peter navarro 2

RENAMED TWO 2 26 MADE PRIMARY FOR VISIBILITY

SEE MAIN[VERY LONG]

PJT 2025

SEE BEN STEIN AWARD

ROGER STONE

BEEF W MUSK?

SEE NEWSMAX

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NOT REALLY AN ECONOMIST? NO PEER REV? MADE BONES ON TRADE POLICY CHINA PHOBE, THEN CULTURE WAR EG FAUCI COVID POL OP FOR TRUMP, FAKE ELECTORS RUSSIAGATE?

TYLER COWEN

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MMA

Newsmax host says he was “out of line” during Peter Navarro interview for interrupting the “totally brilliant” “MAGA royalty” “hero”

Greg Kelly: “I'm usually in a listening mode. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, had a chip on my shoulder that night. I don't know what, but I was interrupting."

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 09/14/26 1:17 PM EDT

Video

Citation

From the September 11, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

GREG KELLY (HOST): Counselor to the president, Peter Navarro — the man is MAGA royalty. Totally brilliant, PhD. He's also a guy who just follows the truth. He doesn't let prevailing conventional wisdom get in the way. No, the man is brave. He has been arrested, right, for his integrity. Remember that whole fiasco about January 6? Whether it was COVID or trade, he's made great, great points about election integrity. The man is a hero, OK?

...

Folks, I got to tell you, I'm usually in a listening mode. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, had a chip on my shoulder that night. I don't know what, but I was interrupting. Folks who watch this show know I don't like to interrupt. But I did. And maybe I got it in my head, oh, well, Peter, maybe, did he leak something? No, he didn't leak anything. He was spot on, and I was out of line.

...

I wanted to kind of clear this up, and I also wanted to — why am I clearing it up? Well, September 11. This is the 25th anniversary, right? And who out there can procrastinate, right? I'm the worst. I tell you, I can get things done that are super duper important, that must be done, deadlines and all that stuff.

But when it came time to apologizing to Peter Navarro, right, I got it in my head, first of all, well, wait a second, I don't have to, I, you know [unintelligible] — I don't know. I had to apologize. I saw a tweet from somebody and they said, wow, it's really nice that Peter Navarro let Greg Kelly talk. It's supposed to be the other way around. So also I noticed the thing that a lot of us have — I know I have. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'll write him a letter. I'll send him a book. I will — and it becomes this whole thing. And it becomes another way of not doing what you have to do. Apologizing. And I apologized to Peter Navarro, and it was my fault. He didn't deserve that, and it felt good to apologize. And it felt even better when he accepted my apology.

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MMA

Peter Navarro claims that Sean Hannity “fought hard” to get Fox News to air Trump's address on election security

09/09/26

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ARI MELBER , WANTS CNN CEO FIRED BY FEDS?

President Donald Trump's top trade adviser appeared on MS NOW on Wednesday and said it is a "dirty little secret" that Fox News settled for $700 million after telling defamatory lies about the 2020 presidential election for one reason: They didn't want network founder Rupert Murdoch on the stand.

Peter Navarro appeared on Ari Melber's show and called for Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to be fired after one of their on-air talents, Maria Bartiromo, was fired after sharing an internal corporate memo with Navarro in which Scott told people not to amplify the same discredited election theft claims that previously got them sued.

"There was no expectation of confidentiality," Navarro said. "There was an expectation that the White House would be informed,' adding that "basically, what Suzanne Scott should have done when the White House contacted her was apologize and acknowledge that it was disrespectful to the president and to people in this country — not to have that network even talk about the address."

Navarro was referring to Trump's July speech in which he heavily implied that China had meddled in the 2020 elections in a way that ultimately caused the contest to go to his opponent, Joe Biden, instead of himself. Critics overwhelmingly agree that the speech did nothing to verify Trump's discredited claim that the election was stolen from him.

From there Navarro argued that Fox News had "censored" Trump's July speech, which Melber pointed out was not true. They covered it, but declined to do so either live or without fact-checking Trump's various claims.

"It was aired, not censored," Melber said, adding that it seemed like Navarro was arguing that the government should be able to tell networks what to cover and not to cover, including disproved claims about election theft. Navarro reiterated his call for Scott to be fired for not covering Trump's election fraud claims, although he added that he was speaking only for himself and not for the White House.

Overall, Navarro complained that Fox News only agreed with Trump on some issues but not on others.

"There's this misconception among viewers on the right and left that somehow that Fox is a conservative messenger and supports Donald Trump and. Fox in a heartbeat will tell you about transgender stuff and illegal aliens rape and killing as well they should," Navarro told Melber, before complaining that "there's certain guardrails they put up. Election integrity is one that you mentioned."

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AN 7 26

President Donald Trump's economic advisor Peter Navarro has lost the appeal of his contempt of Congress charges, reported legal analyst and reporter Amee Vanderpool.

Writing on her Substack "Shero," Vanderpool explained that the three-judge panel said that Navarro's appeal didn't hold up.

Navarro penned a book after the first Trump administration "taking credit for devising a plan to 'leverage' the Vice President’s authority under the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to 'delay certification' of the results of the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021," the ruling explained.

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack then called Navarro to testify, but he refused. According to Navarro, he had the protection of executive privilege and he not only refused to testify but also refused to turn over any documents or engage with the committee at all.

After he was held in contempt of Congress, Navarro moved to dismiss the charges, saying that Trump invoked executive privilege. The problem, Vanderpool and the appeals court noted, is that Trump never did.

In the Tuesday ruling, the court said, "The district court also granted the government’s motion in limine to preclude Dr. Navarro from arguing to the jury that he mistakenly believed he was not required to respond to the Select Committee’s subpoena. A jury subsequently found Dr. Navarro guilty on both counts of contempt. Dr. Navarro appealed. We affirm."

The panel also noted that "Navarro first asserted executive privilege unilaterally without consulting with or receiving direction from President Trump,” who would be the one to assert the privilege.

“We hold that the authority to invoke executive privilege rests with a president or his designee. In that regard, the district court did not clearly err in finding as a matter of fact that neither President Trump nor a designee invoked executive privilege as to the Select Committee’s subpoena to Dr. Navarro,” said the court in an opinion, authored by Judge Patricia Millett, an appointee of the Obama administration.

The claim from Navarro was that he and Trump had a three-minute phone conversation in which the president told Navarro to defy the committee's subpoena. Navarro never had any kind of proof showing that and Trump never testified to the contrary. In fact, an advisor and attorney for Trump who testified to the grand jury said that Trump never formally decided whether Navarro should be protected or not from testifying.

