Two weeks after the administration killed suspected drug dealers in international waters, the president tried to defend the strike. It didn’t go well.
Why Trump’s math fail on the deadly boat strike was more than just an embarrassing flub www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
— @jimrissmiller.bsky.social 2025-09-15T20:13:26.870Z
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-math-fail-deadly-boat-strike-was-just-embarrassing-flub-rcna231395
This came to mind over the weekend because Bondi apparently isn’t the only one who’s struggling with drug-related math. HuffPost reported:
President Donald Trump on Sunday tried to justify the fatal U.S. strike on a Venezuelan boat by claiming that 300 million people, presumably Americans, died from drugs last year. He was off by almost 300 million.
During a brief Q&A, a reporter noted that the president of Venezuela has argued that the U.S. military strike on a Venezuelan boat was “illegal.” Trump replied,
“What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat, and the drugs that are being sent into our country, and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs. That’s what’s illegal.”
Reporter: The president of Venezuela called the strike on the boat illegal
Trump: What’s illegal is the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs
— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2025-09-15T01:00:10.373Z
So, a few things.
First, the actual number of people who died in the U.S. from drug overdoses last year was roughly 75,000. That total is a tragedy, and officials have a responsibility to take steps to reduce avoidable fatalities — but the gap between 75,000 and 300 million is enormous.
Second, I realize that Trump’s approach to statistics and arithmetic has been a mess for many years, but it really ought to occur to him that such an exaggeration sounds absurd, since illicit drugs did not kill nearly 90% of the U.S. population in 2024. (Bill Lueders recently wrote for The Bulwark, “Whatever the claim, the president has the numbers to prove it, even if he has to make them up.”).....
Complicating matters, The New York Times reported that the boat in question
“had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started.” And while the reporting hasn’t been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, that raises the possibility that U.S. officials, acting on the president’s order, launched a deadly military strike against civilians who were retreating — making it that much more difficult to characterize the boat as an imminent threat.
As Senate Democrats press the White House for answers, Trump and his team have had two weeks to come up with some sensible answers. So far, they don’t appear to have come up with anything but a preposterous statistic.
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