We Are Entering a New Age of American Supremacy

It was too short for a South American telenovela, but just long enough for a comic operetta of the Belle Époque.

Last Sunday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a 64-year old former Marxist guerrilla fighter whom recent reports have tied romantically to a man who masquerades as a woman and whose domestic disapproval rating has exceeded 60%, reversed his earlier agreement to allow Colombian illegal aliens who have committed crimes and been detained in the United States to be returned to his country on U.S. military aircraft.

Mrs. Petro has yet to offer her perspective on these unconventional developments, but newly reinaugurated President Donald J. Trump was unamused.

While golfing, the 45th and 47th president formulated an immediate response, announcing that Colombia would face an "emergency" 25% tariff on all exports to the United States, rising to 50% within a week.

The U.S. diplomatic mission in Colombia would stop issuing visas for travel to the United States.

Visas already granted to Petro's officials, party members, supporters, and their families would be canceled. Customs and immigration inspections on arrivals from Colombia would be increased.

The left promptly lost it, solemnly claiming that Trump's punitive economic measures would harm U.S. consumers, who buy from Colombia most of their cut flowers and 17% of their coffee — cheap commodities that apparently mean more to them than the security of their country's borders and the safety of its citizens from foreign criminals illegally present within them.

Quivering members of Washington's former foreign policy establishment brooded about an unnecessary trade war, a further loss of confidence in America across the developing world, supposed benefits accruing to a less insistent China, and other petty concerns that one might expect from people whose highest ambition in life is to serve a weak-kneed globalist establishment in the eunuch's role of polite and orderly caretakers of America's decline.

Within an hour, however, Petro caved, not only returning to his original agreement to receive returned citizens of his country who have committed crimes in ours, but even offering to fly the illegal aliens home on his presidential plane.

Later in the day, possibly hoping to keep his plane free for jaunts with his transgendered paramour, he formally confirmed that U.S. military flights could repatriate the illegal aliens per his original agreement.

In a pathetic attempt to save face, Petro authored a bitter, rambling, and bizarrely emotional X post in which he called President Trump a "white slaver," suggested that Trump wants to overthrow and murder him, and promised fierce resistance to infringements on what he called the "freedom" of Colombia under his rule, which Transparency International ranks 87th in the world for "integrity." Good luck with that, Señor Presidente.

Trump took no notice of Petro's childish outburst, but declared that the proposed tariffs would be suspended pending Colombia's fulfillment of the renewed agreement and that the other restrictions would be lifted pending active compliance by Petro's government. By nightfall, the crisis was resolved and the world moved on to other bold Trumpian moves.

Shorn of its eccentricities — tinpot Latin American ruler, genderbending lover, paranoid hysterics, Asian intrigue, and even a prospective bataille des fleurs — the Petro affair reveals a time-tested truth: power politics works.

Trump, unlike his mentally deficient predecessor and that unfortunate man's weak-willed designated successor, had the courage and resolve to use it — not recklessly to antagonize the world for no reason, but with principle to sustain an agreement made in good faith that the other party violated baselessly and arbitrary on grounds.

Any responsible CEO — indeed, any statesman worthy of respect — would have done the same. The international left and its craven sympathizers within our walls might not like it, but make no mistake: America is back and the illegals are going home.

Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University. Read more — Here.