It is the reason that Millett asserted “Dr. Navarro immediately and categorically asserted executive privilege without consulting anyone … He did so before even seeing the subpoena and its cover letter that made clear the subpoena sought some information that Dr. Navarro concedes is not privileged because he had discussed it publicly. That all cuts against Dr. Navarro’s purported good-faith defense, not in favor of it.”

GGL 6 26

AI Overview

Peter Navarro authored the section on trade within the ⁠Project 2025 policy agenda, advocating for strict protectionist policies and increased restrictions on international trade. [1, 2]

Key details about Navarro's involvement and role:

• The Contribution: His chapter, titled "the case for fair trade," serves as the blueprint for heavy tariffs and import restrictions favored by the administration.

• His Background: Navarro is a Harvard-educated economist and professor emeritus at the ⁠University of California, Irvine.

• His Administration Role: He serves as Donald Trump's Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.

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AN 7 26

Economists tear apart Peter Navarro's 'national security' argument

(REUTERS)

Matthew RozsaJuly 14, 2026

One of President Donald Trump’s top economist advisers defended the administration’s handouts to rare earth elements corporations — and, speaking exclusively with AlterNet, two top economists tore apart the economist’s logic.

“China is using its control over the supply chain for rare-earth and other critical minerals to dominate global commerce and project state power—and the world is finally waking up to the danger,” Peter Navarro, who served as Senior Counselor to the President for Trade and Manufacturing, wrote for The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Navarro added, “For decades, Beijing has pursued industrial dominance through state subsidies, currency manipulation, intellectual-property theft, forced technology transfer, state-directed overcapacity, blocked market access, dumping, forced labor and lax environmental standards. Its economic aggression has advanced across industries—steel and aluminum, shipbuilding, solar panels, batteries, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, telecommunications equipment, drones, robots, machine tools and advanced electronics.”

The conservative economist then described China’s recent investments in rare earth exploration and development as a dangerous economic escalation, and accused them of deliberately stagnating mineral access to other countries through a strategy of “starve, not strangle.” From there, he advocated America’s Defense Department providing assistance to rare earth element companies.

“Consider the Pentagon-guided effort involving ReElement Technologies, Vulcan Elements and key leaders in the defense industrial base,” Navarro wrote. “The Pentagon has supported Vulcan and ReElement construction projects with hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. The Pentagon on Monday announced an additional $25 million investment in ReElement ‘to expand domestic refining capacity for rare earth elements and other defense-critical minerals.’”

Comparing the Pentagon’s work with rare earth companies with their various business collaborations during the COVID-19 pandemic, Navarro admitted that “critical-minerals supply chains are far more complex than ventilators. Yet the industrial lesson is the same: When government identifies the strategic gap, removes obstacles and matches innovators with industrial partners, America can move quickly.”

Overall, Navarro characterized China’s rare earth elements policy as an attempt to “bully the West” but claimed that it has failed because it has instead managed to “encourage the free world’s decoupling from the Chinese economy.”

He concluded his argument by saying, “China built its leverage by making the world believe it was the sole supplier. America’s task is to work with our free-world allies to make sure there is an alternative—cleaner, cheaper and faster. America’s formula is to back breakthrough technologies, pair small innovators with large industrial partners and scale China-free strategic supply chains at the Pentagon’s ‘speed of relevance’—fast enough to gain a competitive advantage.”

Speaking exclusively with AlterNet, Dr. Richard Wolff — economist emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst — characterized Navarro’s argument as part and parcel of his larger anti-China agenda.

“Peter Navarro has a lifelong history of being hostile to everything that the Chinese economy has accomplished,” Wolff told AlterNet. “I'm not surprised in the slightest that he would find some way to comfort everybody about the fact that the Chinese are able, by virtue of the spectacular economic growth they have achieved in the last 40 years — every one of which, the rate of growth of China has exceeded that of the United States — to do this. The result of that was that the United States tried at every turn to slow down, to complicate, to make difficult China's growth. And what the Chinese were looking for is a way to push back and to stop the United States from doing that. The control of the rare earths, which they didn't use to limit the way they do now, is a way for them to push back.”

He added that China did this not out of preference, but “because there are very few options for them to do that. So yes, you can berate them all you want, but in the end, it is a decision of the United States not to sit down with China and work out how you cohabit on a planet when you are the two leading economies. The effort of the United States has been to hold back and limit China, and that has led the Chinese to have to defend themselves. And the rare earths issue is just part of that story.”

Wolff concluded, “I can assure Mr. Navarro — and if he weren't so anti-Chinese in his orientation, he would've figured this out — that there are many ways the Chinese can push back. If they can't use rare earths, if America can produce them, they will find other ways. The problem here is not rare earths, and the problem here is not, quote unquote, a ‘Chinese chokehold.’ The problem is an adversarial relationship, when the only rational way to deal with the spectacular growth of China is to sit down and work out cohabitation arrangements.”

Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, a former economic adviser to Democratic presidential candidates and presidents including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, was also skeptical of Navarro’s arguments.

“Rare earth minerals can be found around the world,” Shapiro told AlterNet. “We've heard that rare earth minerals were part of the justification for Trump's fantasy of seizing Greenland — although there are a lot of rarer minerals there, they're under, you know, a hundred feet [of ice]. There are rare earth minerals in the United States, in Africa, in Asia. It's kind of similar to oil: there's plenty of oil in the world. The issue is how much it takes to extract it. The same is true of rare earth minerals.”

He added, “The attempt to make this into a national security issue — that's simply, what should we call it, the cover story. Whatever it is that they're proposing to do is something they want to do. The only real issue in securing sufficient rare earth minerals is the cost — how much are you willing to pay. So, to the extent that he is trying to make a national security argument, what is it he's actually defending?”

Shapiro concluded, “The pertinent issue here is not whether we're going to be able to get rare earth minerals — of course we are. We can get them from a hundred different sources around the world. The issue is how much it costs. And the fact that Peter Navarro wants to defend the crony capitalism of this administration, in which they give huge contracts paid for by taxpayers to their friends, or to companies in which they're invested — this is an attempt to cloak the ongoing corruption of this administration in national security. As with almost everything Peter Navarro speaks about, the argument fails.”

The Trump administration has previously indicated that it views rare earths as a lucrative industry and a major geopolitical chess piece. A company partially owned by Trump’s sons, Dominari Securities, struck a major deal for tungsten projects in Kazakhstan.

MPU 7 26

VULCAN elements, a three year old startup with 30 employees that makes rare earth magnets.

In August 2025, 1789, invested in Vulcan as a part of a $65 million funding round.

Three months later, the Pentagon gave them a $620 million loan.

the push for this loan came directly from Peter Navarro, Trump's senior trade adviser and a close personal friend of Don Jr.

