Donald Trump not only repeatedly highlighted the success of the military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, remove him from Venezuela, and presumably try him in the United States on Saturday, but throughout the day, Trump also issued several warnings, some with openly threatening tones, against other American countries he accuses of having ties to drug trafficking, such as Colombia and Mexico, or of having political regimes, as is the case with Cuba.
“(Petro) has cocaine labs. He has factories where he produces cocaine. (…) They’re sending it to the US. So yeah, he has to watch his ass,” Donald Trump stated when asked, during his appearance to explain the operation against Maduro, about the statements made by his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro.
“I’m not worried at all,” Petro had written earlier in X, in response to a journalist’s post stating that the Colombian president “must be very worried about what the head of the Cartel of the Suns might reveal,” referring to Washington’s accusations against Maduro.
The warning to Petro comes amidst a series of criticisms exchanged in recent months regarding Washington’s aggressive military anti-drug campaign in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Last month, the US president already warned Petro that he will be “next” after Maduro, whom Trump has repeatedly accused of leading an international drug trafficking network.
Furthermore, Trump asserted this Saturday that “something must be done” about drug trafficking in Mexico, insisting that drug cartels govern the country. The US president made these statements in a telephone interview with Fox News, prior to his appearance in Florida focused on the operation in Venezuela.
Trump clarified, however, that Maduro’s capture was not a message for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, whom he described as a “friend” and “a good woman,” but emphasized that “the cartels govern Mexico; she doesn’t.” The Republican president revealed during the interview that he had offered Sheinbaum “many times” the possibility of having the U.S. military take action against Mexican drug trafficking, but the Mexican president asked him not to.
Trump stated that hundreds of thousands of people die in the United States because of drugs, which, he said, mostly enter through the border with Mexico: “In case you didn’t know, they come in through the southern border. Something has to be done about Mexico,” he said.
Upon taking office almost a year ago, Trump designated Mexico’s major drug cartels as foreign terrorist groups and announced tariffs on Mexican and Canadian exports in retaliation for fentanyl trafficking. Since then, the Sheinbaum administration has offered cooperation with the United States in combating drug trafficking and irregular migration, but has emphasized that Mexico’s territorial sovereignty is inviolable.
The situation in Cuba, a close ally of Venezuela, also came up at Trump’s press conference in Florida. In this instance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “if I were in Havana, I would be concerned, even if only a little.” For his part, Donald Trump added that the Caribbean island is a “very similar case” to Venezuela and that his goal is to help the Cuban people in the face of Castroism.
Source: elmundo
