Trump does ‘pew, pew, pew’ for the boat strikes and tells the crowd not to feel bad

Donald Trump has found the right sound for blowing up boats with people on them. It’s the one a seven-year-old makes.

Wednesday night at Clemson, bragging about the military strikes on alleged drug boats, he said the flow of drugs by sea was down “by 97, pew, pew, pew, 97.” That’s his number, and the sound effects are his too. Then the pastoral care: “And don’t feel bad. When you see that, you shouldn’t feel bad because each one of those boats will kill five to 10,000 people. So you can’t feel that bad when you see those rockets go right through the middle of the boat.” He didn’t say where five to 10,000 comes from.

He also had a joke for whoever’s still running the route: “we’re looking for the three percent because we consider them among the bravest people in the world.” Then an admission, delivered like a punchline: “it’s totally killed the fishing industry ... because everybody’s afraid to go fishing. They’re afraid of being hit with a missile. So the fishing industry is dead but so is the drug industry.”

The count that can actually be checked is of people: at least 238 killed in U.S. boat strikes by early October, by one naval-news tally. The administration says the strikes are cutting overdoses. The same tally notes that CDC data shows no noticeable drop since the strikes began. The UN’s human rights chief has called for a halt to prevent “extrajudicial killing.” The president’s response is a sound effect.