The Trump administration intervened to prevent an upcoming meeting between the president’s favorite Democrat and one of his harshest global critics.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was scheduled to meet with Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Friday, but officials from the South American country called off the meeting after U.S. diplomats contacted Colombia’s foreign ministry, according to The New York Times.
U.S. State Department officials warned that a meeting between the two democratic socialist leaders was unacceptable given the visa restrictions imposed on Petro, The Washington Post first reported, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.
Petro, 66, had his visa revoked over his public comments in September criticizing U.S. support of Israel and asking soldiers to disobey presidential orders.
“I ask all the soldiers of the army of the U.S. not to point their rifles at humanity,” the Colombian leader said at the time. “Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity.”
A State Department official told the Post that “a visa is a privilege, not a right.”
“Any individual’s U.S. visa is at risk of revocation if they visit America and outrageously implore U.S. soldiers to disobey orders of the duly elected president of the United States,” the official told the newspaper.
Mamdani, 34, was set to speak with the fellow leftist leader about democracy in the Americas as part of the Colombian president’s agenda while he attended events at the United Nations in Manhattan.
The two also planned to have a private bilateral meeting, a person with knowledge of the planning told the Post.
Despite his visa restrictions, Colombia’s role as the rotating president of the U.N. Security Council in June allows Petro to travel to the U.N. in New York City to fulfill his nation’s responsibilities to the international governing body.
Neither Mamdani’s office nor the State Department immediately returned the Daily Beast’s requests for comment on the canceled meeting.
Mamdani charmed the 79-year-old president’s socks off in a meeting at the Oval Office in November, which endeared the young populist to Trump despite his refusal to deny his labeling of the president as a “fascist.”
Since then, Trump has had a soft spot for the democratic socialist he once railed against as a “lunatic,” telling him he was “even better looking in person than you are on TV,” and affirming to conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg last month that “he’s a nice guy.”
Trump and Mamdani were both present at Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday at Madison Square Garden but did not spend time together.
The president was greeted by a wave of boos when he appeared on the Jumbotron, and the New York Knicks lost their first game of the series to the San Antonio Spurs. The Knicks pulled off the largest comeback win in NBA Finals history in Wednesday’s Game 4, for which Trump was not present.
