President Donald Trump revealed on Wednesday evening that he held a conversation with radical Marxist Colombian President Gustavo Petro and invited him to the White House — while an anti-Trump protest organized by Petro was underway in Bogotá.
When Petro arrived to speak at the protest — which he addressed for about an hour — he admitted that he had written a much more belligerent anti-Trump speech, but the American president’s outreach had forced him to take a more diplomatic approach.
Petro, a member of the terrorist guerrilla M-19, is the first leftist president in the history of Colombia and has used his position to consistently degrade the mostly friendly relations between Bogotá and Washington throughout their history. In addition to supporting American enemies such as Hamas, China, the socialist Venezuelan regime, and Russia, Petro is a vocal advocate for the legalization of cocaine. Trump has repeatedly accused Petro of producing and distributing cocaine personally. Following the arrest of Venezuelan former dictator Nicolás Maduro, Trump warned on Saturday that Petro should “watch his ass.”
Trump’s tone — and Petro’s — changed dramatically on Wednesday. In a message on his website Truth Social, Trump called his conversation with Petro a “great honor” and noted that Petro called the White House.
“It was 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,” Trump announced. “I appreciated his call and tone, and look forward to meeting him in the near future.”
Trump added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be working to help schedule a visit by Petro to the White House before the end of Petro’s presidential term, expected to conclude in August.
Petro confirmed the call by publishing a photo of himself on the phone with Trump at 8:49 p.m. Eastern, as the anti-Trump rally that he organized in Bogotá raged. The photo showed Petro appearing displeased or tired.
Following that call, Petro published a longer post on Twitter featuring a photo of a bald eagle, the symbol of the United States of America, embracing a jaguar, a tropical big cat that Petro had previously compared to the Colombian people. In his message, Petro claimed that he spent much of his conversation trying to convince President Trump to invest in “green” energy.
“Among the things we discussed, President Trump and I, was the disagreement we had in his vision of the relationship of the U.S. with Latin America,” Petro wrote. He suggested that he told Trump that South America has “great annual potential in clean energy.”
“A use of Latin America for oil will only bring about the destruction of international law and therefore to barbarism and a third world war,” Petro declared. “Peace in the world would be at true risk and we would move towards irreversible climate collapse with the extinction of life.”
Petro then made his planned appearance at the anti-Trump rally and was forced to tell the crowd he had a cordial and positive conversation with Trump.
“I brought a speech to give today and I have to give another one, that’s not easy, the first speech was pretty hard,” Petro told the crowd.
“I know that if someone would attempt to harm me… what would happen is that the people of Colombia would enter conflict and what we already have known for the two centuries we have been a republic would be repeated,” Petro said, explaining his desire to speak to Trump.
Petro added that “Trump is not dumb, we can say other things but he is not dumb.”
Images Petro shared of the protest showed large throngs of people waving explicitly communist symbols, such as a flag bearing the likenesses of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx.
The conciliatory tone was a dramatic shift from three days ago, when Petro wrote a screed at 1:28 a.m. on Twitter in which he invoked the wrath of the “popular jaguar” and personally threatened to “take up arms” to fight Trump.
Petro, whose own cabinet has accused him of suffering from drug addiction, was responding to Trump accusing him of being involved in drug trafficking — the allegation that resulted in the American apprehension and arrest of Nicolás Maduro.
“Although I have not been a soldier, I know about war and clandestine operations,” Petro wrote. “I swore not to touch a weapon again since the 1989 peace agreement, but for the Fatherland I will take up arms again, which I do not want to do.”
Petro regularly boasts proudly of his membership in M-19, a terrorist guerrilla responsible for killing 11 Supreme Court justices in 1985.
“If you detain a president that a good part of my people loves and respects, you will unleash the jaguar of the people,” Petro warned at the time.
Trump repeatedly indicated that Petro could be the next head of state arrested after the extradition of Maduro who, while not the legitimate president of Venezuela since at least 2018, in practice was the commanding leader of the country.
“He has cocaine mills. He has factories where he makes cocaine,” Trump said on Saturday. “And yeah, I think I stick by my first statement. He’s making cocaine and they’re sending it into the United States, so he does have to watch his ass.”