Trump Teaches Colombia A Hard Lesson

Back in 2022, the Biden administration was doing everything it could to distance itself from Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Joe Biden and his handlers wanted to demonstrate that, one year after the election, the adults were supposedly in charge now. And to that end, Biden hosted the president of Colombia at the White House. The purpose of the meeting was to announce that the U.S. intended to designate Columbia as a “major non-NATO ally.” Watch:

Like so many other alliances we’ve entered into, this was the very definition of a one-sided deal. More than a quarter of Colombia’s imports come from the United States, while Colombia accounts for a fraction of a percent of U.S. imports. Colombia’s Air Force was making news because they were cannibalizing their rotary-wing aircraft for spare parts. By most estimates, no other country in the Western Hemisphere has received more U.S. assistance in the last 50 years than Colombia.

And Colombia clearly wasn’t capable of taking care of its own domestic affairs. In fact, just days ago, northern Colombia erupted into all-out warfare, as guerilla factions launched an invasion to take control of cocaine production. So a reasonable person might ask: Why exactly was the Biden administration going out of its way to declare that Colombia was a “major ally”? How exactly are we defining the word “major” here, not to mention “ally”? Isn’t an alliance supposed to be mutually beneficial? Where’s the benefit for us? What the hell does Colombia bring to the table, besides coffee and cocaine? What do they do for us?

Joe Biden and his administration never answered those questions. You can read all of their press releases and statements, and they never explain it. But these are pretty important questions — especially after what happened this week, when Colombia decided to reject U.S. military flights containing dozens of Colombian nationals who had illegally entered the United States.

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According to the State Department, at first, Columbia signaled that these flights were acceptable. And then, when the C-17 cargo planes carrying the Colombian nationals were in the air, Colombia terminated their landing clearance and forced the planes to turn around.

Before we get into the specifics of this particular dispute, just think about that for a second. Imagine you’re a Colombian citizen, and you’re being deported from the United States, back to your home country. And then you find out, in the middle of the flight, that your home country doesn’t even want you. You are such an undesirable criminal — such a strain on society — that you can’t go anywhere. Even “Con Air” didn’t have that problem.

And to make matters worse, the excuse that Colombia’s government invoked was clearly a pretext. It didn’t even make sense. Watch:

So the reasoning, according to Colombia’s president, is that it’s wrong to treat these Colombian nationals like “criminals,” even though that’s exactly what they are. They broke the law. By definition that makes you a criminal. But even if you concede this point — even if you pretend for a second that all of these Colombian nationals on board the C-17 are law-abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong in their lives — then the complaint still doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing “undignified” in any way about what’s happening here.

There are plenty of non-criminals who ride aboard these C-17’s every day, and they don’t complain because there’s nothing unusual or oppressive about it. The thing can carry 800 passengers in an emergency. It can carry 100 paratroopers in full gear, without any problem. And yet, we’re supposed to believe that it’s a human-rights catastrophe when 80 illegal aliens — just 80 — are forced to fly on one of these planes for a few hours. And that’s not the only problem with the reasoning here.

Consider this: Even if Colombia’s government did succeed in rejecting these flights, all that would happen is that these Colombian citizens would end up in migrant detention facilities in the United States. How exactly is that outcome any more “dignified” than simply allowing them to go back to their homes? And by the way, we are not under any obligation to give these criminals a free ride back home. We would be well within our rights to drop them off in the desert on the other side of the border and tell them to figure it out themselves. So these flights represent the United States being, if anything, too kind and generous.

So obviously, everything the Colombian government is saying is a lie. Gustavo Petro is trying to deny the return of his own citizens to their own country because he doesn’t want them there. He is admitting, many times over, that the Trump administration is doing the right thing by getting rid of these people. If you spend just a few seconds thinking about what the government of Colombia is saying, that becomes very clear.

