to Colombia have been suspended.
All this occurs just a few hours after Washington confirmed an eighth extrajudicial attack reported since September — the total death toll is at least 34 people. The novelty is that it is the first in the Pacific Ocean, and not in the Caribbean Sea, and the first that the US authorities recognize took place “off the Colombian coast.” Petro has maintained a striking silence regarding the operation.
However, the attack is the fourth for which there are suspicions of a possible link with the country. Petro has made complaints about at least three other attacks: that of a fisherman’s boat on September 15, that of an alleged narco-submarine on October 16, and the one perpetrated on October 17 against a boat that US authorities have linked to the ELN guerrilla. The pressure, originally against Venezuela, is increasingly stronger on Colombia.
Petro has condemned the attacks from the first moment, when they were limited to Venezuela. “If this is true, it is a murder anywhere in the world,” he said on September 2, hours after the first operation and in contrast to the relative silence of the other countries in the region. Since then, he has spoken out on several occasions and emphasized that alleged drug traffickers must have due process. “We received the Colombian detained in the drug submarine. We are glad that he is alive and will be processed according to the laws,” he commented after the October 18 attack.
Along with the operations, tension has escalated on other fronts. Trump said over the weekend that Petro is “a drug trafficking leader who encourages the mass production of drugs.” The Colombian president responded that he is the one who has fought these criminal activities the most and that people with alleged links to organized crime are, in reality, close to his American counterpart. He considers that Trump has “evil advice” and that some of the politicians around him are “Nazis.” Likewise, he insists on questioning the United States’ support for Israel, which a few weeks ago was the reason for another diplomatic crisis. “You cannot obey a tyranny when there is a crime against humanity,” he stressed on Monday.
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