Bluffing or Backing It Up
Regardless of where you call on the political spectrum, perhaps no story from the past week better demonstrates that Trump 2.0 is a very different presidency from the Biden four years…and for that matter, from Trump 1.0.
The nation of Colombia agrees to take back its citizens who are detained for being in this country illegally. Then when the planes try to land there, they are blocked by the Colombian government.
President Trump is told about it while spending an afternoon on the golf course. So he puts the cart in park and issues a number of directives against Colombia—cancellation of diplomatic visas, imposition of 25 percent tariffs on all Colombian products from coffee to cut flowers, and so on.
Before Americans went to bed that same night, Colombia reversed course and even offered to send its own planes to get its citizens, to save the U.S. the expense. The government caved on every one of Trump’s demands. And when the President sent a social media post on the topic, the Colombian government reposted it to show it agreed.
That’s not only stealing someone’s lunch money—that’s giving them a wedgie on the way out.
Obviously not all such exchanges between the U.S. and other nations will be as smooth. But if anyone still doubted the fact that this Administration meant what it said, and expected folks to live up to their agreements—doubt no longer.
The President probably chipped in from a sand trip to finish the round, too. And again, all in week one.