Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing backlash after she deleted a social media post intended to praise President Donald Trump — but critics say it ended up telling a different story.
Bondi’s post included a government chart about drug overdose deaths that, instead of supporting her claims about Trump’s impact, appeared to highlight major progress that occurred while Joe Biden was president.
The post Bondi shared — and then removed
Bondi shared a chart tracking annual overdose deaths nationwide and by region from October 2015 through October 2024 — a period that ends before Trump returned to the White House for his second term in January 2025.
Alongside the chart, she wrote that “Since day one, the Trump administration and this Department of Justice have been fighting to end the drug epidemic in our country.”
She also claimed that “President Trump closed the border. [Department of Justice] agents have seized hundreds of millions of potentially lethal fentanyl doses.”
Although the full text of the post is no longer publicly available, the chart itself spread quickly — and became the center of the criticism.
Why critics say the chart undercut her message
The chart, sourced from the National Institutes of Health, showed a steep decline in overdose deaths between October 2023 and October 2024 — during the Biden administration.
Nationally, the rate fell from about 32.5 deaths per 100,000 people to roughly 25. The same downward movement appeared across every region — the Northeast, Midwest, South and West.
There is currently no available data in the chart indicating whether overdose deaths continued to decline between October 2024 and October 2025 after Trump returned to office.
A study published in the journal “Science” also reported that the U.S. made significant progress against fentanyl during the final years of the Biden administration.
Drug policy experts told NPR they were surprised those gains didn’t become a more prominent political message. “I think it hurt them because they had a story of success to tell,” Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University researcher and co-author of the report, told NPR.
One key finding from the study was that the potency of illegal fentanyl in U.S. communities dropped dramatically during Biden’s final year. “You’re talking about a 50 percent decline in the purity of fentanyl being seized [in drug raids],” Humphreys said. “That’s a big drop.”
Democratic criticism and online backlash
Bondi’s post triggered a wave of ridicule online, including from Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who argued the data contradicted her framing.
“The chart you provided ends in October 2024. Thank you for unintentionally giving massive credit to Joe Biden,” Lieu wrote on X.
He also accused Bondi of misrepresenting the information, writing that she had posted “another lying sycophantic tweet” before deleting it. Lieu said he reposted a screenshot of the deleted message.
Bondi has not publicly explained why she removed the post.
Trump’s disputed Venezuela-linked fentanyl messaging
The controversy comes as Trump has intensified his rhetoric about fentanyl.
In late 2025, he signed an executive order labeling fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction,” directing the Pentagon and the Justice Department to take broader action against drug trafficking.
It also follows attempts by the administration to tie Venezuela’s government to the U.S. fentanyl crisis. Trump has called Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro a “kingpin” who “flooded” the U.S. with fentanyl, and those claims were cited in support of a U.S. operation that captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Venezuela in early 2026.
However, the federal indictment unsealed in New York accuses Maduro of narco-terrorism and cocaine importation — not fentanyl — and drug policy experts have noted that fentanyl is primarily produced in Mexico using Chinese precursors, rather than being trafficked through Venezuela.
Critics have questioned whether the operation was effectively an attempt at forced regime change tied to Venezuela’s oil reserves.
