‘This guy is so dumb’: Eric Trump tried to celebrate Trump’s illegal boat strike using statistics, but it hilariously bit him in the back
The Trump administration is probably allergic to facts.
On Jan. 18, Eric Trump took to X with what he thought was a mic-drop, red-meat post celebrating his father’s violent Caribbean boat strikes. He linked to a chart, tagged Donald Trump, and claimed, “No statistic has ever made me more proud!” But that statistic, about fentanyl deaths, was never about Trump.
“Well done @realDonaldTrump!! Keep blowing the shit out of those boats!” Eric Trump wrote with patriotic vigor in his post. He linked it to a chart circulated by an X account called EndWokeness, claiming that U.S. fentanyl deaths were falling. He meant to imply that Trump’s boat strikes on suspected drug smuggling vessels were the cause of the drop.
It would have been a triumphant post, only if it had even one element of accuracy in it. Instead, the post became a textbook example of MAGA math: confident, shameless, and completely detached from actual data. The linked chart showed monthly fentanyl deaths in the United States falling dramatically after peaking in 2023 and early 2024. On its face, the graph looks hopeful. But it had a few fatal problems.
The image was altered to remove the date point, but Eric Trump thought we wouldn’t notice
The image linked by Eric Trump was altered to remove the date on the last data point. The point indicated that the data only runs through Sept. 2024. At that time, Joe Biden was still president, and it was months before Trump returned to office in Jan. 2025. That means the entire premise of the bragging that Trump’s military boat strikes somehow reduced fentanyl deaths is unsupported.
If anything, the data Eric shared shows a decline that happened entirely under Biden’s watch. These facts were quickly flagged by Community Notes on X, marking Eric’s post as misleading. According to the notes, the source of the chart was a New York Times article published on March 4, 2025. The chart was then edited after the fact to strip the timeline.
EndWokeness itself deleted its post after the community fact checks exposed the truth. But Eric’s X post remains live, and users were quick to call out his stupidity.
Eric’s brag got him insulted, left and right
Half the people just enjoyed the situation, thanking Biden repeatedly, and calling Eric “dumb.” “You tagged the wrong president,” one wrote. While the other half trolled Eric for still having the post up despite being exposed. One wrote, “Even after everyone corrected you and End Wokeness had enough sense to delete it, you keep your tweet up. Thank you for making us all aware that numbers increased during your dad’s term and decreased during Biden’s.”
Another took a jab at End Wokeness itself and called out the account for deleting their post. They called it “a perfect example of that MAGA doesn’t care about Americans but just their dear leader.” One added, “No retraction, no ‘oops my bad.’ Just a reliance on the fact that braindead MAGAs never fact-check anything.” But Eric Trump didn’t just get a detail wrong. He attributes good public health news to a violent military action with no supporting evidence.
Even if the chart were real during Trump’s term, correlation does not imply causation. There is no evidence that the boats Trump destroyed would lead to a decline in drug deaths. Drug supply dynamics are complex, and enforcement actions do not necessarily shrink mortality rates. So, Eric’s post was propaganda masquerading as data anyway. It’s only a cherry on top that it bit him in the back.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