It was also pretty clear that the whole “tough guy” act was a ruse. No one takes Gustavo Petro seriously, even in his own country. Last summer, even though he’s married and supposedly straight, Petro was spotted holding hands on some kind of date with a trans-identifying man. Here’s that footage:

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who is now trying to be a “tough guy” to Trump, was caught over the summer allegedly cheating on his wife with a transgender.

Petro has been married to his wife since 2000.

Petro lashed out against right-wingers at the time as he tried… pic.twitter.com/5G6aIIgCm0

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 27, 2025

When this footage circulated at the time, Petro didn’t deny the rumors, really. Instead he condemned “transphobia,” demanded privacy, and said he definitely wasn’t gay. He’s going on a date with another man in a totally heterosexual kind of way, he insisted. So when it comes to respectable, reliable allies, needless to say, the Biden administration really had a keen eye. And obviously, his whole “tough negotiator” routine was extremely fake and transparent.

But we all know why Petro is trying this approach. Usually, it works. If Joe Biden or Kamala Harris were still in office, they’d be falling over themselves to apologize for offending our “major non-NATO ally.” But that didn’t happen this time. Trump was reportedly golfing when Colombia came up with this nonsense. And he immediately responded to it, via a post on Truth social. He wrote, “Petro’s denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures.”

Those measures included 25% tariffs on Colombian goods, as well as a travel ban on Colombian government officials, visa sanctions on party members, enhanced inspections of Colombians at the border, and additional treasury and banking sanctions. And Trump threatened even more crushing tariffs — up to 50% — if Colombia didn’t back down.

There was some outrage on the Left in response to this threat. But Trump’s approach was both morally correct and strategically smart. The United States holds literally all the cards against a country like Colombia. We could step on the whole nation like an ant if we wanted to. They have no leverage. No power. We could incinerate the entire country in 10 seconds. The power imbalance could not be any more cartoonishly extreme. Which means we can easily bully them into submission. We have both the ability and the moral right to impose our will on these countries until they stop flooding our communities with criminals. Trump should treat every country to our south just like this until they all get in line. There’s nothing they can do about it.

And very quickly, based on reporting from Fox’s Bill Melugin, Colombia’s government came to that realization:

Colombian President Gustavo Petro offered his presidential plane to repatriate migrants coming back from the U.S. on Sunday in response to stern warnings made by President Donald Trump. … In a statement translated from Spanish, the Colombian government said the plane will help facilitate a ‘dignified return.’ … ‘The Government of Colombia, under the direction of President Gustavo Petro, has arranged the presidential plane to facilitate the dignified return of the compatriots who were going to arrive in the country this morning, coming from deportation flights…

That’s quite a turnaround. Instead of blocking these flights, the Colombian government is going to help facilitate them — using the presidential plane, no less. It was hard to see this development as anything other than a complete and total victory for the Trump administration, which explains why, shortly afterwards, Trump posted this image on Truth Social:

???? BREAKING: Trump just posted this to Truth. “FAFO!” ???? ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/xfMQo11s7A

— Autism Capital ???? (@AutismCapital) January 26, 2025

Apparently in response to that post, a couple hours later, the president of Colombia posted an unhinged message on X, which led to a lot of speculation that he was undergoing some kind of mental or drug-related breakdown, having been thoroughly humiliated in front of the whole world in just a few hours. Petro’s long and rambling message was written in Spanish, so I’m relying on X’s built-in translation tool to understand what he said. With that in mind, here’s part of it:

“I like going to the black neighbourhoods of Washington, where I saw an entire fight in the US capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should join together. … I don’t like your oil, Trump, you’re going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, over a glass of whiskey, which I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it’s difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I’m not, nor is any Colombian.”

If you put aside that he’s probably losing his mind, there’s something kind of amusing about a post like this. He’s trying to project a tough and defiant image, *after* he’s already backed down, and agreed to fly these aliens back home on his presidential plane. It’s a bit like you’re the basketball team of New Zealand or something, and you’re talking trash after you’ve already gotten blown out by Team USA by 90 points.

