President Donald Trump hit back at the Colombian president Wednesday after the Latin American leader called to “get rid” of him.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro told Univision Monday that it may be necessary to “get rid of” Trump as the United States escalates counternarcotics operations in the region.
“Humanity has a first offramp, it is to choose to change Trump in various ways,” Petro told Univision’s Daniel Coronell.
“The easiest way may be through Trump himself. If not, get rid of Trump,” he said while snapping his fingers.
But Trump wasn’t having any of Petro’s threats.
“He’s a thug and bad guy. He’s a guy that is making a lot of drugs,” Trump said in response to The Daily Wire’s White House Correspondent, Mary Margaret Olohan.
“He better watch it or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country,” he added.
Trump also said he’d pulled “all payments” from the U.S. to Colombia as part of an ongoing campaign to pressure Petro to combat drug trafficking in the region.
.@MaryMargOlohan: The president of Colombia recently said that if you won’t change, maybe you need to be gotten rid of. Do you view that as a threat? @POTUS: “He’s a thug and bad guy…He better watch it or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country.” pic.twitter.com/of3eYWGHhW
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 22, 2025
Trump earlier called Petro an “illegal drug dealer” with “a fresh mouth toward America.”
Wes Tabor, who led the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Caracas in 2012, recently told The Daily Wire that Petro has slowly pulled away from the U.S., while embracing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
“His background is steeped in these freedom fighting, kind[s] of guerrilla warfare … socialism, Marxism, and things like that. And we have seen in the last year more aggressively coming out of Colombia, they are saying, ‘listen, we are going to side with Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela,” said Tabor.
“When we look historically, the relationship has been really good,” he added.
The Department of War has taken out seven drug cartel vessels in the Caribbean in recent weeks, killing more than two dozen suspected narco traffickers.
Petro claimed the U.S. killed a fisherman rather than narcoterrorists in one of the strikes, prompting Trump to threaten to hit Colombia with new tariffs.
“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Petro wrote on social media at the time, according to The New York Times.