So close that Don Jr visited Navarro in prison and was one of the few people Navarro's latest book was dedicated He's a friend legitimately can't believe that this is happening to him,

One Pentagon employee told ProPublica that the call came, quote, from the white House.

GGL 6 26

AI Overview

Ron Vara is a fictional economist and trade expert completely fabricated by former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. The name "Ron Vara" is a direct anagram of Navarro's last name. [1,, 3]

Navarro created Vara as a "whimsical device" and extensively cited the made-up character as a credible, expert source in several of his books, including Death by China and The Coming China Wars. [1, 2]

The Discovery and Backlash

The hoax was exposed by The Chronicle of Higher Education after scholars reviewing Navarro's work realized they could find no academic or professional records of an economist named Ron Vara. The revelation caused significant controversy, as critics pointed out that Navarro used a fake persona to validate his own hawkish economic and trade theories, which ultimately helped shape U.S. tariff policies toward China. [1, 2, 3,]

Impact and Recent Developments

Navarro's books, which heavily featured these fictional quotes, were how President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner originally discovered Navarro and brought him into the political fold. The fake expert recently re-entered the spotlight when billionaire Elon Musk—clashing with Navarro over tariff strategies—publicly mocked the adviser for relying on a "fake expert he invented". , 2, 3]

For a closer look at the background behind this fictional economist and how his quotes were used to shape policy:

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NPR

A publishing company plans to add an advisory note to future copies of a book written by White House adviser Peter Navarro, after it was revealed that Navarro fabricated one of the people he quoted.

The character Ron Vara appears in Navarro's 2011 book, Death By China, offering dire warnings about Chinese imports.

"Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel," Vara is quoted as saying.

Politics

Peter Navarro: A 'Bricklayer' Of Trump's Protectionist Wall

But while the book is not supposed to be fiction, Vara is a made-up character.

"Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro," said Tom Bartlett, a journalist who exposed the ruse in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Vara appears in half a dozen of Navarro's books, dating to 2001.

Navarro, who directs the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, defended the fabrication as a "whimsical device."

"At no time was the character used improperly as a fact source," he wrote in an email. "It's just a fun device."

Bartlett grew curious about Vara after being alerted to the character by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, a professor emeritus at the Australian National University.

"She's an Asia scholar and was working on an essay about the rather heated rhetoric of Peter Navarro towards China," Bartlett said.

While Vara is described in one of the books as a doctoral student at Harvard — as Navarro himself had been — the school had no record of him.

Eventually Greg Autry, who co-authored Death By China, acknowledged that Navarro made the character up.

"It's refreshing that somebody finally figured out an inside joke that has been hiding in plain sight for years," Navarro wrote in his email.

But former White House economist Glenn Hubbard, who co-authored another book featuring Vara, told Bartlett he wasn't in on the joke, and he wasn't amused.

Neither was Morris-Suzuki.

"As she put it, the joke wears very thin when you get to certain statements about China and the Chinese people that are quite negative," Bartlett said. "Ron Vara says things that are pretty over the top, and it's hard to construe them necessarily as whimsical in the way we normally use that word."

Inside The White House's Bitter Fight Over China

Navarro's publisher, Prentice Hall, and its parent company, Pearson, were also in the dark about the invented character until this week.

"Pearson has strict editorial standards that apply to all of its publishing businesses and authors," said Scott Overland, the company's director of media relations. "We take any breaches of these standards very seriously and take swift action when one is identified."

Overland said Pearson plans to add a publisher's note to future editions, advising readers that "Ron Vara is not an actual person, but rather an alias created by Peter Navarro."

The episode is not likely to cause Navarro any grief with his boss, however. Donald Trump famously invented his own fictional spokesman, John Barron, in the 1980s. Internet wags have joked that perhaps Barron could offer some PR advice to the newly unmasked Vara.

GGL 6 26

AI Overview

The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is an independent non-profit based at George Mason University that supports scholars working on classical liberal ideas of liberty, open inquiry, and market dynamism. It has been extensively supported by billionaire Charles Koch and the Charles Koch Foundation. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business, located just down the road from IHS's former California headquarters in Menlo Park, operates independently from these organizations, though both educational institutions champion business, economics, and leadership development. [1, 2, 3, 5]

Overlaps & Distinctions

• Ideological Ties: The Institute for Humane Studies is known for advancing libertarian and free-market ideals—a mission that broadly aligns with the political and economic network funded by Charles Koch. [1, 2]
• The Merage School: The business school at UC Irvine offers standard business, MBA, and PhD curricula rather than focusing directly on classical liberal advocacy. However, it offers interdisciplinary degree crossovers for undergraduates, allowing students with backgrounds in humanities to earn an MBA with a $10,000 scholarship. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Koch Network: Charles Koch's philanthropic network has a long history of funding higher education programs, fellowships, and think tanks nationwide, while the UCI Merage School is a public state institution funded by the UC system, tuition, and corporate partnerships. [1, 2]

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OLDER WIKI ON OTHER NODE 6 26 SOME TALK WUHAN FAUCI

Peter Navarro - Wikipedia

Peter Kent Navarro (born July 15, 1949) is an American economist who has been the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing to U.S. president Donald Trump since January 2025. He previously served in the first Trump administration, first as the director of the White House National Trade Council, then as the director of the new Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.

:{:{Navarro is a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business of the University of California, Irvine. Navarro ran unsuccessfully for office in San Diego, California, five times. In January 2017, he joined the first Trump administration as an advisor on trade. As a senior administration official, Navarro encouraged President Trump to implement protectionist trade policies. In particular, he advocated for hardline policies towards China and was a key figure behind the administration's trade war against China; he was sanctioned by China after leaving office.}:

During his final year in the Trump administration, Navarro was involved in the administration's COVID-19 response. He was also named the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator in 2020. Early on, he issued private warnings within the administration about the threat posed by the virus, but downplayed the risks in public. He publicly clashed with Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as Navarro advocated hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 and condemned various public health measures that aimed to stop the spread of the virus.}:

Navarro sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election and in February 2022 was subpoenaed twice by Congress. Navarro refused to comply and was referred to the Justice Department. In 2022, a grand jury indicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress. In 2023, Navarro was convicted on both counts, and in 2024, he was sentenced to four months in jail, becoming the first former White House official imprisoned on a contempt-of-Congress conviction. In January 2025, he was appointed as the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing for President Trump in his second term. In his second term, Navarro became a key official behind Trump's trade policies, including the imposition of tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico as well as the "reciprocal tariff" policy announced in April 2025.

