President Donald Trump signed an executive order to classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction after a racist rant in the Oval Office.
Trump, 79, announced a ceremony to award the Mexican Border Defense Medal to members of the military for their service along the U.S. southern border.
Trump argued that no bomb was doing what fentanyl was doing to Americans.
“There’s no doubt that America’s adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the United States in part because they want to kill Americans,’ Trump said. ”If this were a war, it would be one of the worst wars.”
He said as many as 300,000 people were dying of fentanyl every year. Data shows fentanyl related deaths in the U.S. were down to just over 72,000 in 2023 and continue to decline, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“They’ve destroyed a lot of families,” Trump said. “Because when they lose a child, or even if their child is heavily addicted, you lose that family. The family will never be the same.”
The order directs the administration across federal agencies to take action to “eliminate the threat of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals to the United States.”
“Weapons of mass destruction” refer to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that are designed to cause widespread destruction and death.
Historically, the term has carried significant weight. It was used as justification for the Iraq invasion in 2003, but WMD stockpiles were never found.
China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances being trafficked into the U.S. Trump claimed the U.S. was working with China on the issue before declaring he was classifying it as a “weapon of mass destruction.”
It is a move that some lawmakers have been calling for on Capitol Hill.
“Fentanyl is very bad when you mix it with certain ingredients, but it also is very important for medicine,” Trump claimed during his speech. “It’s not made necessarily for bad.”
The president’s announcement came after he blasted Democrats during his ramble on Monday while attacking immigrants coming into the U.S.
“Remember when the Democrats and others, radical left, used to say that the people they’re allowing into our country, immigrants, are nice people? They’re not violent like our people,” Trump said. “Well, they make our people look like babies.”
He claimed those crossing the border were “some of the most violent criminals anywhere on earth.”
Trump repeated lies that many countries have emptied their jails and “insane asylums” into the U.S. before quickly bringing up the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. He repeated that the U.S. would start hitting them on land as well.
The administration has not provided evidence that at least 22 attacks on alleged drug boats, which have killed more than 80 people, were smuggling drugs.
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