Nothing proves that what goes around comes around like presidential debates. In their last meeting, Joe Biden gratuitously slammed Donald Trump for his Covid response. In their upcoming debate this Thursday, Trump should return the favor and remind viewers of the effects Biden’s open-border policy has had on America’s fentanyl crisis.
In 2020’s final presidential debate, Biden attacked Trump for America’s 220,000 Covid deaths, saying, “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America,” then adding that “the president still has no comprehensive plan.”
Never mind that Covid was a global pandemic. Ditto that America’s annual Covid death totals have also been unforgiving for Biden. According to the CDC, in 2020 under Trump, 385,666 Americans died from Covid; in 2021 under Biden, 463,263 died, 246,161 died in 2022, and 51,684 died in 2023 — 761,108 in total. That averages 253,702 per year, higher than the total for which Biden criticized Trump.
Yet an even less defensible pandemic continues to sweep the country under Biden, one he has largely ignored because its origins are too politically embarrassing. According to the CDC, “overdose deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl)” accounted for 75 percent of America’s estimated drug overdose deaths in 2023 — 81,083 of 107,543. Last year was hardly an outlier. Opioid deaths were 80,816 in 2021 and 84,181 in 2022. Biden’s first three years saw almost a quarter of a million deaths.
Illicitly manufactured and distributed, fentanyl is an extraordinarily lethal synthetic opioid. The Council on Foreign Relations wrote: “A lethal dose requires
