GOP Rep. Tim Burchett called out CNN’s Jim Acosta during a tense live interview for quoting a “bogus” statistic which claims over 80% of fentanyl enters the U.S. through legal ports of entry.
“You know it, and I know it, that’s a bogus statistic that y’all keep putting out,” Burchett snapped at Acosta. “And nobody is buying it because if they did, you would be talking about President-elect Kamala Harris right now and not Donald Trump!”
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While Acosta’s claim is technically true, how he sites it is misleading, since it is difficult to know how much fentanyl is being brought to the U.S. illegally via routes and personnel untracked by law enforcement. The data only refers to fentanyl actually seized by Customs and Border Protection that is then traced to its point of origin at a port of entry.
The data also says that drug traffickers frequently employ U.S. citizens to transport their product because of the lower scrutiny they face at ports of entry.
It is hard to argue that a wide open southern border does not present an incredible opportunity for criminal drug traffickers to enter the U.S. in ways difficult for the government to measure.
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