Trump invites Colombia’s Petro to White House after threats

Sudden detente follows a phone call between the two leaders in which they discussed drugs and ‘other disagreements’, Trump says.Published On 8 Jan 2026United States President Donald Trump has invited Colombian leader Gustavo Petro to the White House, days after accusing him of trafficking cocaine and threatening military action against his government.The sudden detente on Wednesday followed an hour-long phone call between Trump and Petro, in which the two leaders discussed “the situation of drugs” and “other disagreements”, according to the US president.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,414list 2 of 4Trump threatens US defence firms over executive pay, slow productionlist 3 of 4Venezuela’s economy plunged into uncertainty after Maduro abductionlist 4 of 4US to withdraw from dozens of UN, international organisationsend of listIt was their first call since Trump’s threat of a military operation in Colombia following the US’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a brazen attack on Caracas on Saturday. The warnings prompted Petro to issue a call for Colombians to take to the streets to defend their sovereignty.“It was a Great Honour 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 wrote on his Truth Social platform.“I appreciated his call and tone and look forward to meeting him in the near future.”Trump added “arrangements are being made” for a meeting in Washington between himself and Petro, but gave no specific date for a meeting.Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, addressed demonstrators who had heeded his call for protests at Bogota’s Plaza Bolivar following the call with Trump. He said a detente was under way and that he had to change his speech at the last minute.“If we don’t speak, there is war. Colombia’s history has taught us that,” the former rebel fighter said.“And what happened is that we talked and re-established communication for the first time. I talked about two things: Venezuela and the issue of drug trafficking,” he said. “I gave him our numbers of what we are doing to fight drugs.”Petro also accused Colombian politicians of misleading Trump. “Those [people] are responsible for this crisis – let’s call it diplomatic for now, verbal for now – that has erupted between the US and Colombia,” he said.Relations between Trump and Petro have been frosty since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2025.Trump has repeatedly accused Petro’s administration, without evidence, of enabling a steady flow of ‌cocaine into the US, imposing sanctions on the Colombian leader in October.Earlier this week, Trump described Petro as “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States” and that he should “watch his a**” following the US attack on Venezuela.“He’s not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, and said a military operation there “sounds good.”For his part, Petro had condemned the US attack on Venezuela as “abhorrent”, convened emergency meetings before the United Nations and the Organization of American States and even threatened to take up arms again to defend Colombia.Petro and Trump also sparred last year when Colombia initially banned deportation flights from the US. Washington in September also ⁠revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York following a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly and called on American soldiers to “disobey the orders of Trump”.Petro, who has been a vocal opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza, had accused ‌Trump of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and called for “criminal proceedings” over US missile attacks on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.Despite the tensions, for Colombia, the US remains critical to the military’s fight against left-wing rebels and drug traffickers. Washington has provided Bogota with roughly $14bn in the last two decades.For the US, Colombia remains the main source of intelligence used to interdict drugs in the Caribbean, and the cornerstone of its counternarcotics strategy abroad.Colombia is also a “Major non-NATO ally” of the US – a designation that only belongs to a handful of countries like Australia, Japan and Qatar.“The relationship between presidents Trump and Petro is volatile and unpredictable,” said Anthea McCarthy-Jones, an expert in Latin America affairs at the University of New South Wales.“It seems to oscillate from exchanges involving threats and inflammatory language to more reasoned attempts to use diplomacy as a way forward,” she told Al Jazeera.Colombia’s government, meanwhile, said cooperation between the two countries on intelligence, defence and law enforcement was continuing.Colombia’s defence minister Pedro Sanchez told The New York Times this week that the “Navy, Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives” have been uninterrupted.