Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced during a live cabinet meeting that he survived an assassination attempt on Monday night after his helicopter was unable to land along the country's Caribbean coast. The aircraft diverted to open sea, where it remained for four hours before landing at an unplanned location.
Petro told his cabinet that unnamed individuals "were going to shoot" at the helicopter, forcing the diversion.
"We headed out to open sea for four hours and I arrived somewhere we weren't supposed to go, escaping from being killed."
No independent corroboration of the threat has been cited. No group or individual has been identified as responsible. The entire characterization of the incident as an assassination attempt rests on Petro's word alone.
As reported by the Daily Caller, this is not the first time Colombia's first left-wing president has claimed someone is trying to kill him — and it's not the second time either.
The list is growing:
Each claim arrives with dramatic language and zero independent verification. Each one positions Petro as the embattled hero of his own narrative — the lonely leftist standing against dark, unnamed forces.
Left-wing leaders in Latin America have long understood the political currency of victimhood. An assassination claim — whether substantiated or not — reframes every policy failure as evidence of persecution. It turns critics into suspected conspirators. It transforms incompetence into martyrdom.
Petro's rhetoric follows a well-worn script. Drug traffickers are buying missiles. Rebel commanders dispatching snipers. Shadowy gunmen wait along the coastline. The threats are always vivid, always existential, and always conveniently unverifiable.
None of this means the threats aren't real. Colombia has a brutal history of political violence. Liberal politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was shot and killed in 1948, and the country's decades-long conflict with narco-traffickers and guerrilla groups has claimed countless lives. Political assassination is not abstract in Colombia — it is a scar that runs through the national memory.
But that history cuts both ways. It provides genuine cause for concern — and it provides cover for a leader who benefits politically from being perceived as a target.
Credibility is a depletable resource. When a head of state claims a missile threat one year, a sniper plot the next, and a helicopter ambush the year after that — all without named perpetrators, arrests, or independent confirmation — the reasonable observer starts asking harder questions.
Where is the Colombian military's assessment of the helicopter threat? Who identified the individuals allegedly waiting to shoot? What intelligence led to the decision not to land? Petro offered none of this during his cabinet announcement. He offered a dramatic story and a quote designed for headlines.
And he got them.
Petro's relationship with the United States has been adversarial, to put it mildly. His leftist governance, his posture toward drug policy, and his open clashes with Washington have made him a frequent subject of diplomatic tension. A claim like this — broadcast during a live cabinet meeting, guaranteed to generate international coverage — lands differently when you understand the political context surrounding it.
An assassination attempt, if real, demands international sympathy and domestic solidarity. It shields a leader from criticism. It makes opposition uncomfortable. It changes the subject.
If fabricated or exaggerated, it does all the same things — until someone calls the bluff.
Colombia deserves a president whose security concerns are taken seriously. That requires a president whose claims can be taken seriously. Four dramatic, uncorroborated threats in four years make that harder with each telling.
At some point, the helicopter has to land — and the evidence has to be on the ground when it does.