It has been one hundred days of this new administration. In that time we have learned that there is a desire of this administration to diminish education, from the proposed cuts to educational funding for K-12 education to their desire to cut back on student loans. While we did discover this week that the administration can count to 100 days, this was the only mathematical proof that they have demonstrated thus far.

MAGA Math has run rampant in the first few months. DOGE and Elon Musk asserted that there was $2 trillion that could be cut from the federal budget without touching Social Security, Medicare, or Defense (then it was $1 trillion, then it became $160 billion, then $62 billion itemized, then only $33 billion with receipts attached). The Republican leaders in the Senate decided that extending the Trump tax cuts will cost nothing (instead of the $4.5 trillion dollars they will add to the national debt over the next decade). RFK Jr. claimed this week that the last administration facilitated child trafficking of 300,000 children because they didn’t show up for their immigration court hearings (gosh, imagine how many missing persons can be blamed on dentists when they fail to show for their dental appointments!). They created a tariff formula that economists universally say makes no sense. Claiming numbers that aren’t there gives a new definition to imaginary numbers.

But this week’s claims regarding fentanyl seizures set a new bar in MAGA calculus. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, claimed this week that that during the first 100 days of the Trump administration, border patrol seized 22 million pills laced with fentanyl, representing 3,400 kilos (that means kilograms), resulting in 258 million lives saved (up from the claim of 119 million lives saved the day prior). Now it was not explained how 22 million pills could kill over 75% of the US population (apparently each pill will kill 11+ people – do they die from imagining them or watching someone else take the pill? still haven’t figured that out). Never mind that a bit under 75,000 people in the US died of a fentanyl related death in the most recent reported year (that is .02% of the amount claimed by Bondi). Never mind that in Bondi’s math, each of the pills seized would need to weigh over a quarter of a pound (3.4million x 2.2 pounds per kilo x 16 ozs / 22 million pills) – that’s one Big Mac of a pill! Never mind that the CBP’s website tracking seizures of fentanyl shows only 2500 pounds of pills seized (that’s 1,136 kilos for those keeping track). Also never mind that CBP seizures in this administration are down by about 50% over last year at this time. Or perhaps never mind the faux display of concern regarding fentanyl related deaths when the administration intends to eliminate a program that provides opioid overdose reversal medication kits health centers and train others to use them.

But with MAGA math do I take the absolute value of the 50% and multiply it by the reciprocal tariffs on China and divide them by 4 (the elasticity of import demand with respect to import prices – it didn’t make sense in the tariff calculation, maybe it will make sense here?). Maybe a 5th grade math teacher could use this as an assignment for their class. Or is math too ‘woke’ for all of this to matter.

And the national disgrace continues…