:{:{Navarro's views on trade are significantly outside the mainstream of economic thought, and are widely considered fringe by other economists.^{[1][2][3][4][5}] A strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits, Navarro is well known for his hardline views on China, describing the country as an existential threat to the United States.}:

He has accused China of unfair trade practices and currency manipulation and called for more confrontational policies towards the country.^[6] He has called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, setting high tariffs, and "repatriating global supply chains". He is also a vocal opponent of free trade agreements. Navarro has written books including The Coming China Wars (2006) and Death by China (2011). In several of his books, Navarro quoted a fictional economist named "Ron Vara", an anagram of his surname, as a source of information.^[7]}:

Early life and education

Navarro was born on July 15, 1949, in Cambridge, Massachusetts to an Italian-American family.^[8][9] His father, Albert "Al" Navarro, a saxophonist and clarinetist, led a house band, which played summers in New Hampshire and winters in Florida.^[10] After his parents divorced when he was 9 or 10,^[11] he lived with his mother, Evelyn Littlejohn, a Saks Fifth Avenue secretary, in Palm Beach, Florida.^[11][12] As a teen, he lived with his mother and brother in a one-bedroom apartment in Bethesda, Maryland. Navarro attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.^[11]

:{:{Navarro attended Tufts University on an academic scholarship,^[13] graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.^[14] He then spent three years from 1973 to 1976 in the U.S. Peace Corps, serving in Thailand,^[15][16] traveling to Laos, South Korea, Japan, India, Myanmar and Malaysia during his holiday breaks.^[17] According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Navarro recalled listening to Voice of America and hearing Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign on a "message of hope".^[18]}:

He received a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1979, and a PhD in economics from Harvard in 1986 under the supervision of Richard E. Caves.^[16] His doctoral dissertation was titled "A theoretical and empirical investigation of corporate charity motives".^[19]}:

AUSTRIAN

In 1971, Haberler left Harvard to become a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Among other things, Haberler is credited with developing the theory of opportunity cost, which was pioneered by the Englishman John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and the Austrian Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926) further developed it.^[9][10]

Career

Academic career

From 1981 through 1985, he was a research associate at Harvard's Energy and Environmental Policy Center. From 1985 through 1988, he taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of San Diego.^[20][16] In 1989 he moved to the University of California, Irvine, as a professor of economics and public policy. He continued on the UC Irvine faculty for more than 20 years and is now a professor emeritus.^[21] He has worked on energy issues and the relationship between the United States and Asia.^[22] He has received multiple teaching awards for MBA courses he has taught.^[23]

As a doctoral student in 1984, Navarro wrote a book entitled The Policy Game: How Special Interests and Ideologues are Stealing America, which claimed that special interest groups had led the United States to "a point in its history where it cannot grow and prosper." In the book, he also called for greater workers' compensation to help those who had lost jobs to trade and foreign competition and wrote that "as history has painfully taught, once protectionist wars begin, the likely result is a deadly and well-nigh unstoppable downward spiral by the entire world economy".^[18] His doctoral dissertation on why corporations donate to charity is one of his most cited works. He has also done research on the topic of wind energy with Frank Harris, a former student of his.^[24]

Campaigns for public office

While teaching at UC Irvine, Navarro unsuccessfully ran for office five times in San Diego, California.^[15][20] During his campaigns, he primarily focused on limiting the number of houses in the city as well as the number of immigrants.^[18] In 1992, he ran for mayor, finishing first (38.2%) in the primary, but lost with 48% to Susan Golding in the runoff.^[25] Navarro ran on a no-growth platform during his mayoral campaign.^[26] He paid $4,000 in fines and court costs for violating city and state election laws.^[14]

In 1993, Navarro ran for San Diego city council, and in 1994 for San Diego County board of supervisors, losing each time.^[20] In 1996, he ran for the 49th Congressional District as the Democratic Party nominee, touting himself as an environmental activist, but lost to Republican Brian Bilbray, 52.7% to 41.9%.^[27][14] In 2001, Navarro ran in a special election to fill the District 6 San Diego city council seat but lost in a special election with 7.85% of the vote.^[28]

Publications on China

Navarro has written more than a dozen books on various topics in economics, specializing in the balance of trade. He has published peer-reviewed economics research on energy policy, charity, deregulation, and the economics of trash collection.^[29][30][31] The Economist magazine wrote that Navarro "is a prolific writer, but has no publications in top-tier academic journals" and "his research interests are broader than the average economist's."^[24] In 2001 Navarro started writing investing books including If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks: The Investor's Guide to Profiting from News and Other Market-Moving Events.^[32]

Navarro focused his attention on China in the mid-2000s.^[33] Navarro has said that he started to examine China when he noticed that his former students at UC Irvine were losing jobs, concluding that China was at fault and said that "all roads began leading to Beijing".^[33][18] He wrote that China was flooding the U.S. with cheap goods, "thereby beginning to put Americans like my MBA students out of work."^[18] He then tasked his students to research how China was able to price their products more cheaply compared to the rest of the world.^[17]

His first publication on the subject is the 2006 book The Coming China Wars, a book published by Financial Times in 2006^[34] In the book, Navarro examined China as an emerging world power confronting challenges at home and abroad as it struggles to exert itself in the global market. He discussed how China's role in international commerce created conflicts with nations worldwide over energy, natural resources, the environment, intellectual property, and other issues. A review in Publishers Weekly described the book as "comprehensive" and "contemporary" and concluded that it "will teach readers to understand the dragon, just not how to vanquish it".^[35]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Professor_Peter_Navarro_of_the_Business_School_at_University_of_California,_Irvine_talks_his_work_%22Death_by_China%22_and_how_China_cheats_in_the_world_trade_system_@_University_of_Michigan-4.jpg)Appearing at the University of Michigan in 2012, Navarro discusses his work, Death by China, arguing China cheats in the world trade system.

In Death by China, published in 2011, Navarro and co-author Greg Autry argued that China violates fair trade by "illegal export subsidies and currency manipulation, effectively flooding the U.S. markets" and unfairly making it "virtually impossible" for American companies to compete.^[36] It is a critique of "global capitalism", including foreign labor practices and environmental protection.^[37] Currency manipulation and subsidies are stated as reasons that "American companies cannot compete because they're not competing with Chinese companies, they're competing with the Chinese government."^[38] The Economist wrote that "the core allegations Mr. Navarro makes against China are not all that controversial. He accuses China of keeping its currency cheap" and "He deplores China's practice of forcing American firms to hand over intellectual property as a condition of access to its market. He claims that Chinese firms pollute the environment more freely and employ workers in far worse conditions than American rules allow."^[24] In 2012, Navarro directed and produced Death by China, a documentary film based on his book.^[39] The film, described as "fervently anti-China",^[40] was narrated by Martin Sheen.

