White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo
White House adviser Peter Navarro came out swinging against former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and China in a vigorous defense of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
On Sunday morning, Navarro started off by calling Obama’s administration a “kumbaya of incompetence.”
Obama on Saturday had again jabbed the U.S. coronavirus response in a two-hour virtual commencement for graduates of historically black colleges and universities: “This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing.”
“I’m glad Mr. Obama has a new job as Joe Biden’s press secretary,” Navarro responded on ABC’s “This Week.” “As far as I’m concerned, his administration was a kumbaya of incompetence in which we saw millions of manufacturing jobs go off to China.”
President Donald Trump, he went on to say, has built the “most beautiful economy in modern history” — unemployment rates were at 3.5 percent before the pandemic more than quadrupled that — though China “did take that down in about 30 days.”
That statement led Navarro to his next target: The “China virus” could have been kept in Wuhan, where it was thought to have originated, he said. But the Chinese government intentionally hid information and sent its citizens to other countries to “seed” the virus.
While saying that he did not believe China deliberately unleashed Covid-19 on the world, Navarro pointed to FBI warnings that the Chinese government is hacking intellectual property, saying it was part of its effort to steal vaccines.
“And what would they do with it? It wouldn’t be a benign experience. They’d use that vaccine to profiteer and hold the world hostage. So yes, I do blame the Chinese.”
Trump is the only one to “stand up to China,” Navarro asserted, unlike Democratic rival Biden who’s “got 40 years of sucking up” to that government. Navarro also pushed the false claim that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, took a billion dollars from the Chinese.
Trump had been praising China through the month February, even as the spread of coronavirus increased.
The president tweeted Feb. 7: “Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days.”
He continued, “Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!”
On Sunday, Navarro said the starting gun for the pandemic was on Jan. 30, when Trump acted quickly and restricted travel from China, though there were exceptions.
“Don’t tell me we lost February, because I was there. I’m right here,” Navarro said. “And this president was directing us to move as quickly as possible, even as publicly we were trying to figure out in the fog of war just how serious this pandemic.”
Navarro’s spiel on Sunday also included referencing a “deep state” conspiracy, doubling down on calling whistleblower Richard Bright a “deserter” in the fight against the pandemic, and saying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lost his support for another relief package when she included money for “illegal immigrants.” And he attacked some in the medical profession as wanting to “run and hide.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the White House adviser said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which hasn’t been able to give a briefing in over a month — let the country down on testing, which “set us back.”
On the debate to re-open the economy: Lockdowns may save lives, but Navarro asserted it can also take lives as people struggle with depression and drug abuse, and as hospitals redirect resources to focus mainly on coronavirus-related cases.
“If you contrast like this complete lockdown where some of the people in the medical community want to just run and hide until the virus is extinguished, that’s going to not only take a huge toll on the American economy, it’s going to kill many more people than virus, the China virus ever would,” he told host Chuck Todd.
