Trump awards 13 military members border defense medal, declares fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction

President Donald Trump awarded the Mexican Border Defense Medal to 13 service members on Monday at the White House for their deployment to the southern border.

Trump said a core mission of his administration is to protect and defend the homeland, and thanked the 13 warriors for their role in protecting it.

“We went from having millions of people pouring over our border to having none in the last eight months,” Trump said. “We inherited the worst border in the history of our country, one of the worst borders, I would say, in the world. I can’t imagine any border in the world being worse.” 

Trump criticized the prior administration for allowing millions of illegal immigrants to enter the country, including gang members and people from “prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and some of the worst people on earth.” 

He also announced an executive order to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, calling illicit fentanyl “closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.” 

“Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, constitutes a lethal dose,” the executive order reads. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses.” 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth echoed the importance of border security to the administration. 

“It’s getting down to that border and getting control of it; and whether it’s hanging concertina wire and reinforcing fencing or patrolling … you guys have jumped at the mission, gotten after it, and I think it’s been six months of effectively zero crossings on the southern border, which was the goal,” he told awardees earlier in the day at the Pentagon. 

Trump touted lower gasoline and energy prices under his administration, and blamed Democrats for high inflation and prices. He remarked on the Russia-Ukraine war and ongoing peace talks, saying “we’re getting closer” to peace and that he wants to “save a lot of lives.” 

“We’re having tremendous support from European leaders. They want to get it ended also,” he said. “And at this moment, Russia wants to get it and the problem is they’ll want to get it ended, and then all of a sudden they won’t, and Ukraine will want to get it ended, and all of a sudden they won’t. So we have to get them on the same page.”