As Ed wrote, it took 37 minutes for Columbia's President Gustavo Petro to reverse himself on accepting Colombian deportees AND to offer his presidential plane to carry out the deportations. 

37 minutes, or three holes of golf for the president. Between the end of his third hole, when President Trump tweeted out his threats to President Petro and the sixth hole, the diplomatic dispute was resolved in our favor. 

The difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 this time around is like the difference between Michael Jordan as a freshman at North Carolina and Michael Jordan as NBA MVP.

— John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) January 26, 2025

The Pravda media and many in the transnational elite were horrified by what happened. 

Donald Trump is so mean. 

He bullied the poor, poor president of Columbia. Yankee imperialism in its worst form! Trump is a big mean bully who doesn't respect our neighbors like Petro. 

If you weren’t on X between 1:36 PM and
2:23 PM here’s an update: you will still get your flowers for Valentine’s Day and Columbian coffee for your coffee addiction and Columbia will get their recent border crossers back.
In between Columbia learned what “and find out” means. pic.twitter.com/suAqFGXLPM

— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) January 26, 2025

You know, that guy who quite literally was a terrorist arrested in possession of weapons and bombs shortly before M-19 conducted a siege of the Supreme Court building that resulted in over 100 deaths, including half the Supreme Court. 

It is unconscionable that Trump would upset this Marxist revolutionary-turned-politician!

Exactly. Gustavo Petro’s defiance toward President Trump’s decisive actions highlights the dangers of weak leadership emboldened by the Biden-Harris administration. Petro, a former guerrilla with ties to Colombia’s infamous M-19 group, now positions himself as an anti-American… pic.twitter.com/U8HWLcw7Xe

— Torsten Prochnow (@TorstenProchnow) January 26, 2025

Petro is Colombia's first leftist president in years and considers himself a man of the people, but his past shows him to be a Marxist revolutionary with a violent past and a long-standing hostility to the United States. A member of the M-19 revolutionary movement-turned-political-party (it was part of the settlement that ended a Colombian civil war that M-19 would give up armed struggle in exchange for participation in the political process), Petro is not a good guy. Frankly, there is no reason why Trump should be treating him with kid gloves. 

At age 17, while studying economics at Externado University of Colombia in Bogotá, Petro was recruited by the 19th of April Movement (M-19), a Marxist guerrilla group that took its name from the date on which the group argued that the 1970 Colombian presidential election had been “stolen.” The group often resorted to audacious militant actions, including the kidnapping and murder of a labour leader in 1976, a raid on a Bogotá arsenal in 1979, and the kidnapping of cocktail-party guests at the Bogotá embassy of the Dominican Republic in 1980. ...In October 1985, while disguised as a woman, Petro was arrested and incarcerated after he was found to be in possession of firearms, homemade explosives, and propaganda. Some three weeks later, while Petro was still behind bars, the M-19 undertook its most notorious operation: an invasion of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, where it took scores of hostages. In the subsequent military assault on the building, some 100 people were killed, including half of Colombia’s Supreme Court judges. In March 1987 Petro was released from confinement, and he helped promote peace talks between the M-19 and the Colombian government. In 1990 he demobilized along with the rest of the M-19 after negotiations with Colombian Pres. Virgilio Barco led to amnesty for members of the group, which then transformed into a legitimate political party, Alianza Democrática M-19.

Petro may have been elected President of Colombia. Still, he is hardly a friend of the United States, and while it is true that Trump bullied him, the alternative was to give in to the demands of a Marxist enemy of the United States. 

This was an easy call for Trump. Petro had agreed to take the deportees, reneged on his promise while the flights were in the air in order to embarrass Trump and enhance his reputation as a man who could stand up to the United States, and he deserved to be humiliated. 

It was Petro or Trump, and you know who should win that fight. And he did. Donald Trump was as likely to defer to a Colombian Marxist as he is to give up Diet Coke. The only surprise is that Trump ended his round of gold 3 under par at 78. That's impressive, considering that he was simultaneously kicking a Latin American President's butt diplomatically at the same time. 

Trump is magic.