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So Trump had a fun day on the golf course.
While golfing yesterday, he got the news that Colombia will not be accepting two jets full of repatriated criminals. So he goes on TruthSocial and posts that, immediately, Colombia will get slapped with 25% tariffs, as well as visa revocations for ruling party members.
This causes an immediate reaction from Petro, the unpopular socialist leader of Colombia, who offers to fly convicts back to Colombia in his Presidential jet.
There is much celebration and dunking from Trump supporters.
Not so fast. It turns out Petro might have been drunk, because he later goes on to post this insane rant on Twitter and then threatens the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs.
Now the Democrats are celebrating (because obviously it's good to hurt Trump even if it's bad for America). We are driving Colombians into the arms of China! Who will work our coffee fields? That kind of stuff.
The evening goes on. Trump finishes golfing. Petro sobers up and probably gets some, um, interesting phone calls from prominent Colombians who will have to pull their daughters from American finishing schools. Petro apparently caves, as the White House posts this, announcing that Colombia will accept unlimited flights. No tariffs for now, but the visa restrictions remain in force until Colombia follows through.
It's hard not to see this as a massive win for Trump and for America as a whole. He accomplished more in a few minutes, while golfing, than a normal administration would in weeks. Sometimes you can just do stuff.
MSN reported it like this: Donald Trump starts massive diplomatic crisis with Colombia while playing round of golf.
Was there ever any non-fake disagreement between Colombia and the US here?
Per centrist Twitter, deportation flights to Colombia had been running smoothly in civilian planes, Trump switched to using military planes without asking permission, Colombia turned the planes round due to lack of permission, Trump asked for permission (impolitely), Trump got permission, and everything will continue in an orderly way, apart for both sides spending the length of a round of golf trolling each other on social media.
Whether this is a win for America depends on whether you think being gratuitously boorish when you can get away with it is good diplomacy (because it makes you look tough and dangerous) or bad diplomacy (because it makes you look like a boor). This is a point of genuine partisan disagreement in 21st century America.
Maybe. I'm skeptical of that framing.
For one, how many planes have arrived since Trump took office? Presumably this was the first batch. Colombia might have been okay taking a plane every once in a while. Will they be okay taking 100x as many planes? These will be just the first of many, many flights.
And, of course, the correct response to rude behavior from an ally (sending the military planes, although I haven't verified this was actually abnormal) would be to accept the planes and politely ask for clarification. It would not be to make the leader of the free world lose face.
The bigger issue, of course, is the message this sends to Mexico and other countries that would refuse to take back their own citizens. Trump will immediately escalate and win. Despite what many people on this forum claimed, he is serious about mass deporting hundreds of thousands of violent criminals.
It's not a winning issue for the Dems either. Wait, you are upset that a country doesn't want to take back its own citizens? You are upset that violent felons can't stay in the US? They will just keep losing if they make this an issue even if they say its really about breaches of diplomatic etiquette or whatever.
The whole issue is dumb because they’re only deporting Colombians on these flights, who make up only a tiny percentage of illegal migrants to the US. The big issue is Colombia as a transit hub for people from countless other countries, and those people aren’t being ‘returned’ to Colombia, or anywhere else, any time soon.
It is?
If you intend to get to the US overland from South America, you pretty much have to go through Columbia.
Are there significant land migratory flows to the US from anywhere in South America but Colombia and Venezuela?
Haitians and eastern hemisphere types seem to like flying into Ecuador to walk to the border for some reason.
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