On April 30, 2025, multiple X posts (archived, archived, archived) claimed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that in U.S. President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office, drug enforcement agents seized millions of pills and thousands of kilos of fentanyl – saving "258 million lives" in the process.
The claim also spread to Reddit (archived), Bluesky (archived), TikTok (archived) and Instagram (archived).
These posts correctly attributed the quote to Bondi. During a Cabinet meeting on April 30, 2025, Bondi claimed the Department of Justice under Trump had seized more than 22 million pills and 3,400 kilos of fentanyl, which she said had saved more than 258 million lives.
Her full comments during the Cabinet meeting were as follows:
Since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl since you've been, your last 100 days. Which saved – are you ready for this, media? — 258 million lives. Kids are dying every day because they're taking this junk laced with something else, they don't know what they're taking, they think they're buying a Tylenol or an Adderall and a Xanax, and it's laced with fentanyl and they're dropping dead. And no longer, because of you. What you've done.
Her claim begins at 0:54 in the video below:
We reached out to the Department of Justice, who said it arrived at that number by multiplying the 3,400 kilograms of fentanyl by a purity of 15.18% and dividing by 2 milligrams — an amount considered potentially deadly — to arrive at 258,060,000 "deadly doses."
For context, the total population in the U.S., as of April 30, 2025, was 341,699,054, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This would mean Bondi claimed Trump's administration saved the equivalent of more than 75% of the U.S. population from a fentanyl-related death.
(census.gov)