WASHINGTON — In Donald Trump’s thoughts, there’s a “massive” quantity of lethal fentanyl pouring into the nation throughout the U.S. northern border with Canada.
In the actual world, precisely 43 kilos of the lethal artificial drug have been seized on the U.S.-Canada border final yr — two one-thousandths of the 21,000 kilos seized on the U.S.-Mexico border.
That disconnect illustrates succinctly the president’s method to each the very actual fentanyl downside and the nation’s commerce relationships with our North American neighbors — an method apparently based mostly on his whims and the political expediency of the second quite than details and a coherent plan.
White Home communications director Steven Cheung wouldn’t say why Trump was equating the fentanyl downside from Canada with the one from Mexico. He as a substitute recommended that any quantity of the drug coming into from a overseas nation was an excessive amount of and would possibly warrant retaliation.
“So you are saying there is an acceptable level of fentanyl?” he mentioned. “Are you saying 40 pounds of fentanyl is acceptable? Because according to the DEA, two milligrams, equivalent to a few grains of salt, can kill someone.”
For months, Trump has been claiming that fentanyl from Canada required the imposition of punitive tariffs — solely to later say that Canada deserved tariffs as a result of it ran a commerce surplus towards the US whereas concurrently suggesting that your entire downside may very well be resolved if it agreed to turn out to be the 51st U.S. state.
This week, Trump backed down from his 25% tariff menace towards each Canada and Mexico for no less than one month with out gaining something. Mexico once more promised to deploy troops to assist forestall unlawful border crossings, because it has repeatedly lately. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised the identical $1.3 billion in border safety enhancements he had already pledged in December, solely this time with the addition of a brand new “fentanyl czar” within the Canadian authorities.
Within the meantime, Trump has completed nothing since taking workplace to push for the fentanyl-detecting tools that had been contained in bipartisan border safety laws that he blocked final summer season.
“He stood in the way of 100 fentanyl detection machines,” mentioned Andrew Bates, a former White Home aide beneath President Joe Biden, referring to the units that the Division of Homeland Safety says are one of the best software for stopping the circulate of the drug.
Andrej Ivanov/Bloomberg through Getty Pictures
At present, solely a small fraction of all automobiles crossing northward into the US from Mexico are scanned as they enter. The overwhelming majority of fentanyl seized on the border is taken from automobiles pushed by Americans at official ports of entry. Had the invoice that Trump blocked final summer season handed — he mentioned he informed his allies in Congress to kill it as a result of it will have helped Democrats beat him in November — the 100 new machines would have dramatically elevated the share of scanned automobiles.
“If he really cared about people being hurt by fentanyl, he wouldn’t have blocked the biggest package of anti-fentanyl trafficking measures in years,” Bates mentioned.
Cheung wouldn’t reply to questions on Trump’s alternative to dam that laws — nor would he reply to a query about Trump’s pardon of convicted drug supplier Ross Ulbricht, given his marketing campaign speeches praising the demise penalty for drug sellers.
Ulbricht created the “Silk Road” website on the so-called darkish internet, which was designed particularly for the sale of unlawful medicine around the globe. Greater than a decade in the past, it was used within the earliest days of the fentanyl epidemic to mail the drug instantly into the nation.
Federal prosecutors confirmed how no less than six Individuals died from an overdose utilizing Silk Highway, with Ulbricht getting a fee from each transaction. He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 2 life phrases plus 40 years.
Trump mentioned he pardoned Ulbricht as a result of he promised pro-drug libertarians he would achieve this in the event that they supported his candidacy. “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me,” Trump wrote in a Jan. 21 social media submit.
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Trump’s “weaponization” declare refers to 2 federal prosecutions towards him: one for his Jan. 6, 2021, coup try, and the opposite for his refusal to show over secret paperwork he took with him to his South Florida nation membership upon leaving the White Home in 2021. Each circumstances have been dismissed after his November election win due to the Division of Justice’s longstanding coverage towards prosecuting a sitting president.
