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US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would slash US funding to Colombia because the country’s leader “does nothing to stop” drug production, in what is the latest sign of friction between Washington and one of its closest allies in Latin America.
In a social media post, Trump referred to Colombian President Gustavo Petro as “an illegal drug dealer” who is “low rated and very unpopular”.
He warned that Petro “better close up” drug operations “or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely”.
Colombia’s defence minister, Pedro Sanchez, defending Petro and the nation’s drug-fighting commitment, said: “If there’s a country that has used all its capabilities and also lost men and women fighting drug trafficking, it’s Colombia.”
Trump, while at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, wrote on his Truth Social platform that Petro is “strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields” across Colombia, which the Republican president initially misspelled as “Columbia” before deleting his post and replacing it with the correct spelling of the country.
“Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip off of America,” Trump wrote.
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