Trump campaign advisor

According to Navarro, his first contact with Donald Trump came after a 2011 blog post in the Los Angeles Times that described Trump's supposed 20 favorite books on China, which included Death by China. Though whether the interview is authentic is uncertain, it still prompted an exchange of messages with Trump.^[17] Navarro received a letter as a reply by Trump assistant Rhona Graff, with the letter containing Trump's handwritten notes. Navarro continued to exchange notes with Trump through Graff afterwards.^[41] In 2016, Navarro served as an economic policy adviser to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.^[42] Navarro was invited to be an advisor after Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner saw on Amazon that he co-wrote Death by China.^[43] In his memoir Breaking History, Kushner wrote that he liked the thesis of Death by China so much that he hired the "eccentric former professor" as the Trump campaign's trade adviser.^[18]

According to Navarro's memoir, he was strolling on Victoria Beach near his home in Laguna Beach, California, when he got a call from Stephen Miller; they talked about an upcoming Trump speech in Pittsburgh that blamed globalization for the shuttering of steel mills; Navarro called the speech "pure MAGA magic". During the campaign, Navarro advocated for an isolationist and protectionist American foreign policy.^[44] Miller was the primary advocate for having Navarro join the campaign full time.^[41] Navarro was given an office on the 14th floor of Trump Tower, where he worked on economic plans that heavily focused on starting a trade war against China.^[18] Navarro and the international private equity investor Wilbur Ross authored an economic plan for the Trump campaign in September 2016.^[15][45] When told that the Tax Policy Center assessment of Trump's economic plan said it would reduce federal revenues by $6 trillion and reduce economic growth in the long term, Navarro said that the analysis demonstrated "a high degree of analytical and political malfeasance".^[46] When the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that Trump's economic plan would cost millions of Americans their jobs, Navarro said that writers at the Peterson Institute "weave a false narrative and they come up with some phony numbers."^[47]

According to MIT economist Simon Johnson, the economic plan essay authored by Navarro and Ross for Trump during the campaign had projections "based on assumptions so unrealistic that they seem to have come from a different planet. If the United States really did adopt Trump's plan, the result would be an immediate and unmitigated disaster."^[48] In October 2016, along with Wilbur Ross and Andrew Puzder, Navarro co-authored an essay titled "Donald Trump's Contract with the American Voter".^[49] When 370 economists, including 19 Nobel laureates, signed a letter warning against Trump's stated economic policies in November 2016, Navarro said that the letter was "an embarrassment to the corporate offshoring wing of the economist profession who continues to insist bad trade deals are good for America."^[50]

First Trump administration (2017–2021)

White House trade advisor

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Navarro,_Director_of_the_White_House_National_Trade_Council,_Addresses_in_the_Oval_Office_before_U.S._President_Donald_Trump_Signs_Executive_Orders_Regarding_Trade_on_March_31,_2017_4.jpg)Director Peter Navarro addresses President Donald Trump's promises to American people, workers, and domestic manufacturers (Declaring American Economic Independence on June 28, 2016) in the Oval Office with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross before President Trump signs Executive Orders regarding trade in March 2017.^[51][52]

According to Navarro, he was initially promised to be appointed as the National Economic Council, but the position was instead given to Gary Cohn.^[17] On December 21, 2016, Navarro was selected by President-elect Trump to a newly created position as director of the White House National Trade Council.^[53] In the first three weeks of his administration, Navarro was not assigned an office on the White House campus and instead had to work out of his house.^[54]: 66  Navarro was first allowed to see Trump in the Oval Office in early March; in the meeting, he had a big argument with Cohn.^[54]: 67  Early in the administration, Navarro was allied with speechwriter Stephen Miller and White House strategist Steve Bannon; the latter had read Navarro's books about China and used his influence on Trump to advance Navarro's views.^[18]

In the administration, Navarro was a hawkish advisor on trade, as he encouraged Trump to implement protectionist trade policies.^[55][56][57] He was also a key official in the China–United States trade war and influential in tougher policies towards China. The New York Times wrote in 2019 that Navarro "has managed to exert enormous influence over United States trade policy" in the Trump administration.^[55] In explaining his role in the Trump administration, Navarro said that he is there to "provide the underlying analytics that confirm [Trump's] intuition [on trade]. And his intuition is always right in these matters."^[3]

Director of Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy

In April 2017, the National Trade Council became part of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, of which Navarro was appointed Director.^[58] By September 2017, the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy had been folded into the National Economic Council by Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, which meant that Navarro would report to NEC director Gary Cohn.^[59] This was seen as a demotion for Navarro, as he was known to have strongly clashed with Cohn and his views on trade;^[60] Navarro later described him as "one of the worst and most treacherous misfits of the entire Trump administration".^[18]

In February 2018, several media outlets reported that Navarro's influence in the administration was rising again and that he would likely be promoted from the secondary billet of Deputy Assistant to the President to Assistant to the President, giving Navarro parity with the NEC director.^[60][61] Josh Rogin, writing for The Washington Post, reported that Navarro had used his prior time of lower influence to lead several low-profile policy items, such as working to increase military funding, drafting Executive Order 13806, and leading the effort to solve a dispute between the United States and Qatar over the Open Skies Agreement between the two countries.^[62] In March 2018, Cohn left the Trump administration, further solidifying Navarro's influence.^[63]

During the campaign, Navarro, together with Wilbur Ross, who became Trump's commerce secretary, designed a $1 trillion infrastructure development plan for Trump's presidential campaign.^[64] The plan called for $137 billion in tax credits to private business to induce them to finance the bulk of infrastructure spending. Economists across the political spectrum derided the proposal.^[65] Trump released a $1.5 trillion version of this plan in February 2018^[66] but the Republican-controlled Congress showed little enthusiasm for the proposal, with The Hill reporting, "President Trump's infrastructure plan appears to have crashed and burned in Congress".^[67]

In June 2018, Navarro said that there was "a special place in hell" for Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, after Trudeau said that Canada would respond to U.S. tariffs against Canada with retaliatory tariffs.^[68] Trudeau's remarks and Canada's response to these tariffs were already public and well known when Navarro made this comment.^[69] Navarro later apologized.^[70] In 2018, Navarro supported the United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act, which would have given the President sweeping powers over trade policy.^[71] He lobbied heavily in the United States Congress for the bill and its successor called the United States Reciprocal Trade Act, though the act ultimately did not pass.^[41] In May 2019, Navarro said that Trump's decision to place tariffs on Mexico unless Mexico stopped illegal immigration to the United States was "a brilliant move".^[72]

