President Trump on Wednesday claimed that for every boat the US bombs in the waters of Latin America, 25,000 American lives are saved, a blatant lie he’s used to justify the US bombing campaign in the region and push toward a regime change war in Venezuela.
“Every boat that we hit kills, think of this, if it gets through, kills 25,000 Americans plus … every time we hit a boat, we save 25,000 American lives,” the president said at the American Business Forum in Miami, Florida.
Trump and his top officials have justified the strikes and the extra-judicial executions at sea by pointing to overdoses in the United States, which, according to CDC data, killed 80,391 Americans in 2024, a decrease of 26.9% from the 110,037 deaths estimated in 2023.
The majority of the overdose deaths, 48,422, were caused by fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. While Trump has previously claimed the strikes are targeting fentanyl, the Pentagon has told Congress that all of the boats it has hit were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Department of War has not provided any evidence, either to the public or to Congress, to back up its claims about what the vessels are carrying.
Another false claim pushed by the Trump administration to justify the bombing campaign is the idea that the boats being targeted in the Caribbean were attempting to bring drugs to the US, but a US official has told Drop Site News that many of the vessels that have been struck “do not even have the requisite gasoline or motor capacity to reach US waters.”
A report from The Washington Post cited officials from the US and other countries who said the route the US was targeting near Venezuela is mainly used to smuggle cocaine and marijuana to Trinidad and Tobago, and from there, cocaine is shipped to Europe and West Africa.
Since the US began the bombing campaign in early September, it has blown up 17 boats, including nine in the Caribbean and eight in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and has killed 66 people. The US has also continued its military buildup in the Caribbean, and according to The New York Times, Trump is considering several options for launching a war with Venezuela.
