Does he actually believe it, or is he just bullshitting?

Donald Trump has said on multiple occasions that each (alleged) drug smuggling boat destroyed off the coast of Venezuela saves 25,000 American lives. Does he really believe that, or is he just bullshitting? And which—the believing or the bullshitting—would be worse?

As of early December, the U.S. has destroyed around 22 such boats, killing over 80 persons. Do the math: 22 x 25,000 = 550,000 lives saved.

Official estimates put the number of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. at around 105,000 (actually now a lot less) annually. So Trump's 3-month boat-destroying campaign has already saved five times as many lives—over half a million—as are lost to drug overdoses in a year.

Which is a truly impressive accomplishment.

The majority of U.S. drug deaths are caused by fentanyl overdose. Trump himself has long decried the problem of illicit fentanyl. He even used the minuscule amounts coming into the country from Canada as a nonsensical excuse for tariffs on that country. Most fentanyl entering the U.S. is produced in Mexico from chemical precursors produced in Asia, and then smuggled across the southern border.

Venezuela is not a fentanyl-producing or fentanyl-trafficking country. It is a transit country for, but not a primary producer of, cocaine. Most cocaine is produced in Columbia, an ostensible sometimes ally of the U.S. Some is also produced in Peru and Bolivia. Because of its geographic location, Venezuela is well positioned to export cocaine out of South America. But most of the cocaine exported through Venezuela to the Caribbean route is destined for Europe, not the U.S. Cocaine bound for the U.S. more commonly travels via Pacific/Eastern Pacific and Central American routes that bypass Venezuela.

To recap, the claim of 25,000 lives saved is on its face absurd; the drug possibly (no evidence has ever been produced) being interdicted, cocaine, isn't the one that causes most U.S. deaths; and Venezuela and the Caribbean aren't the transit routes for U.S. bound cocaine but rather for Europe bound cocaine.

So I ask again: Does Trump really believe his 25,000 lives saved claim, or is the president of the United States just bullshitting? And again, which would be worse?

The incongruities abound, and and go beyond what I've already laid out. If Trump is concerned about cocaine, then his primary focus should be Columbia, not Venezuela. The U.S. has had an often-strained relationship with Columbia. In September, the U.S. decertified the country as a cooperating partner in counter-narcotics efforts.

If instead Trump is primarily concerned about fentanyl, as he has said many times in the past, and long before he became fixated on Venezuela, then his efforts should be directed at Mexico. Obviously there are difficulties and delicacies with this, but that is nevertheless the reality.

Other incongruities: You don't hear so much about the southern border wall as you used to, but it's worth mentioning while we're on the subject of drug smuggling that the long-held claims that the border wall would impede the flow of illicit drugs into the U.S. is also patently false. Most of the drugs being smuggled across the southern border are hidden in vehicles passing through legal ports of entry. And most of that smuggling activity is conducted by U.S. citizens who go back and forth across the border frequently, and probably just want to make some extra money. So the drug/border wall connection was always bogus. I mention this to demonstrate how messed up our grasp of reality tends to be, and how we can't have intelligent policy conversations because many of us, including our president and politicians, don't know what's real.

One more complaint. The Trump administration refers to the Venezuelan drug runners as narco-terrorists. They are no such thing. Misappropriation of the word "terrorist" (which I've written about previously) is an egregious tendency of certain governments, usually in order to justify their own autocratic proclivities and actions. Simply put, terrorists want to terrorize, such as with attacks on civilians, suicide bombings, and flying airplanes into buildings. They terrorize with political intent, such as to compel attention to their cause, or to demand remedy of an injustice, or to fight an oppressor. Drug cartels, by contrast, are operating businesses, albeit illegal ones that causes much harm and suffering. Nonetheless, their intent is not to terrorize the populace, but rather to make money. The distinction is crucial. Not making it is another way we loosen our grip on reality, and poison the national polity.

Back to bullshitting. We ought to be able to expect that our president, at least, knows what's real, and accurately conveys that reality to the American people. It often appears that Trump genuinely does not, or at least doesn't care. The not caring is a definition of bullshitting, where the intention is less to knowingly lie (although Trump does plenty of that) than to assert whatever nonsense pops into his head, without any grasp of or concern about the underlying facts, whatever they may be. 

Trump has had an extraordinarily long bullshitting career, going back decades. That propensity has been plainly obvious to any intelligent observer. And yet he twice won election to the presidency. That says a lot about us. And so Americans gave gotten what they deserve, with dismal results. This is no way to make a country great, or even to maintain a semblance of past greatness.

 Copyright (C) 2025 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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