It’s difficult to say who was the very first Republican to complain about the Biden administration successfully stopping illicit drugs at the border, though Rep. Andy Biggs was certainly among the first. It was in July 2021 when the Arizona Republican complained via social media, “Under Joe Biden, enough fentanyl to kill 238 million Americans was seized at the southern border last month. Where’s the outrage in the media?”

Even at the time, it was an odd criticism. The Biden administration was seizing drugs before they reached the United States. There was nothing to be “outraged” about.

Nevertheless, in the months that followed, this became an oddly common criticism of the Biden administration. Every couple of months, from the Republican National Committee to the halls of Congress to the presidential campaign trail, the more the Democratic administration seized fentanyl at the border, the more Republicans pointed to the seizures as evidence of an “open border” that obviously wasn’t open.

Biden is obviously no longer in office, but the partisan incoherence surrounding the issue remains a problem.

Take Attorney General Pam Bondi, for example.

The Republican AG appeared on Fox News this week, and marked Fentanyl Awareness Day with a curious claim. “In President Trump’s first 100 days, we’ve seized over 22 million fentanyl laced pills, saving over 119 million lives,” Bondi said.

According to the Census Bureau, the current population of the United States is over 341 million people. According to the attorney general, fentanyl laced pills were poised to kill roughly one in three Americans — which seemed difficult to believe.

A day later, Bondi attended a White House Cabinet meeting, where she gushed for quite a while about how awesome Donald Trump’s awesomeness is, before turning her attention to fentanyl seizures.

After prefacing her comments by asking whether journalists were “ready” for her big announcement, Bondi credited Trump with saving “258 million lives” — or roughly three-quarters of the population of the United States.

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Asked how she arrived at such a figure, the Department of Justice told The Daily Beast about the administration’s formula: If you start with 3,400,000 grams of fentanyl, multiply that by the “current purity level” of .1518, and then divide by .002 (the lethal amount per gram) the result is 258,060,000. (This total included FBI seizures, while her total from the day before did not, which explained the increase from 119 million lives.)

So, a few things.

First, the Trump administration really should stop coming up with weird mathematical formulas. Readers who were baffled by what the DOJ told the Daily Beast can take comfort in the fact that they’re not alone, though it’s about as strange as the White House’s tariffs formula.

Second, the first hint that this formula was flawed should’ve been obvious to Bondi and her team given that fentanyl-laced pills, though extremely dangerous, were never going to wipe out 78% of the American population.

Finally, let’s also not overlook a recent report from Reuters, which noted that under the Biden administration, there was a sharp decline in overdose deaths from fentanyl, but those directly involved in the anti-narcotics fight are concerned about a reversal due to “federal spending cuts instigated by” the Trump White House.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.