President Donald Trump has threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro with possible military action, while his Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that Cuba is “ready to fall,” just a day after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro in a surprise raid.
Speaking aboard Air Force One, Trump accused Petro of overseeing a “sick country” driven by cocaine exports and warned his rule would not last long.
“The government in Bogotá is run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” Trump said. “And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you.”
When pressed if that meant military action, Trump replied, “Sounds good to me.”
Petro shot back on X, denouncing Trump’s remarks as “slander” and urging Latin America to unite or “be treated as servants and slaves.” He accused Washington of bombing a South American capital “for the first time in human history” following the U.S. abduction of Maduro.
The Venezuelan leader and his wife were seized early Saturday by U.S. Special Forces in Caracas and flown to New York, where they face narcoterrorism and drug-trafficking charges. The operation, which disabled parts of Venezuela’s air defenses, came under immediate international fire. Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Spain called it a “dangerous precedent for peace,” while Argentina’s Javier Milei praised the fall of a dictatorship.
At Mar-a-Lago, Trump said the United States would temporarily run Venezuela until a “safe and proper transition” could occur. He announced that U.S. oil companies would enter the country to restore its shattered energy sector — a plan critics said revealed Washington’s interest in controlling the world’s largest petroleum reserves.
“We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said. “We can’t take a chance that someone else takes over who doesn’t have Venezuelans’ interests in mind.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press that Cuba could be next. “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” he warned, noting that Cuban intelligence officers had been guarding Maduro.
Trump agreed, saying Cuba was collapsing without Venezuelan oil revenues. “Cuba literally is ready to fall,” he said.
Cuba’s Communist government condemned the U.S. strike as “state terrorism,” vowing “Homeland or Death.” Its Foreign Ministry called the action a “criminal act” and “violation of international law.”
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum also came under fire from Trump, who accused her of letting cartels “pour drugs through the border,” while describing her as a “terrific person.”
Trump defended the legality of the operation, calling it a law-enforcement mission against a “narco-state.” Critics in Washington compared it to Cold War interventions in Panama and Grenada.
Still, Trump cast the seizure as part of his revived “Don-roe Doctrine,” a modern version of the Monroe Doctrine asserting U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot,” Trump said. “They now call it the Don-roe Doctrine.”
Maduro is expected to appear Monday in Manhattan federal court, while his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has assumed power in Caracas.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said Sunday, suggesting the U.S. message to the region was deliberate — and that Venezuela would only be the beginning.
The Trump administration’s vigorous foreign policy is a stark contrast with the weak U.S. posture projected by the preceding Biden administration. It appears the entire world has been put on notice — including the Venezuelan ally communist China — that America is “back.”