Trump Hosts Sanctioned Colombian President Petro Amid Drug‑War, Venezuela Tensions

President Donald Trump is set to host Colombian President Gustavo Petro at the White House on Tuesday for talks on regional security and counternarcotics, barely weeks after threatening military action against Colombia and calling Petro a 'sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.' The meeting comes after the Trump administration in October sanctioned Petro, his wife, his son and his interior minister over alleged involvement in the global drug trade, then named Colombia a country 'failing to cooperate' in the drug war for the first time in three decades; those sanctions had to be formally waived to allow Petro to travel to Washington. Relations have been further strained by a U.S. special‑operations raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, which Petro has condemned as a kidnapping, and by Trump’s deployment of U.S. forces for at least 36 lethal strikes on suspected smuggling boats that have killed 126 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific with little public accounting of who died. Despite that backdrop, Trump now says Petro has 'changed his attitude' since the Venezuelan raid and appears more willing to work with Washington, even as Petro continues to label Trump an 'accomplice to genocide' in Gaza and has urged Colombians to protest in Bogotá during the summit. For U.S. audiences, the encounter tests whether a decades‑long anti‑drug partnership with the world’s top cocaine producer can survive personal insults, sanctions and open talk of regime change, or whether Trump’s militarized narco‑terror campaign is pushing a key ally further away.