Last week there was a social media battle between President Donald Trump and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia. Colombia, which has never had a problem accepting deportation flights, did not like the optics of Colombian citizens disembarking in handcuffs. Petro turned away the American military plane, and Trump immediately threatened sanctions and tariffs.
Petro then counter-threatened tariffs on American goods and pointed out that if he were to deport the over 15,000 Americans living illegally in Colombia, he would not use handcuffs or treat them with such indignity.
Trump’s planes did not hold violent criminals, but people whose only crime was illegally crossing the U.S. border or asking for asylum. There was no need to deplane them with their hands bound.
Both sides knew that a schism between the U.S. and Colombia, our best ally in South America, benefitted no one. Roughly 34% of Colombian exports go to the U.S., including coal and petroleum. Colombia is also the second largest buyer of U.S. corn and a crucial provider of flowers and coffee.
Within hours, everyone stood down and both sides claimed victory. Colombian newspapers, depending on their political leanings, praised their president for standing up to the U.S., chastised him for caving into American pressure or worried he had endangered a long-standing allyship. The U.S. media mostly ran with Trump’s version, parroting his line that Colombia “folded like a cheap suit.”
Many pundits pointed out that Colombia did not actually lose. The photographs on Instagram showed the deportees arriving on Colombian soil on a Colombian airplane, without handcuffs, and being treated with what the Colombian president called “deserved dignity.”
Tryna play it coy, tryna make it disappear
My father often points out that there’s no way to defend yourself against a liar. Against a thief? You can safeguard your belongings. Against a violent person? You can keep your distance. But a liar? You can’t escape a lie.
Maybe Trump won in his diplomatic stance against Colombia (which he cringe-inducingly spelled “Columbia,” like the university). But with his administration, I cannot tell truth from lies.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has a theory about the administration’s mendacity. As he said in a press conference after the federal government turned off access to Medicaid for half a day, and then claimed it was a glitch, “The White House is either lying to us or they’re critically incompetent.”
As if to prove it’s both, a few days ago, the president declared on live television that $50 million went to condoms in Gaza, Palestine, an egregious waste emblematic of the previous administration’s failures. The truth? That money was for reproductive health projects, including STD prevention, in Gaza Province, Mozambique.
The Trump Administration has yet to issue a correction. Where are the fact-checkers in his office? Where are the people who know the difference between Palestine and Mozambique? Does anyone there care what’s true?
There’s nothing subtle here
I’m not sure who actually won the Colombia-U.S. Tweet-Off of January 2025. Some will see the detainees getting off the plane as evil-doers deserving of handcuffs. Some will see them as human beings worthy of dignity, who, while breaking the letter of law, acted like all humans would when faced with the same circumstances.
Those are differences of opinion, accepting the basic facts and interpreting them in different ways. Both are trying to tell the truth.
A president who says he is not targeting Latinos who are here legally, but enables ICE to pick up a Puerto Rican family guilty of speaking Spanish in public, is not telling the truth. One who claims DEI caused a horrific airplane tragedy, a week after bragging about restoring “excellence and safety within the Federal Aviation Administration” by reducing air traffic controllers, is not telling the truth.
Who does tell the truth? Filters and manipulation have even made it impossible to trust our own eyes.
In the absence of that trust, we all tend to believe what we want to believe. My parents, who vehemently dislike Petro, think he lost. One of my good friends in Colombia, quite leftist, thinks his president scored a righteous victory.
People are right not to trust everyone in the media and all the experts. But we should trust the press and experts as a whole. If you only listen to one side of the story, you’ll never have the complete picture. Listening widely gives you a better chance of seeing the whole truth.
Listen widely
Our president does not listen widely. That’s one of the great dangers of his firing of federal employees with institutional knowledge who try to do what’s best, not what’s politically best for the party in power. There’s a reason they swear an oath to the Constitution and not the president.
I do not want an ignorant America. I want a strong nation, able to confront the truth — even if we lose a small dispute with Colombia.
We’re in a wild time right now, which makes it more important to listen in a way Trump does not. Until we can trust public discourse again, everything will be chaotic, everything will be overwhelming — and we won’t even know how to talk about what’s happening.
Which is, perhaps, precisely what the Trump Administration wants. Especially when they’re critically incompetent.
Adriana E. Ramírez’s previous column was “We must enjoy the taste of failure.”
First Published: February 1, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
