Colombian President Gustavo Petro meets with President Trump during an official meeting at the Oval Office Tuesday.
(Colombian Presidency Press Office / Anadolu via Getty Images)
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Kate LinthicumStaff Writer
Feb. 3, 2026
3:17 PM PT
4 min
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Colombian President Gustavo Petro and President Trump, who recently traded harsh insults, held a White House meeting that both called productive and friendly.
The gathering represents a dramatic reversal after months of escalating tensions, including visa revocations, tariff threats and suspended U.S. aid to Colombia.
President Trump recently called Colombia’s leader, Gustavo Petro, a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
Petro, meanwhile, has labeled Trump a murderer and compared him to Adolf Hitler.
But on Tuesday, the two leaders made nice — mostly — at a closed-door meeting at the White House that both described as productive.
Trump described the two-hour-long conversation, which touched on energy, Venezuela and bilateral efforts to combat drug trafficking, as “fantastic.”
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Petro, in turn, called the confab “very positive” and said it had “optimistic and constructive tone.”
He brought Trump Colombian coffee, and First Lady Melania Trump a gown crafted by indigenous artisans.
Trump gifted him a framed portrait of the two men shaking hands scrawled with the words: “I love Colombia.”
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The meeting did not erase the considerable political differences between Trump, who believes the U.S. should dominate the Western Hemisphere, and Petro, a former left-wing guerrilla who opposed the recent U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Yet it did appeared to ease tensions between Colombia and the United States, longtime allies whose relationship soured over the last year amid public clashes between Trump and Petro.
Relations between the nations grew tense shortly after Trump returned to the White House for a second term.
Petro refused to receive U.S. military flights of deported migrants, relinquishing only after Trump threatened heavy tariffs on imports of Colombian goods.
After Petro gave a speech at the United Nations General Assembly slamming U.S. support for Israel and calling on American soldiers to disobey Trump and “obey the orders of humanity,” the State Department announced it was revoking the visa of Petro and several of his family members.
Last fall, Trump accused Petro of failing to stop cocaine production — and of being a drug trafficker himself.
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Washington removed Colombia’s certification that it is doing enough to eliminate cocaine crops and halted aid to Colombia, which in 2023 surpassed $740 million. The Colombian government recalled its ambassador to the United States.
Tensions peaked after the U.S. bombed Caracas and captured Maduro last month.
Petro said the U.S. had “kidnapped” Maduro, and dared Trump to launch a similar strike in Colombia. “Come get me. I’m waiting for you here,” he said.
Trump did not discard the possibility of a U.S. military operation in Colombia, saying, “It sounds good to me.”
Relations thawed with a Jan. 7 phone call between the leaders, in which they agreed to meet in person. The U.S. granted Petro a temporary visa so that he could visit the White House.
Colombian officials said Petro planned to focus on defending his record in deterring drug trafficking, even though cocaine production is rising in Colombia. Acting Minister of Justice Andrés Idárraga Franco recently said that Petro’s administration has extradited more criminals to the United States than any of his conservative predecessors, including one alleged trafficker who was delivered to U.S. authorities this week.
Reporters are typically allowed into the Oval Office to ask questions of ahead of meetings between Trump and other heads of state, but they were not on Tuesday.
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While Trump praised the meeting as productive, he tempered his praise.
“You know, he and I weren’t exactly the best of friends,” Trump said. “But I wasn’t insulted because I’d never met him. I didn’t know him at all. And we got along very well.”
Speaking to journalists at the Colombian Embassy in Washington after the meeting, Petro mentioned climate change, criticized the U.S. operation in Venezuela and what he described as the “genocide” in Gaza.
He said Trump gave him one of his trademark red ballcaps. He said he took a pen to change Trump’s slogan, adding an “s,” so that it now reads: “Make Americas Great Again.”
Times staffer Ana Ceballos contributed reporting from Washington.
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