As this week got underway, the Pentagon made the latest in a series of announcements: Deadly U.S. military strikes killed eight people as part of the latest operation against civilian boats in international waters. According to the official tally, there have now been 25 such strikes since early September, with a collective death toll of 95 people.
The announcement from the Defense Department coincided with another announcement from Donald Trump.
“With this historic executive order I will sign today, we’re formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is what it is,” he declared at a White House event.
Observers would be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu: Americans saw a Republican president, with an apparent interest in foreign oil, pitching suspect claims about WMDs.
To be sure, Trump’s announcement didn’t come out of nowhere. Two months ago, White House border czar Tom Homan told Axios that designating illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction should “at least be a discussion.” Looking back further, the Department of Homeland Security began a related analysis as far back as 2019.
That discussion has now advanced to a signed presidential executive order.
Historically, the “weapons of mass destruction” label been limited to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Now, it apparently includes fentanyl pills, too.
Time will tell whether the White House tries to use this designation as part of its provocative saber-rattling toward Venezuela, though it’s worth emphasizing that there is no evidence that Venezuela produces or traffics fentanyl. But the effort to connect fentanyl to the boat strikes in international waters is ongoing. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week described “narco-terrorists” as the “Al Qaeda of our hemisphere,” purportedly responsible for spreading “narcotics so lethal they’re tantamount to chemical weapons.” What’s more, as The New Republic noted, The Wall Street Journal reported last month “that a classified legal brief justified the Trump administration’s extrajudicial execution of alleged drug smugglers by referring to fentanyl as a potential chemical weapon.” The executive order is the start, not the end, of a broader policy discussion.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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