In February 2020, it was reported that Navarro was conducting his own investigation into the identity of the author of an anonymous op-ed in *The New York Times* criticizing the Trump Administration.^[73] The United States Office of Special Counsel ruled in December 2020 that Navarro repeatedly violated the Hatch Act by using his official capacity to influence elections in speaking against Trump's opponent Joe Biden during the presidential campaign.^[74]

China

According to Chaos Under Heaven, a book by Josh Rogin, Navarro was part of a group of officials that wanted Trump to "speed the downfall" of the Chinese Communist Party and that "believed in economic nationalism, the return of manufacturing from abroad, and the protection of domestic industries, even at the expense of free trade".^[54]: 27–28  In his 2021 book In Trump Time, Navarro wrote that he urged Trump to go "full Sudden Zen" and start an all-out trade war against China. He also described himself as a "one-man China hawk totally without power or allies in a White House filled with a symphony of Wall Street transactionalists and China dove appeasers".^[18] In 2018, Navarro was influential in pushing the Trump administration to initiate the China–United States trade war.^[75] After the start of the trade war, Navarro argued that no countries would retaliate against U.S. tariffs "for the simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world". Shortly after the implementation of the tariffs, other countries did implement retaliatory tariffs against the United States, and the World Trade Organization rejected the U.S. tariffs.^[76][77]

Navarro clashed frequently with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who had a more moderate stance on trade with China; Navarro accused Mnuchin without evidence of having "made millions from Communist China."^[18] In May 2018, during a visit to China for trade talks, Navarro and Mnuchin started screaming and cursing at each other on the lawn in front of the Chinese government building where the talks were held after Navarro confronted Mnuchin because he believed that he had been excluded from certain meetings with Chinese officials.^[78] During the trip, which was his second ever to China, Navarro was described as having "acted strangely", including by insisting on keeping his luggage with him at all times, wanting to sleep inside the U.S. embassy because he feared hotel surveillance and having "rudely refused to eat the food served to him in official functions".^[54]: 197 

In October 2018, Navarro supported a proposal by Stephen Miller to stop providing student visas to Chinese nationals, making it impossible for Chinese citizens to study in the United States.^[79] In August 2019, Navarro asserted the tariffs of the ongoing China–United States trade war were not hurting Americans. Citing extensive evidence to the contrary, PolitiFact rated Navarro's assertion "Pants on Fire."^[80] In September 2019, after Trump tasked him with combatting China's usage of international mail rates to more cheaply ship products into the US, Navarro successfully led a diplomatic effort to the Third Extraordinary Congress of the Universal Postal Union, where it agreed member countries could opt-in to self-declare their rates starting in July 2020. This agreement arose following repeated threats from the Trump administration to leave the UPU unless global postage rates were changed; at the summit, Navarro claimed that countries like China were unfairly benefitting from international delivery prices, particularly regarding e-commerce deliveries.^[81][82]

In October 2019, Navarro defended the trade war with China, saying that the United States was "dealing with a strategic rival – and they are trying to buckle our knees".^[83] Navarro continued to advocate for trade restrictionist policies even while the administration was trying to reach a compromise in trade negotiations with China.^[84][85][55] Navarro worked with the DHS to initiate a crackdown on counterfeited and pirated e-commerce goods from overseas,^{[86][87][88][89}] and he promoted the administration's actions on the matter.^[90][91] Trump signed an executive order on the matter on January 31, 2020.^[92] In August 2020, Mnuchin and Navarro started a shouting match in the Oval Office in front of Trump about the fate of TikTok in what was described by The Washington Post as a "knockdown, drag-out brawl". Mnuchin began arguing that TikTok should be sold to a U.S. company, while Navarro demanded an outright ban on the app.^[93]

On January 20, 2021, the Chinese government imposed sanctions against Navarro and 27 other Trump administration officials who "planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves, gravely interfered in China's internal affairs, undermined China's interests, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-U.S. relations". The sanctions ban them from entering China, including Hong Kong and Macau, and restrict companies and institutions associated with them from doing business in China.^[94]

Coronavirus pandemic

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:White_House_Coronavirus_Update_Briefing_%2849742769412%29.jpg)Navarro taking questions from the press during a coronavirus update briefing, April 2, 2020

During his final year in the first Trump administration, Navarro was involved in the administration's COVID-19 response.^[95] On January 29, 2020, Navarro issued a memo warning that novel coronavirus could "evolv[e] into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans" and that the "risk of a worst-case pandemic scenario should not be overlooked". He argued for restrictions on travel from China.^[96][97] Navarro wrote another memo on February 23, 2020, arguing that the disease "could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1–2 million souls" and calling for an "immediate supplemental appropriation of at least $3 billion."^[98] At the same time that Navarro issued these private warnings, he publicly stated that the American people had "nothing to worry about" regarding the coronavirus.^[99]

On March 27, 2020, Trump appointed Navarro to coordinate the federal government's Defense Production Act policy response during the coronavirus pandemic.^{[100][101][102}] In this position, Navarro promoted domestic production of coronavirus-related supplies in addition to a general nationalist agenda.^[103] He advocated for reducing U.S. reliance on foreign supply chains, stating that "never again should we rely on the rest of the world for our essential medicines and countermeasures."^[104][105] Among other statements, he accused China of "profiteering" from the coronavirus^[106] and warned of economic disruptions resulting from the virus.^[107]

In February 2020, biologist Steven Hatfill became Navarro's advisor with regard to the coronavirus pandemic.^[108] Hatfill was a strong promoter of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID, even though the drug's effectiveness was unproven.^[109][110] By April, Navarro, and the president himself, were touting the drug as a lifesaver.^[111] Navarro clashed with Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, over whether the administration should promote the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus.^[110] In July 2020, Navarro touted a widely criticized study as showing that hydroxychloroquine was an effective coronavirus treatment; public health experts pointed to limitations with the study and to the fact that multiple randomized controlled trials failed to conclude that hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment.^[112][113]

In May 2020, Navarro criticized stay-at-home orders, arguing that the COVID-19 lockdowns would kill "many more" people than the coronavirus.^[114][115] He frequently referred to the virus as the "China virus" or the "CCP virus"^[116] and, in May 2020, accused the Chinese government of sending Chinese citizens to other countries to "seed" the virus.^[117] In July 2020, USA Today published an editorial by Navarro under the headline "Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on", after which White House officials disavowed Navarro's attacks. Under criticism for the editorial, the newspaper later published an apologetic statement that read, in part, "several of Navarro's criticisms of Fauci – on the China travel restrictions, the risk from the coronavirus and falling mortality rates – were misleading or lacked context. As such, Navarro's op-ed did not meet USA Today's fact-checking standards."^[118] During a Fox News appearance in March 2021, Navarro echoed a baseless conspiracy theory that Fauci was the "father" of the virus and had used taxpayer money to finance a Chinese laboratory where it was supposedly developed.^[119]

