Trump gets Rude Awakening as Colombia Prez Strikes Back Hard

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2:25Ben Meiselas:Colombia's President Gustavo Petro and Colombian leaders, senators, ministers, are powerfully punching back at Donald Trump after Donald Trump maligned and defamed Petro and Colombia in general, saying that Colombia now is a narco-terrorist-like state, saying it's led by Gustavo Petro, who Donald Trump labeled a drug dealer. And Colombia is united. Don't you dare call President Petro a drug dealer. He's done more to try to fight back against drug trafficking, not just in the country, but in the region, and has been a solid ally with the United States military in order to stop the actual drug trafficking taking place in South America and in the Caribbean.

3:14Ben Meiselas:So what are you doing attacking Petro? Let's take a look at what President Petro said. Let's take a look at what the ministers in Colombia are saying. And then Petro gave a very powerful speech I want to share with you as well. So here's what Petro posted moments ago. He wrote the following in response to Donald Trump's ridiculous post. Mr. Trump, Colombia has never been rude to the USA. On the contrary, it has greatly admired its culture, but you are rude and ignorant toward Colombia. He goes, you need to read the history right here. Read 100 years of solitude and maybe you can learn something.

3:55Ben Meiselas:I don't do business like you do. Yes, I am a socialist. I believe in aid and the common good and in the common goods of humanity, the greatest of all life, put in danger by you and your oil. I'm not a merchant, then much less a drug trafficker. In my heart, there is no greed. I can never get along with greed. A mafioso is a human being who embodies the best of capitalism, greed. And I am the opposite. I am a lover of life and therefore a millennial warrior for life. Greed flees from us because life is more powerful. And then you had Petro repost the following from someone there by the name of Ben Norton.

4:35Ben Meiselas:Petro responds to Donald Trump's attack on him by saying Trump is a maniac. While waging war on Venezuela, he now threatens to attack Colombia too, although he doesn't even know how to spell Colombia correctly. Donald Trump spelt it four times, C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A. Trump falsely claims that Colombian President Gustavo Petro is a drug dealer. This is a total lie. Now he's threatening sanctions and attacks. An imperial psycho, an imperial psycho is what President Gustavo Petro is calling Donald Trump. He also reposted the following message. A head of state cannot so lightly presume to tell a president of Colombia that he is a leader of drug trafficking.

5:25Ben Meiselas:It is unacceptable, disrespectful. The vulgar mishandling of the pain we have endured as a nation as a result of that terrible scourge must be rejected. rejected. Now, this all started with, over the weekend, Gustavo Petro and the president of Colombia saying that those boats that Donald Trump has been attacking, those fishing boats in the Caribbean, one of them was Colombian. This is what he says. That boat attacked on September 16th was Colombian, had an engine on top as a sign of damage and was turned off. Presumably, it was in Colombian waters. Who was there was a lifelong fisherman, Alejandro Carranza, who has not returned to his home.

6:08Ben Meiselas:Alert to the attorney general of the nation. I request you act immediately. Grant immediate protection to the victim families and associate them if they wish with the victims of Trinidad and Tobago to initiate legal actions in the world and in the justice system of the United States. In other words, war crimes have been committed against innocent fishermen in Colombia. We also know that innocent fishermen from Trinidad and Tobago were also killed in these war crimes being committed by the United States of America. We're clearly seeing now why that four-star decorated admiral who was the commanding Navy leader in Latin America suddenly quit last week.

6:53Ben Meiselas:It's becoming increasingly obvious. More on that. I'll tie this all together. But after President Petro said, you just killed innocent Colombians, Donald, Donald Trump responded, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia is an illegal drug leader, strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs in big and small fields all over Colombia. It's become the biggest business in Colombia by far. And Petro does nothing to stop it. Despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA say that are nothing more than a long-term ripoff of America. As of today, these payments or any other form of payment or subsidies will no longer be made to Colombia.

7:33Ben Meiselas:The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc. Petro, a low-rated and very unpopular leader with a fresh mouth toward America, better close up these killing fields immediately or the United States will close them up for him and it won't be done nicely. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Donald J. Trump, on behalf of the normal people in the United States that are still left, let me send this message to President Petro, to the President Gustavo Petro and to all the other leaders out there. Donald Trump is a horrible human being.

8:10Ben Meiselas:Okay. He is a vile piece of trash in the Oval Office. And what many Americans think, tens of millions of us think, is that this guy is a despicable tyrant who is making our country weaker. And on behalf of normal Americans who don't support war crimes, we apologize to you for his despicable war crimes and the behavior that's being done in our country's name. Because we're also learning about this huge buildup of naval assets in the Caribbean. There were over 200 military flights conducted in the area between August 15th and October 15th per a CNN review of flight data. The missions were carried out by 83 separate aircraft as the United States seeks to intimidate the region, including intelligence gathering planes and tankers used to refuel jets midair.

