Colombia’s Petro hits back at Trump’s drug-war threats: “Come to Colombia… I’ll show you”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has fired off a sharp, very public invitation to US President Donald Trump after Trump warned that any country “selling cocaine into our country is subject to attack,” pointedly naming Colombia along the way.

At a White House Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said:

“I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine. They have cocaine manufacturing plants, ok, and then they sell us their cocaine. Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.”

Petro didn’t wait long to respond.

“Come to Colombia, Mr. Trump,” he wrote on social media. “Come with me, and I’ll show you how they are destroyed, one laboratory every 40 minutes… to prevent cocaine from reaching the US.”

He added that his government had dismantled 18,400 labs “without missiles,” a pointed jab at Washington’s increasingly muscular anti-narcotics operations in the Caribbean and Pacific, where US strikes on boats have killed at least 83 people since September.

Petro also warned Trump against crossing a line Colombia views as existential.

Threatening Colombia’s sovereignty, he said, is effectively “a declaration of war that will awaken a Jaguar.”

“Do not damage two centuries of diplomatic relations,” Petro added. “You have already slandered me; do not continue down that path.”

He was referring to Trump’s earlier public insinuations that the Colombian president had ties to drug trafficking, allegations Petro has repeatedly denied.

For all the political theatre, Colombia remains the leading source of cocaine entering the United States. The US Drug Enforcement Agency says 84 percent of cocaine seized domestically in 2024 originated there. Petro argues that’s precisely why his country bears the brunt of the eradication effort, and deserves respect, not threats.

But the context for Trump’s comments is darker.

His administration has deployed an enormous military presence around Venezuela and dramatically expanded lethal strikes on vessels Washington says are tied to drug trafficking. Rights groups and legal scholars have described several of these killings, including a secondary “double-tap” strike that killed two shipwrecked survivors in September, as possible war crimes.

Trump floated his latest “subject to attack” warning while seated next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been criticised for overseeing that double-strike operation. Hegseth insists he did not witness the deadly second attack and said it was ordered by Admiral Frank Bradley.

Washington has so far provided no evidence that those killed in the boat strikes were drug traffickers. Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro says the US is using the anti-drug narrative as cover for a broader effort to oust him.

Petro, meanwhile, is signalling he won’t accept being included in the same category.