Trump makes false claims about drug boats and DC crime at Venezuela raid briefing

The U.S.

President Donald Trump made false claims about the lethal impact of drug-boat strikes and Washington, D.C., homicide rates at a Saturday news conference called to explain the U.S. military raid that extracted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Associated Press reported January 3, 2026.

Trump’s assertions — that each intercepted vessel prevents 25,000 American deaths, and that the capital had seen no killings in six or seven months — contradict federal data and Metropolitan Police Department records.

The three false or unsupported claims, made while praising National Guard deployments and drug-interdiction strikes, were each checked by the AP against government statistics, police records, and court filings.

Drug-boat strikes

Speaking about U.S. strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, Trump said, “Each boat kills on average, 25,000 people.”

The U.S. military has attacked at least 35 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since strikes began September 2, most recently on December 31, the AP reported. By Trump’s arithmetic, those strikes would have prevented 875,000 fatal drug overdoses — a figure that exceeds the total U.S. overdose deaths recorded in any recent 12-month period.

Preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed up to 76,516 drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending April 2025, down 24.5 percent from up to 101,363 the previous year, according to the AP.

The route of the drugs further undercuts the claim. Fentanyl, which accounted for 65.1 percent of overdose deaths in 2024, is typically trafficked to the U.S. overland from Mexico — where it is produced with chemicals from China and India — not by sea from Venezuela, the AP reported, citing CDC data.

Washington, D.C., homicides

Trump said of the capital’s National Guard deployment: “We haven’t had a killing in a long period of time. Six, seven months.”

Metropolitan Police Department statistics showed 59 homicides in Washington in the seven months before the press conference, including two in the week before, the AP reported. The city recorded 126 homicides in 2025 overall, with 29 occurring after National Guard troops deployed to the capital on August 11.

The city’s attorney general had said violent crime in the district reached 30-year lows in 2024 and fell an additional 26 percent in 2025. Trump had made the same false claim about a killing-free period before, according to the AP.

Chicago and Los Angeles

Trump said that Guard deployments had helped reduce crime in Chicago and that the administration “saved Los Angeles early on.”

Guard members were never on the streets of Chicago as legal challenges to the deployment played out, the AP reported. A Justice Department lawyer said during those proceedings that the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government agents, not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”

Chicago homicides fell 25 percent between 2020 and 2024. Over the same period, however, rape rose 27 percent, robbery increased 17 percent, and aggravated assault climbed 11 percent.

In Los Angeles, Trump deployed approximately 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines in June to guard federal buildings and to protect federal agents during immigration arrests. The troops were removed from the streets by December 15 after a lower court ordered control returned to California Governor Gavin Newsom. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to return control of the National Guard to Newsom.