In August 2020, administration officials terminated a contract to purchase 42,900 ventilators for use in the pandemic that Navarro had directly negotiated for.^[120] A US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson said the cancellation was "subject to internal HHS investigation and legal review", as an oversight subcommittee of the US House of Representatives concluded that the government had overpaid for the ventilators by US$500 million.^[121] The Washington Post reported in March 2021 that congressional investigators were examining whether Navarro had directed over $1 billion in federal funds for medical supplies to companies of his selection, after President Trump had rejected his recommendations.^[122]

Attempts to overturn the 2020 election

Main article: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election

In October 2020, two weeks before the presidential elections, Navarro's office in the White House had begun preparing allegations of election fraud.^[123] In December 2020, Navarro published a report alleging widespread election fraud.^[124] The report repeated discredited conspiracy theories claiming election fraud, including allegations that had been dismissed by the courts and Trump's own election security task force.^[125][126] In the report, Navarro wrote that large initial leads by Trump in battleground states, which turned to leads for Biden as vote counting progressed suggested impropriety, Navarro was actually describing the well-known phenomenon of the "blue shift", caused by the fact that mail-in votes in many states cannot be counted on Election Day itself; those votes tend to lean Democratic, so that an Election Night lead by a Republican candidate can turn into a Democratic lead as the later counts come in.^[126] In the report, Navarro cited many biased and unreliable sources of information, such as One America News Network, Newsmax, Steve Bannon's podcast War Room: Pandemic, John Solomon's Just the News, and Raheem Kassam's The National Pulse, because they provided what he termed "alternative coverage".^[126]

On January 2, 2021, Navarro, along with Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, participated in a call with Georgia election officials in which Trump urged them to overturn the results of the election.^{[127][128][129}] During a January 2, 2021, appearance on Jeanine Pirro's Fox News program, Navarro asserted, "[t]hey stole this and we can prove it," and falsely asserted Joe Biden's inauguration could be postponed to allow for an investigation.^[130][131]

Navarro and Bannon coordinated an effort on January 6, 2021 – called "The Green Bay Sweep" – with more than 100 Republican state legislators.^[132] Navarro later stated, "We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m. [on January 6], Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them ... My role was to provide the receipts for the 100 congressmen or so who would make their cases… who could rely in part on the body of evidence I'd collected".^[133] In the wake of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Navarro appeared on Fox Business Network's Making Money on January 8, telling host Charles Payne that Trump was not to blame and specifically saying that Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, and Mitt Romney "need to shut up".^[134] Days later, Navarro reiterated false claims that Trump had won the election.^[135][136]

Later in 2021, Navarro published In Trump Time, a book in which he describes how he, Bannon, and others worked to delay or overturn Congress's counting of the election votes formalizing Biden's victory, in part through a failed scheme to try to get Pence to "reject" electoral votes for Biden, something Pence had no power to do.^[137] In December 2021, Navarro was still claiming that his falsehoods were meant "to lay the legal predicate for the actions to be taken", despite no evidence of voting fraud being found.^[133]

Post-administration (2021–2025)

Arrests

Contempt of Congress conviction and prison stay

On February 9, 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack subpoenaed Navarro to provide documents and testimony.^[138] He refused to do so and ignored both subpoenas. He made media appearances to defend this behavior in the press. He claimed that Trump was asserting executive privilege on his behalf, so he was exempt from the subpoenas – although, in fact, the president in office, Joe Biden, had possessed sole discretion to assert executive privilege since the end of the Trump administration, and had not done so on Navarro's behalf. Moreover, despite Navarro's claims in the news media, he did not identify any supporting evidence that Trump had even attempted to assert the privilege on his behalf.^[137] Ultimately, Navarro ignored all requirements of both subpoenas without effectively asserting any legally cognizable privilege or exemption. On April 6, 2022, the House of Representatives voted to hold Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for their refusals to testify before the House Select Committee based on executive privilege claims.^[139] In May 2022, Navarro said he had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury and ordered to surrender any documents he had related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.^[140][141] Navarro unsuccessfully sought to block both the House committee's subpoena and the grand jury subpoena.^[141]

On June 2, 2022, a grand jury impaneled in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia indicted Navarro on two counts of contempt of Congress.^[142] Count 1 of the indictment alleged Navarro refused to comply with a subpoena to produce documents; Count 2 alleged refusal to comply with a subpoena for testimony.^[138] Under the applicable law (2 U.S.C. § 192) each count is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year imprisonment.^[143] Navarro was arrested by deputy U.S. marshals at Reagan National Airport as he was about to board a plane to Nashville.^{[144][145][146}] U.S. district judge Amit Mehta on July 15, 2022, signaled that he agreed that the treatment of Navarro at the outset of the criminal case was "unreasonably harsh," noting that the government did not offer self-surrender to Navarro.^[144]

Navarro claimed that Trump had privately asked him to invoke "executive privilege" over the documents sought by the congressional subpoena.^[147] In January 2023, Judge Mehta denied Navarro's effort to dismiss the charges against him, writing, "Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege. And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt."^[147] Mehta noted that Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino (two other Trump advisors whom the House committee had also sought to prosecute for contempt) had produced letters from Trump, in which he directed them to assert executive privilege on his behalf. DOJ chose not to prosecute Meadows and Scavino, and Mehta cited Navarro's failure to produce any similar letter from Trump.^[147] Mehta also rejected Navarro's bid to argue that the congressional subpoena was procedurally invalid.^[147] In a pretrial hearing in August 2023, Navarro claimed that Trump had told him in a February 2022 phone call not to testify to the House committee but failed to produce any evidence of what Trump actually said in the conversation. Trump had already said he would not testify at Navarro's trial.^[148] Two days later, Judge Mehta ruled that Navarro could not claim an "executive privilege" not to testify before the House committee. After the ruling against him, Navarro tried – and failed – to grab a demonstrator's "Trump lost" sign from her at a press conference outside the courthouse.^[149]

On September 5, 2023, a jury was seated.^[150] Three former congressional committee staffers testified as prosecution witnesses; Navarro declined to testify in his own defense^[151][152] or to offer any witnesses for the defense.^[152] Navarro's criminal defense lawyer was Stanley Woodward Jr.^[151] Navarro told reporters that he expected to face legal bills of $750,000. He later said that Trump helped pay $300,000 and while he raised more in an appeal on a website.^[18] After a two-day trial, Navarro was convicted on both counts of contempt of Congress; the jury rejected Navarro's argument that he had not willfully refused to comply with the subpoena.^[151][153] Navarro was the second ex-Trump aide to be convicted of contempt of Congress; Bannon had been convicted of the same offense the preceding year.^[153] On January 16, 2024, a federal judge denied Navarro's request for a new trial.^[154]

