DUMB AND COKE

Trump’s BS About Major Failure Exposed in Damning Leak

The president says his administration has stopped “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea.” His drug enforcement agents say otherwise.

Donald Trump’s own officials just torpedoed his statistically astounding claims of having prevented almost all drugs coming into the United States by sea.

The 80-year-old president trumpeted during a speech in Georgia on Wednesday that, thanks to his administration’s efforts, “drugs coming in by ocean, sea, by water, was cut 97 percent.” That’s only a slight decline on the figure he put in an April Truth Social post, writing that “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!”

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Both numbers are, in any case, almost certainly not true—and his own enforcement agents have brought receipts.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump’s ongoing air strikes against alleged narcotrafficking vessels in the Caribbean, which legal experts warn may represent violations of international law, haven’t put a dent in the cocaine trade. The newspaper cites “a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a closed-door congressional briefing, and interviews with current and former U.S. and foreign officials.”

Those sources told the Post that if anything, the president’s ongoing military campaign in the region is only “prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods.”

The DEA’s own analysts, in a copy of their report obtained by the newspaper, found that both the supply and price of cocaine have remained relatively unchanged. Smugglers have simply pivoted to using bigger vessels and steering clear of international waters. Pentagon officials reportedly echoed that assessment when briefing lawmakers last month, explaining that strikes at sea hadn’t reduced the purity of cocaine being pulled off the street.

Compensating for any downturn in naval trafficking has been an increased use of planes, according to the Post. Many of those flights take off near the border between Colombia and Venezuela, heading east before turning north to avoid the stretch of water where the U.S. has focused most of its attacks.

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“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,” as one DEA agent put it to the Post. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.” Another noted that “smugglers have adapted to the intensified pressure,” and that “price and availability have not been noticeably affected” as a result.

The Daily Beast contacted the White House, the Pentagon, and the DEA for comment on this story. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told the Post that “the measures have not only eliminated narcoterrorists themselves, but also discouraged bad actors from trying to smuggle drugs into our country should they meet the same deadly fate.”

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She added that “President Trump is using every tool at his disposal to save lives from the scourge of illicit narcotics, and any suggestion that these efforts have not been effective is laughable.”

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell also defended Operation Southern Spear, as Trump’s campaign in the Caribbean is known, in comments to the newspaper. He said that the campaign is doing “exactly what it was designed to do: detect, disrupt and dismantle designated terrorist organizations and the networks they rely on to traffic narcotics, generate illicit revenue, and threaten the security of the United States and the Western Hemisphere.”

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