AG Pam Bondi Makes Absurd Announcement in Cabinet Meeting Claiming Trump Saved Over 75% of Americans from Dying

Attorney General Pam Bondi made a mathematically questionable claim during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, telling gathered reporters and the television audience that President Donald Trump deserved credit for saving “258 million lives.”

Trump gathered his Cabinet at the White House Wednesday afternoon for what has become a predictable round of compliments dished out from his appointees, who declare that their agencies have accomplished great things at the president’s direction.

When it was Bondi’s turn, she began by declaring, “Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you.”

“Your directive to me was simple: make America safe,” Bondi continued, before discussing the work of agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency:

I was at DEA yesterday, they said to me, “you — Donald Trump — have taken the handcuffs off of DEA agents,” and as a result of — since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl, since you’ve been, your last 100 days — which saved — are you ready for this, media? — 258 million lives.

Kids are dying everyday because they are taking this junk laced with something else — they don’t know what they are taking, they think they’re buying a Tylenol or an Adderall or a Xanax, and it’s laced with fentanyl and they are dropping dead. And no longer, because of you, what you’ve done.

After discussing other topics including gun seizures, vandalism targeting Teslas, the arson at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, and terrorism, Bondi wrapped up her presentation.

“I could go on,” she said. “We’re doing everything to keep America safe at your direction. Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Thank you, really doing a great job,” replied Trump. “Thank you very much.”

The total population of the United States of America, according to the most recent Census in 2020, was 331,449,281. The Census Bureau’s estimated population for 2024 was 340,110,988. Allowing the attorney general the larger, more recent number, saving “258 million lives” would mean Trump saved 75.86% of the total U.S. population from death.

Bondi did not explain how she calculated her 258 million figure. The DEA’s “Facts About Fentanyl” website, which states that one kilogram — the quantity by which drug traffickers typically distribute fentanyl — “has the potential to kill 500,000 people,” is often cited by federal officials.

This methodology has been criticized as greatly exaggerating the risk, though, in part because of the highly variable body size and drug tolerance between different people — habitual drug users usually have much higher tolerance levels than non-users — and for assuming no one receives any medical interventions.

For the sake of argument, if we use the DEA’s numbers, assuming Bondi is correct that the DEA seized “3,400 kilograms” of fentanyl, and assuming what was seized was in fact pure fentanyl, that would be enough to potentially end 1.7 billion lives, which is roughly the entire combined population of the U.S. and China.

That is completely nonsensical.

Even assuming, arguendo, a drug trafficker imported 1 million tons of fentanyl, there is no way every man, woman, and child in the U.S. would take a dose. Bondi’s bold declaration is the logical equivalent of saying if everyone in the U.S. was deprived of oxygen, that would cause over 300 million deaths; technically an accurate statement but utterly useless for any real purposes.

It should perhaps be noted that even 258 million is far, far, far in excess of the actual number of annual fentanyl deaths in the U.S.

In 2017, Trump declared the opioid crisis to be a public health emergency, and President Joe Biden’s administration retained that designation. The good news is the number of drug overdose deaths has been decreasing in recent years. The total number of U.S. deaths from fentanyl overdoses has always been fewer than 100,000, even as the use of that drug has spiked.

Graphic via National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse.

According to the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System, the total number of Americans who died from all drug overdoses from October 2023 to September 2024 (the annual time period the CDC uses to track its data) was 87,000, which was a decrease from the prior year’s 114,00 drug overdose deaths.

The DEA estimates that about 70% of U.S. drug overdoses are “attributed to opioids such as fentanyl.” For example, in 2022, the most recent year for which the NIH has provided drug overdose statistics broken down by type of drug, there were 107,941 overdose deaths total and 73,838 deaths “involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl),” or 68%.

Moreover, critics of government drug policies have argued that cracking down on prescription opioids backfires by both making it harder for patients to properly treat their pain and addicts misusing the drugs to obtain the legitimate drugs, driving them to seek out illegal street drugs — which could potentially be laced with fentanyl or other dangerous additives. Some argue that even the crackdown on fentanyl posts an increased risk of drug overdoses because of pushing drug buyers to even less trustworthy illegal drug sources after a dealer they knew gets arrested.

There are some studies showing that distribution of opioid antagonist naloxone (commonly referred to by its brand name, Narcan) and fentanyl testing strips have played a role in helping reduce drug overdose deaths. Public health agencies at both the state and federal level have stepped up investments in obtaining and distributing Narcan, and educating people on its use and effectiveness, and it does seem to be having a positive effect. But cuts proposed by both Elon Musk’s DOGE and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s draft budget for his agency would eliminate many of those programs, reversing that progress.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.