8:59Ben Meiselas:Several intelligence gathering assets may also have been diverted from surveillance operations in Eastern Europe, where we were supporting Ukraine, to the Caribbean so that Donald Trump can try to bully and threaten war on places like Venezuela and Colombia. Very different. Venezuela is being run by a dictator tyrant. President Petro, Gustavo Petro, is someone who the U.S. was allied with. He showed up in the White House with former President Biden. He's someone who's been actually tough on drugs, not just in Colombia, but in the region. And I also want to say one thing as well. Fentanyl is not coming in from Colombia, nor is it coming in from Venezuela.

9:37Ben Meiselas:A lot of it's being manufactured in the United States. Some of it's being manufactured in Mexico. A lot of it's being manufactured in China, and it's being shipped to the United States. So Trump's attempt to blame fentanyl on Venezuela and Colombia, it's just be lied by the facts. It's utterly false what he is doing. And Trump's trying to create an enemy to create pretext for war, pretext for war. I want to show you this from Armando Bendati, who is the minister, the interior minister. Here's how he describes it, interior minister of Colombia. He goes like, We're in the fourth dimension here. The most powerful president on planet Earth from the country that consumes the most tells the president, Gustavo Petro, who has fought the hardest against drug trafficking since forever, that he is the leader of drug trafficking in the region.

10:26Ben Meiselas:That is mocking the families who lost their loved ones, the members of the public force who have lost their lives in the war against the mafias. But everything that is wrong is susceptible to getting worse. Then some Latino dog washers from the United States come out who just mess with Petro Gustavo's demand-raising tariffs, decertification, invasion, showing the little gallantry and maturity on the issue for handling in this country. Then you had another senator, Martha Apayu. She goes, listen, President Trump, we are Colombia, not Colombia. Spell it right. You don't even know the name of our country.

11:05Ben Meiselas:From the Senate of Colombia, I categorically and energetically reject the unfounded, disrespectful, and dangerous misinformed accusations issued by Donald Trump against Pedro Gustavo and against the Colombian state. Colombia does not kneel before the threats or blackmail, no matter where they come from. We are a sovereign nation that has paid with blood the price of war against drug trafficking that has been waged for decades, many times under rules imposed by others, while in the North, the consumption that fuels this chain of death does not stop. The government of President Gustavo Petro is without a doubt one of those that has most forcefully confronted the structural roots of drug trafficking in Colombia.

11:47Ben Meiselas:Voluntary crop substitution, social justice for historically forgotten regions, an environmental approach, and dismantling of criminal networks through a policy of human security. The figures prove it. Seizures have increased. The economic power of the mafias has been hit and a paradigm shift has been initiated that for years was postponed by the complicity and double standards of certain sectors. President Trump, here is the honest and hardworking people. Stop the consumption in your country. Stop bombing innocent fishermen and capture the real narcos who are in Dubai, is what she says. A lot of other senators in Colombia who are echoing that message right here.

12:31Ben Meiselas:And more powerful statements from Gustavo Petro right there. Getting older hits harder than you expect, right? One day you wake up with stiff joints, recovery from the gym takes longer, your hair's thinning, nails are breaking, and your skin just doesn't have that same smooth glow anymore. That's where Bub's Naturals collagen peptides come in. Starting in your mid-20s, your body naturally produces less collagen every single year. And collagen is the protein that holds everything together. It's literally the glue of your body. With bubs, you can help restore collagen levels closer to what your body naturally had in its youth.

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14:30Ben Meiselas:After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that Midas Touch sent you. I want to share with you this message from Gustavo Petro. I think it's a very powerful one. He gave a speech over the weekend. And here he talks about Trump using fentanyl as the pretext in order to go after Colombia and Venezuela. He goes, in reality, Trump just wants the oil from Venezuela. That's what this is really about. And then Petro makes his powerful statement. If you have family members who are missing, give us a call because Trump is going after innocent fishermen.

15:07Ben Meiselas:He's killing people. Call the office. We have to deal with these war crimes. Here, play this clip.

15:38U.S. Teriparus, what it wants is the oil of Venezuela and Guyana. The oil grid is what is behind the strategy that is launching missiles at fishermen. There are already fishermen from the island of Trinidad and Tobago who died under a missile. There is already the video of a boat that was not sailing the sea, but had its engines lifted and therefore was stationary, which was hit by a missile. We still don't know the exact point. There are already young fishermen who left their homes in Santa Marta. Anoutan Anou and Efonate returned. It is not yet time to say anything definitive, but we are concerned because their families are calling.