In any event, late in the evening yesterday, the whole situation fell apart for Colombia. They quit pretending to be in charge. They capitulated entirely — apparently realizing how weak their negotiating position was. According to Trump’s press secretary, Colombia agreed to “unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens” using military flights. Trump said he’d hold off on the tariffs, and lift the visa sanctions once the first planeload of illegal aliens lands in Colombia. So this was a total and complete victory. Trump’s message ended with this: “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again.”

In other words, apparently, when you’re the most powerful country in the world, you can just simply force other countries to do what you want. You can actually wield power for the sake of protecting the interests of your own people. You don’t have to capitulate to countries whose very existence depends on the aid and protection you give them. They have to capitulate to you — if you force them to. And you should. You can and should use the power that you have. There is no point in being the most powerful nation on Earth if you will not act like it. That’s the moral of this story.

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It’s hard to overstate the importance of Trump’s foreign policy victory here. He just sent a very clear signal to every other country that, for the first time in a very long time, the United States is actually going to advance its own interests, using force if necessary. That’s an important message to send to the government of Haiti, for example, which is particularly upset right now. As the AP reports: “The president of Haiti’s transitional presidential council said the Trump administration’s decisions to freeze aid programs, deport migrants and block refugees will be ‘catastrophic’ for Haiti.” He goes on to say that Haiti can’t handle the “influx” of its own people.

In other words, Haiti wants you to know that sending more Haitians to Haiti will be a “catastrophe” for Haiti. Right. Yes. That’s exactly the point. That’s why Donald Trump was elected. It’s why Tom Homan is on the streets right now with Dr. Phil, kicking foreign nationals from places like Haiti and Colombia out of the country. If you don’t want these people, then why exactly should we? If the addition of thousands of more Haitians will be a catastrophe for Haiti, then why in the hell should we take them? Haitians should be Haiti’s problem. Not ours. Why should our country have to deal with your country’s problems?

Over in Honduras, they have no answer to that question. But they do seem to think they have some leverage. They’re reportedly threatening to cut off U.S. access to an airbase in their country. But again, just like Colombia, Honduras doesn’t actually have any leverage in this situation. We send Honduras hundreds of millions of dollars in financial assistance every year. If we turn that off, they’ll open the air base immediately. And if they don’t, frankly, we can just take it. The Texas National Guard is bigger than their whole army. What are they going to do about it?

Just think about this dynamic for a moment. All of the countries complain about our deportation policies depend on us for financial aid. They leech of of us, take food out of our children’s mouths, steal money from our paychecks, and then thank us for our donations by shipping the worst elements of their societies into our neighborhoods, so that our fellow citizens end up lying dead in ditches because of them. Now they have the audacity to complain because we’re returning the package back to sender. That’s why, again, I hope Trump treats them all like he did Colombia. Tell them to shut their ungrateful mouths or he’ll shut it for them. For decades we have had to put up with these entitled international welfare queens. They don’t fear us. But they should. When you’re the most powerful nation on the planet, lesser countries should fear you.

These are all obvious observations, but until Donald Trump’s election, no one in Washington ever made them. Our political leaders and “expert” class in this country have pretended for so long that all of our problems are hopelessly complicated and nothing can really be done to solve any of them. All we can do is sit around pontificating and debating and coming up with abstract theories to explain why we’re so screwed. Trump is proving that you can actually take action and do simple yet effective things to solve serious yet simple problems. You can, in fact, just do stuff. You can send illegal aliens back home. And when their home country doesn’t want to take them, you can force them to do it.

That’s maybe the single most prominent lesson from Donald Trump’s first week in office. We’ve already accomplished more on the international stage than we did in four years of the Biden administration. For Americans, this is a rare and welcome sign that we’re finally getting what we voted for. And for everyone else — especially in places like Haiti and Colombia, but also all over the world — it’s a clear signal that they need to respect American sovereignty. And if they don’t, then they, too, will be as humiliated as the president of Colombia is right now. They will face crushing embarrassment on the international stage. And the United States, without apologizing to anyone, will celebrate their defeat.