Now that Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is in New York awaiting trial on narco-terrorism and other federal charges, President Trump told reporters that he is ready to knock off the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and that Cuba will likely fall on its own.
He accused Petro of making and selling cocaine that comes to the United States. But he “won’t be doing it very long,” Trump warned.
The remarks on Air Force One — with GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at his side — highlight Trump’s turn toward global military intervention, despite campaign promises that such imperial adventurism would end.
Another possible target: Greenland, because Denmark isn’t doing much with it, and the United States “needs” it.
Colombia: “Sounds Good To Me”
Trump threatened Colombia as the belligerent neoconservative Graham smiled and giggled like a prom queen after one too many Jello shots.
“Colombia is very sick too,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One, “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.”
“What does that mean?” a reporter asked.
Replied Trump: “He’s not going to be doing it very long. He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories. He’s not going to be doing it very long.”
Asked whether that meant the nation faced a military strike, Trump replied:
Sounds good to me.
Petro replied by calling Trump a “coward.”
“Come and get me you coward,” he said. “I’m waiting for you here.”
On X, Petro elaborated, claiming he is not a drug kingpin.
“I ordered the largest seizure of cocaine in world history, I stopped the growth of coca leaf crops and began a great voluntary crop substitution plan by the coca-growing peasant,” he wrote, warning that bombing Colombian drug cartels “will kill many children” because the narcos use them as shields.
“If you bomb peasants, thousands of guerrillas will return in the mountain,” he continued:
And if you arrest the president whom a good part of my people want and respect, you will unleash the popular jaguar.
Every soldier of Colombia has an order from now on: every commander of the public force who prefers the flag of the US to the flag of Colombia must immediately withdraw from the institution by order of the bases and the troops and mine. The constitution orders the public force to defend popular sovereignty.
Although I have not been a military man, I know about war and clandestinity. I swore not to touch a weapon again since the 1989 Peace Pact, but for the Homeland I will take up arms again that I do not want.
I am not illegitimate, nor am I a narco, I only have as assets my family home that I still pay for with my salary. My bank statements have been published. No one could say that I have spent more than my salary. I am not greedy.
Cuba and Greenland
Though Trump hinted that Cuba might be next in his presser on the Maduro raid, he also told reporters that “Cuba is ready to fall.” The nation “has no income” because “they got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil.” U.S. forces won’t attack Cuba, he said, because the country will fall on its own.
U.S. forces allegedly killed 32 Cubans who provided Maduro’s security.
But Greenland might be on the list of targets, Trump told reporters. “Let’s talk about Greenland in 20 days,” Trump joked.
But then he delivered a not-so-veiled threat.
“I will say this.… We need Greenland from a national security situation,” he said:
It’s so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not going to be able to do it, I can tell you. You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security in Greenland. They added one more dogsled.… The European Union needs us to have it.
How Trump would seize Greenland from Denmark is unclear. But Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called such remarks “unacceptable pressure.”
“I believe that he means it,” she said:
If the United States were to choose to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end. The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance — all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another.
The Greenland conversation arose, apparently, because of Katie Miller, wife of top White House aide Stephen Miller. After the Maduro raid, she posted a map of Greenland covered by an American flag on X. “SOON,” she wrote.
Asked whether the United States would attack Greenland, Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the Trump administration’s policy has always been that Greenland should be part of the United States, and military force isn’t needed to annex Greenland.
Greenland has a population of 30k people, Jake. The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim?… The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States.
“Nobody is gonna fight the U.S. militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said.
Graham Tickled
Tickled pink with Trump during the Air Force One gaggle, Graham summarized his policy agenda during a speech at the meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in November.
“I feel good about the Republican Party,” he said:
I feel good about where we’re going as a nation. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes.
Trump is my favorite president. We’ve run out of bombs. We didn’t run out of bombs in World War II.
Graham did not explain who “all the right people were,” but he was presumably referring to Russians killed by Ukraine with help from U.S. military advisors and equipment.
