Far-left President of Colombia Gustavo Petro on Wednesday criticized Hispanic Americans who voted for President-elect Donald Trump, claiming that some migrants, once they obtain a legal residence in the United States, “kick the ladder” so that others cannot reach the same position.
Tuesday’s presidential election saw Trump receive record-breaking amounts of Hispanic support for the Republican Party. Initial exit polls showed that Trump received 45 percent of the nationwide Hispanic vote while, in states such as Michigan, the number spiked to upwards of 60 percent Hispanic support.
Petro, a former member of the Marxist M19 terrorist guerrilla, has issued numerous jaw-dropping assertions about and migrant-related demands to the United States over the course of his two years as Colombia’s first leftist president in history.
Some of his wildest past statements on migration include demanding the United States grant Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to Colombian nationals ahead of a purported climate change-caused catastrophe in 2022 and predicting that climate change would cause an exodus of “billions” of migrants during his doomsday-riddled 2023 speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
On Wednesday evening, and within the context of the United States’ 2024 presidential election, Petro criticized Hispanic migrants supportive of President-elect Trump.
The Colombian president shared a video on his Twitter account from a reporter from the Chilean newspaper Meganoticias who interviewed a Hispanic Trump supporter in New York on Election Day. In the video, the Hispanic Trump supporter asserted that the agenda of the now-outgoing Biden-Harris administration is “to destroy the country.”
The man, who expressed to not believe in the good intentions of the outgoing administration, justified his answer in the “permissiveness” of allowing “any kind of people from any part of the world.”
“That does not look good,” the man stressed. The reporter followed by asking the man for his nationality, to which he responded he was Peruvian.
The video shared by Petro appears to mock the Peruvian man for supporting Trump by ending with a snippet of the credits theme of American television comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm — used as an outro in memes depicting awkward, uncomfortable, or unexpected moments.
“This is called the ladder theory, if you make a profit, you pull the ladder so that people like you don’t climb it,” Petro’s message read.
Petro’s criticism of Hispanic Trump supporters comes days after the Colombian far-left President claimed that the United States allegedly engages in “ethnic discrimination” against illegal migrants. He also accused the U.S. of causing Venezuela’s unprecedented migrant crisis through a purported “blockade” of the country — failing to mention that in reality, it is the result of the collapse of socialism in Venezuela and the continued human rights violations committed by the authoritarian regime against its own people.
Petro publicly “congratulated” Trump for his electoral victory on Wednesday on Twitter — availing himself of the opportunity to criticize Trump’s plan to close the U.S. southern border.
“The American people have spoken and they are respected. Congratulations to Trump on his win. The north/south dialogue continues and the reality of climate collapse will make it revolve around its solution,” Petro said.
“The only way to seal the borders is with prosperity for the peoples of the south and an end to the blockades. The progressive possibility in the US could not applaud the genocide in Gaza,” he continued.
During the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, President-elect Trump claimed that Biden had the support of Gustavo Petro, whom he described as a “loser.”
Petro, who at the time served as a member of the Colombian Senate, appeared to have been greatly offended by Trump’s statements, and waited for the results of the 2020 election to respond to Trump by calling him a “loser.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
