After more than 100 days of caution and silence on Donald Trump, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega finally broke his silence. On the eve of May 1, during an International Workers’ Day rally in a public square, the Sandinista leader launched into a tirade against the Republican president.
Ortega’s attack came just hours after the U.S. State Department released a self-congratulatory report marking Trump’s first 100 days in office, which listed Nicaragua’s regime among its “adversaries.”
Until that moment, Ortega’s government had quietly pursued a cooperative stance — receiving planeloads of sports without protest and withdrawing from the South African-led case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide to align with Washington. This week, however, marked a sharp reversal.
Ortega railed against Trump for over half an hour, denouncing the Republican president’s anti-immigration policies, trade tariffs, expansionist ambitions, and authoritarian posturing.
“These are already horrendous crimes — horrendous like holding a two-year-old girl in prison, kidnapped, and attacking her poor mother,” declared the Sandinista leader, referring to a Venezuelan woman who was deported and lost contact with her young daughter in Miami.
As part of his self-congratulatory assessment of his first 100 days, the Trump administration hailed Secretary of State Marco Rubio for executing a “decisive and focused America First foreign.