16:27I ask all the families where their children or husbands are not returning home in a strange manner in places where there are ports to immediately notify the authorities and we will see what has happened to them. Because if what is happening is that any of the Colombians have died under the missiles, ask all the human rights lawyers that today. We apologize because the Colombian state murdered and persecuted them in past decades to help us establish internationally and nationally the claims and complaints if Colombians have been killed by the missiles.

17:25Ben Meiselas:And then as part of this speech, Petro's like, look, when Biden was in office, we were able to have arguments. We can talk back and forth. We could have adult conversation. He goes, Trump doesn't want to talk. Trump has already decided what the outcome is, that he wants to invade Venezuela, that he wants to take over Colombia, that he has his decided outcome. and he's just going to go and make up whatever he wants, regardless of the facts. Here, let's play this clip. This is, we put this through AI so we can translate it into English for you. Here, play this clip. So, et cetera, the students talk about arguments that the presidents, we're going to talk about arguments.

18:06How naive with Biden, I could talk about arguments, but with Trump, they haven't even met him. Arguments are useless. We are facing a government that has a predetermined purpose and only uses data if it serves them. Did that false data serve the Trump administration to discredit us and say that then the United States could be flooded with cocaine? which is not true because it is being flooded with fentanyl and fentanyl is not produced in Colombia it is not produced in Latin America it is produced in the large industrial apparatus of the United States and in other industrial apparatus is it is an excuse poorly constructed because here I demonstrate with arguments that the potential for cocaine production is different and Let's go to this chart.

19:07This chart, a bit complicated, this chart was made by the Minister of Defense, retired General Pedro Sanchez. It is authored by him based on the data, obviously official of hectares.

19:25The great measures are not,

19:32So this is key to knowing if the government's policy is effective or not regarding cocaine production in Colombia. This bar shows the growth in the year 2021 of coca leaf crops. In 2021, they grew 43%. 2022, 13%. 2023, 9.8%. 2024, 3%.

19:58Ben Meiselas:Now, as you also know, this comes on the same week that the four-star Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head of Southern Command, is stepping down after less than a year in his position. He was the commanding admiral in the Latin American region. And this is the area where the shooting of the fishing boats was taking place by the United States. The war crimes were taking place. I will show you this. This is from Admiral Holsey when he was a vice admiral at the time in 2023, speaking in the Concordia America lecture series over here. And he talks about the importance, this is in 2023, of cooperation in the region with countries like Colombia.

20:40Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip. What do you think are the most important concerns that we actually are dealing with, or your particular Southcom, are dealing with today? So thanks for that question as well. So first of all, I'd like to share that Southcom has been building partnerships in this region now for close to 60 years. And if you were to look at our mission statement, two things that really stand out, rapidly responding to crises and then building partner capacity, regional capacity. So how do we do that? We do it through security cooperation. Security cooperation is a way that we engage our partners by and large.

21:16Now, how do we do that? It goes back to the fact of foreign military sales, foreign military financing, security assistance, funding as well. And so by doing that, we're able to engage and build partner capacity. That's very important as you look at different threats in the region. So as we assist partners in developing that military capability, what that does for us. And at the same time, we stick with them. We don't just go away. We've got to be on the field and engage. Right. So we assist them with training, the necessary training to do the sustainment and maintenance. And by doing that, and again, on the field, engage with our partners, building that trust, we're able to enable them to counter that malign activity.

21:59And so that's kind of the main focus right now, security cooperation. And here he is again saying that. At U.S. Subway Command, we are one of the six geographic combative commanders for the Department of Defense. And so in that role, we're responsible for overseeing the contingency planning operations, as well as a security cooperation in the Central America, South America and the Caribbean in our neighborhood, we'd like to say. And we refer to it as our neighborhood because of the the physical proximity, the shared values and culture and also the shared economic and security concerns.

22:35Ben Meiselas:Now, finally, I'll just show you this from April 23rd, 2023. This is former President Biden when he met with Gustavo. You can just see how different these times are. He goes, thank you, President Petro Gustavo, for your commitment to addressing climate change and promoting democratic values across the Americas. When Columbia and the United States stand together, there's nothing we can't accomplish. So just think where we went from Biden to where we are now under Trump with war crimes being committed and the worst possible relations with our four-star admirals quitting and hell is breaking loose.

23:11Ben Meiselas:Here, play in this clip.

23:17Mr. President, welcome. It's great to see you here in the Oval Office of Washington. I really want to thank you for your outspoken and strong commitment to peace and human rights across America, as you speak to it all the time. Together, Columbia and the United States are leading an effort to deal with climate change compared to make a$500 million commitment in preserving the Amazon. We're also working together to counter narcotics trafficking and address historic levels of migration. As we begin the next century of our partnership, I believe we can do even more to deepen and develop cooperation.

23:53So I want to thank you again for taking the time to be here and look forward to our conversation.