LISTEN: President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One, Nov. 30, 2025
Aboard Air Force One on Sunday, President Donald Trump delivered his clearest warning yet that the United States will treat maritime drug-smuggling operations as mass-casualty threats, citing the staggering death toll tied directly to fentanyl trafficking.
“Each boat is responsible for the death of 25,000 Americans,” Trump told reporters. “You can see the drugs in the boats. They’re doing an amazing job, and the numbers are shocking.”
The remark underscored a core theme of Trump’s press conference: the fentanyl catastrophe is no longer a border issue—it is a national-security emergency.
According to CDC data, synthetics like fentanyl now kill more Americans annually than the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars combined.
Trump framed every seized vessel not as a routine interdiction, but as a life-and-death intervention preventing tens of thousands of casualties.
Trump emphasized that maritime trafficking has plummeted since the administration’s new naval directives went into effect.
“The amount of drugs coming into our country by sea is infinitesimal compared to what it was just a few months ago,” he said.
While he did not detail operational movements, he praised military and Coast Guard teams executing precision strikes on cartel boats responsible for moving the chemicals that become fentanyl in U.S. cities.
WATCH: Previously Unreleased Footage of U.S. Coast Guard Intercepting Drug Smugglers off Venezuela
Democrats have sharply criticized Trump’s approach, particularly after rumors circulated about secondary strikes in a recent operation.
Trump dismissed the controversy, saying Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “did not say that, and I believe that.”
He added that a lethal first strike on a drug-running vessel is “fine” because of the scale of American deaths tied to each shipment.
“Very little concern,” Trump said when asked if he had any reservations. “Look at the numbers.”
Trump used the fentanyl statistics to justify additional immigration restrictions, arguing that several countries with collapsed governments were contributing to the crisis.
“We don’t want those people,” he said, referring to migrants coming from nations with strong cartel presence or no functioning law-enforcement structures.
He tied the asylum pause directly to national security, saying, “Many of them are no good, and they shouldn’t be in our country.”
While reporters pressed him on Venezuela defense controversies, Trump repeatedly returned to the American death toll—27,000 killed in the past month alone from conflicts abroad, but more than 75,000 killed annually from fentanyl at home.
He made clear that drug networks moving products into the United States would be treated with zero tolerance.
Trump closed with a blunt reminder of the stakes: “Think of this—each boat, on average, is responsible for the death of 25,000 Americans.”
The administration is signaling that the era of treating drug trafficking as a law-enforcement issue is over.
It is now a wartime footing aimed at stopping the deadliest killer in modern American history.
Watch additional reporting on Venezuela here:
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