Trump suggests US could take action against more countries

By YAN ZHUANG

President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that the United States could take action against other countries after its attack on Venezuela. He threatened Colombia and its president, described Cuba as “ready to fall” and reasserted his desire to take control of Greenland.

Trump has been facing questions about his plans for Venezuela since a U.S. raid in Caracas captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and brought him to New York City to face federal drug trafficking and weapons charges. As Trump took questions about that Sunday, he spoke of other countries in Latin America and beyond.

On Air Force One, Trump told reporters that Colombia was being “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”

“He’s not going to be doing it for very long,” he said of Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who has frequently criticized Trump. “He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”

Trump and Petro have been locked in an escalating dispute over the United States’ series of boat strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which have ratcheted up pressure on Colombia, a nexus of the region’s drug trade.

Asked whether his administration would carry out an operation targeting Colombia, Trump replied, “It sounds good to me.”

Petro responded angrily in a post on social platform X, warning that any attempt to detain him would unleash popular fury.

Trump also suggested that the United States could take action against a number of other countries, including Mexico and Iran, over a range of issues.

He said that drugs were “pouring” through Mexico and “we’re going to have to do something,” adding that the cartels there were “very strong.”

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, brushed aside the remarks. “This is just President Trump’s manner of speaking,” she said at a news conference Monday.

Of Iran, which is being roiled by protests, Trump said, “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

Trump suggested that military intervention was unnecessary in Cuba, a key ally of Venezuela, because it was “ready to fall.”

“I don’t think we need any action,” Trump said. “It looks like it’s going down.”

“I don’t know if they’re going to hold out, but Cuba now has no income,” he added. “They got all their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had suggested earlier in the day that Cuba could face U.S. military action.

On “Meet the Press” on NBC early Sunday, when asked whether Cuba was the Trump administration’s “next target,” Rubio said, “The Cuban government is a huge problem.” Pressed again, he said, “They are in a lot of trouble, yes.”

Rubio had accused the Cuban leadership of “propping up” Maduro’s Venezuelan government and sponsoring his internal security apparatus, including his personal bodyguards. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has said for decades that the leadership of Cuba must be removed and that toppling the Maduro government would help lead to a transformation in Cuba.

On Air Force One, Trump also reiterated his desire to take control of Greenland, the semiautonomous Danish territory in the North Atlantic that he has said the United States must acquire for security purposes.

“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” he said, describing the region as “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”

Earlier in the day, Trump had made a similar remark about Greenland in an interview with The Atlantic. That prompted Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, a NATO ally, to tell Trump to “stop the threats” and emphasize that the United States had “no right to annex” Greenland.

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, also rejected Trump’s comments as “utterly unacceptable” and said that connecting Venezuela and Greenland was “disrespectful.”