Attorney General Pam Bondi faced backlash after she shared, then quickly deleted, a social media post that seemed to credit President Donald Trump for a significant decline in drug overdose deaths. The data in the graph ended in October 2024, which was before Trump took office.
Bondi’s now-deleted post included a chart that tracked overdose deaths from October 2015 to October 2024. She presented it as evidence that the Trump administration was already “saving American lives,” according to reports on the deleted post and the screenshots that circulated afterward.
“President Trump closed the border. DOJ agents have seized hundreds of millions of potentially lethal fentanyl doses. We are aggressively prosecuting drug traffickers and cartel leaders. These are the results,” Bondi wrote. She added, “Elections have consequences. Electing President Trump and enforcing the law is saving American lives.”
Critics quickly pointed out a major issue with her post: the timeline. The chart’s title clearly showed it ended in October 2024. This meant the steep decline highlighted at the far right of the graph occurred while President Joe Biden was in office, not during Trump’s term.
Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, mocked the post and suggested that Bondi inadvertently gave political credit to Biden. “Dear @AGPamBondi: The chart you provided ends in October 2024. Thank you for unintentionally giving massive credit to Joe Biden,” Lieu stated in a post that included the screenshot.
He followed up with a more pointed comment, stating, “Lol, the truth hurts. @AGPamBondi was glazing Trump again with another lying sycophantic tweet, but the chart she attached stopped in Oct 2024, thus showing the great work done by Joe Biden. She later deleted her tweet. Here is the screenshot of her deleted tweet.”
Lol, the truth hurts. @AGPamBondi was glazing Trump again with another lying sycophantic tweet, but the chart she attached stopped in Oct 2024, thus showing the great work done by Joe Biden. She later deleted her tweet.
Here is the screenshot of her deleted tweet. https://t.co/qhsotN74cy pic.twitter.com/0wALvXav3n
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 31, 2025
Bondi removed her post soon after, but by then, the screenshots had spread widely. The incident turned into a one-day political blunder, as the attorney general highlighted a trend that contradicted the triumph she claimed in her caption.
The data has been widely discussed by researchers and public health agencies. A 2025 study in JAMA Network Open, which examined overdose death rates from 2015 through October 2024, explained how the crisis surged with the spread of fentanyl. It then entered a period of slowdown that became more obvious in 2024. The authors noted that the slowdown after February 2024 was nearly twice the rate of the prior surge from 2019 to 2021.
Additionally, the CDC reported significant declines in provisional national overdose deaths over approximately the same period. They noted a nearly 24% drop for the 12 months ending in September 2024 compared to the previous year, which also predates Trump’s return to office.
Bondi’s deleted post brought back a common debate about whether the national decline in overdose deaths is mainly due to border enforcement and drug seizures or if it results from a mix of factors. These factors include access to naloxone, treatment availability, changes in drug supply, and public health efforts. The chart itself cannot resolve this question, but the political implications shifted quickly. Bondi’s post became a Rorschach test for which narrative would prevail.
The Department of Justice did not provide an immediate public comment on why Bondi deleted the post.
