In remarks delivered during a nationally televised cabinet meeting Monday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro claimed President Donald Trump’s administration had taken away his visa to travel to the United States.
Petro made the offhand comments during a meeting that was ostensibly to address a yellow fever outbreak in the South American nation, according to the City Paper Bogotá.
“I can’t go anymore because I believe they took away my visa,” Petro said during the meeting. “I didn’t really need a visa, but anyway, I’ve already seen Donald Duck several times, so I’ll go see other things.”
The president then chuckled and moved on, providing no further context for the remarks. The City Paper reported that the remark, “delivered casually and seemingly out of context, caught his ministers off guard.”
Petro — whose 2022 election was part of a wave of leftist victories in South America — has clashed with the second Trump administration already over accepting expelled illegal immigrants with Colombian citizenship. The administration responded by halting visa applications for Colombians.
As the U.K. Independent noted, Petro would eventually back off and allow the migrants to be repatriated.
Despite his remark that he had “already seen Donald Duck several times,” Petro has never met with the current U.S. president, although he did visit former President Joe Biden in 2023.
The remarks came as Petro’s administration has begun waging a diplomatic battle against one of the White House’s closest allies in Latin America.
“Just hours before Monday’s Cabinet meeting, Petro posted a rare English-language message aimed at El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele,” the City Paper reported.
Should the Colombian president have his visa revoked?
“In it, he condemns Trump’s Central American ally for the treatment of Venezuelan migrants, likening it to the terror tactics that preceded the Holocaust.”
“Fascism in Europe created a criminal idea and gave it legal cover,” the message read.
“It said that you could blame a social group for the crime of an individual. That is the path that led to the holocaust of the Jews. No democratic-minded person in Latin America can accept that all of the Venezuelan people in exile are criminalized because of the crimes of the so-called ‘Tren de Aragua.’”
However, if Petro’s claim that he was being denied a U.S. visa was meant to draw attention to his jeremiads against Bukele and Trump, there was a slight hitch: The denial or revocation of a visa does not appear to have happened.
While the State Department declined to comment due to the confidentiality of visa records, the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá said that “no formal notification of visa revocation” was issued for Petro.
In addition, Colombian Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia is scheduled to travel to New York for an address to the United Nations Security Council.
The controversy also comes as Petro has alienated both the United States and regional trade partners, particularly on drug control issues. Under Petro’s rule, the amount of coca leaf — the plant from which cocaine is produced — being grown has increased exponentially.
“With an estimated 280,000 hectares of illicit crops, Colombia risks losing its certification status with the U.S. — a move that could impact security cooperation and jeopardize the country’s 10 percent tariff ceiling under trade agreements with the new Trump administration,” the City Paper reported.
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