Far-left President of Colombia Gustavo Petro on Tuesday threatened President Donald Trump with “awakening the Jaguar” after Trump said any country trafficking drugs into the U.S. could be subject to attack.
President Trump delivered his remarks speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s Cabinet Meeting after referring to Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producer.
“I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine. They have cocaine manufacturing plants, okay? And then they sell us their cocaine. We appreciate that very much,” President Trump said.
“But yeah, anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack,” he continued.
President Trump’s remarks appear to have angered Petro, an avid defender of the legalization of cocaine who claims the drug is “less harmful” than sugar.
Petro, known how delivering unhinged social media rants that have single-handedly caused diplomatic impasses with the United States, used his X account to respond to Trump’s remarks, inviting him to participate in the “destruction of the nine laboratories we dismantle every day to prevent cocaine from reaching the U.S.”
In his message, Petro claimed that his administration has allegedly destroyed 18,400 drug manufacturing laboratories “without missiles,” a reference to the ongoing U.S. military precision strikes against drug trafficking vessels in Caribbean waters.
Petro urged Trump to “not threaten our sovereignty, because you will awaken the Jaguar,” an apparent threat he has repeated in recent days.
“Attacking our sovereignty is declaring war. Do not damage two centuries of diplomatic relations,” Petro wrote.
“You have already slandered me. Do not continue down that path. If any country has helped stop thousands of tons of cocaine from being consumed by Americans, it is Colombia,” he concluded.
Petro, a former member of the Marxist M19 terrorist group and Colombia’s first leftist president ever, has maintained fierce animosity towards Trump throughout the years that intensified since Trump’s return to the White House in January.
The Colombian president has repeatedly accused Trump of “murder” over the U.S. military strikes against drug traffickers — insisting that the men on board the boats were not “drug traffickers” but instead “drug trafficking workers.”
Petro’s lenient drug fighting policies have led to a dramatic, record-breaking surge in cocaine production according to the latest report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Former members of Petro’s administration have accused him of allegedly suffering from drug addiction problems.
President Trump cited the surge in cocaine production on a September determination to Congress designating Colombia and other countries as having failed to adhere to international counter-narcotics agreements.
In October, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Petro for having engaged in, or attempted to engage in, “activities or transactions that have materially contributed to, or pose a significant risk of materially contributing to, the international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production.”
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