‘How TF Is This Guy the President?’: Trump Claims Most of the Country Died from Drug Overdoses Last Year; MAGA’s Defense Has the Internet Howling
President Donald Trump just killed off most of the U.S. population with bizarre comments on Sunday about how many Americans have died of drug overdoses.
Trump was taking questions from reporters at Morristown Airport in New Jersey before he heads off on an overseas trip Tuesday for a state visit to the United Kingdom.
While he was bragging about the historic nature of his trip to the U.K. and how the British royals are opening Windsor Castle for Trump’s state dinner, “It’s going to be exciting,” he inadvertently bungled the answer to a question about his administration blowing up boats off the coast of Venezuela.
A reporter told Trump, “Venezuela called the strike on the boat illegal.” Then, Trump was asked if he was concerned the attacks on Venezuelan boats could escalate.
Trump tried to justify the administration’s attacks on the boats, insisting they were trying to bring drugs into the United States.
“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 stated, omitting any explanation of why summary execution in international waters and not interdiction in American waters was the legally permissible response.
The 300 million figure is almost the entire population of the United States, which the U.S. Census Bureau puts at just over 342 million.
In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an estimated 80,391 Americans died in overdose deaths in 2024, a 26.9 percent decrease from the 110,000 estimated deaths in 2023.
However, some viewers argued that Trump did not explicitly say where those people died.
“Might have been talking about the world genius,” one viewer wrote. “Trump did not say 300 Million Americans – nor 300 Million people in the US died of drugs. He said 300 million people. Period. End of sentence. There is enough B.S. that Trump does say that there is no need to make up headlines like this one. There are more than 8.2 Billion people in the world, it is very possible that 300 million people died worldwide due to drug overdoses,” another viewer wrote.
However, according to the World Health Organization, about 600,000 people die annually from drug use worldwide.
This isn’t the first time Trump has made unfounded claims about the number of U.S. drug deaths. Earlier this month, he said he thought 300,000 people had died of drug overdoses in 2024 or “350,000 people died last year from drugs.”
“We know Trump just makes up numbers for the cameras with no facts to back anything up. His recent comment that 300M people die of drug overdoses a year is so ridiculous even grade schoolers can do the math. That’s practically the whole US. World overdoses avg about 600k a year,” X user Bad Linda Robot said.
“How TF this guy is the President of the USA?” another X user asked.
“He’s wrong. It’s a billion gazillion people,” MeidasTouch media co-founder Ben Meiselas jokingly posted in response.
“Maybe it’s actually a gazillion trillion people. Trump’s dementia must be kicking in,” another X user suggested.
“So we’re all dead? That would explain a lot,” this X user wondered.
In justifying the second strike on a Venezuelan vessel on Monday, Trump said observers could see the bags filled with drugs on the boat.
“We knew it before they even left. We knew it before they even left, we knew exactly where that boat, where it came from, where the drugs came from and where it was headed,” the president boasted.
He also claimed the U.S. has actually destroyed three Venezuelan drug boats, although the administration has only confirmed the most recent strike, which killed three people, and another one two weeks ago that killed 11.