Key Highlights
- Brinley BrutonBOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombian officials began frantically calling Republicans in Congress seeking help to prevent a feared U. S.
- attack after President Donald Trump issued searing comments about their country’s leader in the wake of the raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a senior Colombian official tells NBC News. Aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump called his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” adding: “And he’s not going to be doing it very long.”Petro, a former Marxist revolutionary and one of the few Latin American leaders willing to vocally criticize Trump, on Tuesday said the American president had a “senile brain.”The Colombians asked members of Congress to help set up a phone call between Petro and Trump, which the Colombian government had wanted for some time.
- The official said the mediation paid off, with the two leaders speaking by phone on Wednesday, shortly before Petro was set to lead nationwide demonstrations in support of the country’s sovereignty. Colombia's Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez attends a ceremony in Bogota in June. Ivan Valencia / AP fileThe Trump-Petro call resulted in a dramatic de-escalation in tensions between the two men, with both leaders praising each other and announcing plans for a meeting in Washington next month. Colombia’s Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez told NBC News on Thursday that he planned to travel to Washington along with Petro to meet with American officials — and that he no longer had concerns the U. S.
- would launch a military attack on his country.“I trust in the word of the president of the United States,” he said, adding that the conversation had been a crucial “icebreaker” for the two leaders and countries. Something Trump said on the call made a particular impression on Petro, the Colombian leader said in a Thursday interview with NBC News partner Telemundo.“I know you have been surrounded by lies like I have,” Petro said Trump had told him during a 55-minute telephone conversation. In a Truth Social post sent a short while later, Trump wrote that it had been a “Great Honor to speak with the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had.”In another post on Friday, Trump said he was looking forward to meeting Petro at the White House in February, adding: “I am sure it will work out very well for Colombia, and the U. S. A., but, cocaine and other drugs must be STOPPED from coming into the United States.”The White House did not respond to questions about the flurry of calls that preceded the conversation between the two leaders, nor about Trump’s comment to Petro that they both were “surrounded by lies.”Colombian leaders, including Petro and Sánchez, appeared gratified by the language Trump used when describing the conversation. Colombia's President Gustavo Petro speaks at a rally to protest comments by President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
- Luis Acosta / “He said yesterday that it was ‘an honor’ to speak with the president of Colombia to solve a common problem,” said Sánchez, a decorated career Air Force officer with a key role in engaging with the U. S.
