President Donald Trump has justified targeting an alleged Venezuelan drug boat by wildly claiming that nearly the entire U.S. population died from overdoses last year.
Reporters asked the 79-year-old Trump to respond to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s claim that the U.S. killing of 11 suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea was “illegal,” and whether he was concerned Venezuela would retaliate.
“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,” Trump said.
For Trump’s claim to be accurate, it would mean nearly 90 percent of the current U.S. population of about 340 million died from drug overdoses last year.
Official figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show Trump’s estimate was off by around 299,925,000. In the 12 months ending March 2025, there were nearly 75,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S., down from highs of around 111,000 recorded two years earlier.
Even giving Trump the benefit of the doubt by suggesting he meant worldwide deaths, the president’s 300 million figure is still way off. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in June 2024 that drug use accounted for 600,000 deaths globally.
Trump, who is well known for making misleading or exaggerated claims on easily fact-checked topics such as crowd sizes, faced mockery for his latest gaffe.
Ben Miselas, co-founder of the liberal news outlet MeidasTouch, jested while sharing a clip of his comments, “He’s wrong. It’s a billion gazillion people.”
California congressional hopeful Eric Garcia posted on X, “Almost the entire U.S. population died from drugs last year!!!! Someone who loves this man needs to get him the help he needs.”
Conservative lawyer and commentator George Conway added: “The great thing about Labor Day weekend when we didn’t hear from him is we had a pleasant respite from hearing him say idiotic things.”
This is not the first time Trump has drastically inflated the number of U.S. drug deaths. While announcing plans to rename the Department of Defense to the “Department of War,” he openly dismissed official statistics and just invented his own.
“We don’t want drugs killing our people. I believe we lost 300,000. They always say 95, 100,000. I believe they’ve been saying that for 20 years. I believe we lost 300,000 people last year,” Trump said on Sept. 5.
He also falsely claimed 300,000 Americans died from overdoses last year during the 2024 campaign and again in January while signing an executive order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
The post Trump, 79, Says Nearly All Americans Have Died From Drugs in Bonkers Claim appeared first on The Daily Beast.
