Donald Trump has escalated tensions between Washington and one of its closest Latin American allies, declaring the US will slash assistance to Colombia and enact tariffs on its exports because its president, Gustavo Petro, “does nothing to stop” drug production.
Trump referred to Petro as “an illegal drug leader” in a post on the Truth Social platform and warned that Petro “better close up” drug operations “or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely”.
Later on Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that Colombia had “no fight against drugs” and “they are a drug-manufacturing machine” with “a lunatic” for a president. He said he would announce new tariffs on Monday.
Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:
Trump calls Petro a ‘drug dealer’ as US says it hit another boat
Donald Trump accused the Colombian president of being an “illegal drug leader” and threatened to immediately cut US funding to Colombia as a Republican senator said the US would soon announce “major tariffs” on the country.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump blamed Petro for encouraging the mass production of illegal drugs, saying the leftwing leader “does nothing to stop it, despite large-scale payments and subsidies from the US”.
It came as the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, confirmed US forces had attacked a vessel associated with a Colombian leftist rebel group, killing three “terrorists”, in its latest strike on an alleged drug boat.
Petro rejected Trump’s accusations and described himself as “the main enemy” of drugs in Colombia.
Read the full story
George Santos says jail sentence disproportionate but ‘large slice of humble pie’
Disgraced former US congressman George Santos said on Sunday that his prison sentence had been “disproportionate” but that he had been served “a very large slice of humble pie”, while lashing out at his critics in his first interview since Donald Trump commuted his sentence.
Speaking to CNN, Santos said he was “all politicked out” and called for his former campaign staffer, Sam Miele, to also receive a commutation.
“This isn’t about … glitter, stars and glam or going back to Congress,” he said. “This is a very personal journey and road for me ahead.”
Read the full story
Inside the Republican network behind big soda’s bid to pit Maga against Maha
Major US soft-drink and snack-food corporations are waging a coordinated campaign that aims to pit Donald Trump’s Maga faithful against Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement, a Guardian investigation in partnership with environmental watchdog Fieldnotes has found.
Their goal is to stymie the Maha-led effort to curb Americans’ consumption of soda and ultra-processed foods.
To carry out the plan, the companies have turned to a partially formalized network of for-hire pollsters, strategists and political financiers with deep ties to the national Republican party.
Portlanders mock Trump for calling their city ‘war-ravaged’
When Donald Trump said he was sending the national guard to Portland, Oregon to protect immigration officers, residents immediately responded with characteristic sarcasm mocking the president’s portrayal of a city in decline.
When the US secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) building where protesters had been gathering for weeks, she found a small crowd of demonstrators wearing inflatable animal costumes, not a city overrun by antifascist militants.
The reality on the ground did not deter Trump from painting the city as unliveable.
What else happened today:
-
A city council member in Florida is facing a backlash from national Indian American organizations, members of Congress and residents after posting a series of social media messages that insulted Indian people living in the US and called for them to be deported en masse.
-
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged allies against appeasing Russia after returning from a meeting with Donald Trump at the White House in which the Ukrainian president failed to secure long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 18 October 2025.