Navarro filed an appeal.^[155] Judge Mehta^[156] and the appeals court^[157] denied his request to stay out of prison during the appeal. On September 7, 2023, Navarro was convicted on both counts and on January 25, 2024, he was sentenced to four months in jail and fined $9,500, becoming the first former White House official ever imprisoned on contempt of Congress conviction.^[158] He was ordered to report to a minimum-security federal prison in Miami, Florida by March 19, 2024.^{[159][160][161][162}] Navarro appealed to the Supreme Court to stay the order, but Chief Justice John Roberts rejected the appeal on March 18 in a single-paragraph in-chambers opinion.^[163][164] Navarro spent March 19 – July 17 incarcerated in the elderly prisoner unit of a U.S. Federal penitentiary.^[165][166] While in prison, he asked to spend the final 30 days of his sentence on supervised release, but Mehta denied his request.^[167] During Navarro's prison stay, he was visited by Trump's son Donald Jr., according to his prison consultant Sam Mangel.^[168][169]

Navarro was released on July 17, 2024.^[170] Within hours of being released from prison, Navarro gave a prime time speech endorsing Trump for a second term at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.^[171] In the convention, Navarro said "The J6 committee demanded that I betray Donald John Trump to save my own skin. I refused."^[18] In 2025, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin demoted Elizabeth Aloi and John Crabb Jr., who worked as prosecutors in Navarro's case, to low-level positions.^[18] Navarro stated that he is not seeking a pardon from President Trump.^[172]

Refusal to produce presidential records to National Archives

In August 2022, the Department of Justice sued Navarro in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to compel him to produce official business-related emails from a personal ProtonMail account that he used to conduct White House business. After Trump left office in January 2021, Navarro refused requests from the National Archives to return the records, demanding immunity before he would release the emails.^[173][174] Navarro acknowledged that he had kept between 200 and 250 records that belonged to the government but claimed that there were no legal means to require him to return the records to the National Archives and that producing the emails would infringe his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.^[175]

In March 2023, U.S. district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered Navarro to promptly turn over the records, ruling that Navarro had a "plain" duty to turn over the records to NARA under the Presidential Records Act, which requires government business-related messages on personal accounts to be forwarded to official accounts within 20 business days.^[176] Navarro appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In April 2023, the D.C. Circuit unanimously denied Navarro's request for a stay of the district court's order, writing: "There is no public interest in Navarro's retention of the records, and Congress has recognized that the public has an interest in the Nation's possession and retention of Presidential records."^[175] After the appeals court denied Navarro's stay request, Judge Kollar-Kotelly ordered Navarro to turn over the 200 to 250 records and to conduct searches for additional presidential records.^[175] In February 2024, Kollar-Kotelly said she would appoint a magistrate judge and consider holding Navarro in contempt to ensure his compliance.^[177]

Second Trump administration (2025–present)

On December 4, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced Navarro would be the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing in his second term.^[178] He is one of the few officials from Trump's first term to return for his second term.^[179] He assumed office on January 20, 2025.^[180]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:President_Donald_Trump_signs_Executive_Orders_%2854325855363%29.jpg)President Donald Trump signing Executive Orders, February 10, 2025, in the Oval Office. Navarro is standing behind Trump (left).

In January 2025, amidst Trump's threats to put tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Navarro called NAFTA a "catastrophe" in an interview and said because "China was so much worse," it was ignored "how bad NAFTA was." He also linked America's problems with illegal immigration to NAFTA, saying since the US started exporting corn to Mexico, many Mexican agricultural workers lost their jobs, sending some to the US.^[180] In February 2025, Navarro and Stephen Miller were the leading officials in the economic discussions regarding the imposition of tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico.^[181][182] Navarro was a key official behind Trump's decision to adopt a trade policy memo on the first day of his presidency, his decision to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S., as well as his decision to adopt so-called "reciprocal tariffs" for every country.^[183] Navarro successfully pushed the Trump administration to close the de minimis duty exemption for China, which allowed Chinese products worth less than $800 to be imported duty-free.^[18]

The Financial Times reported in February 2025 that Navarro proposed expelling Canada from the Five Eyes.^[184] A few days later, The Daily Telegraph reported that Navarro pushed US negotiators to start discussions with Canada about reworking and redrawing the Canada–United States border, which reportedly prompted Canada to cease negotiating with the United States until Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer were confirmed to their positions by the Senate.^[185] Navarro was a key official behind Trump's "reciprocal tariff" policy announced in April;^[186] ING Group noted that plans for the policy appeared to align with Navarro's section of Project 2025, titled "The Case for Fair Trade", published in April 2023.^[187] Bloomberg News reported that Navarro urged Trump to adopt a 25% tax on imports or "reciprocal" tariffs based on trade deficits; the latter idea was adopted as part of Trump's announcement.^[188] The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that Navarro played a central role in developing the administration's "reciprocal" tariff formula.^[17][189] Navarro predicted the tariffs would raise $6 trillion, a figure disputed by The Washington Post's Fact Checker.^[18]

On April 5, 2025, Navarro was criticized by Trump advisor Elon Musk, who the NYT estimated to have lost about $31 billion with the new trade tariffs. Musk questioned his educational qualifications from Harvard on X and wrote "He ain't built shit."^[190] In response, Navarro said Musk is not a "car manufacturer" but a "car assembler". On April 8, Musk responded by calling Navarro "a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks", and said he should consult "the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara".^[191] The higher "reciprocal" tariffs were paused on April 9 for 90 days for all countries except China; The Wall Street Journal reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took advantage of Navarro's absence, who was meeting with Kevin Hassett, to meet with Trump in the Oval Office and convince him to announce a pause on tariffs on Truth Social.^[192] That same month, he suggested to the president of pressuring Cambodia, Mexico, and Vietnam to not trade with China.^[193] On May 4, during an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Navarro accused the United Kingdom of being a "compliant servant of communist China" and said "If the Chinese vampire can't suck the American blood, it's going to suck the U.K. blood and the EU blood".^[194]

Navarro has been criticized multiple times for the Trump administration's tariffs against India. On August 7, Kaitlan Collins questioned Navarro on why the U.S. was doubling tariffs on Indian goods over Russian oil imports while not imposing similar penalties on China, which imports more. Navarro responded that China already faced 50% tariffs and warned that increasing them further could harm U.S. interests. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton criticized Navarro's explanation, stating that the tariff policy risked damaging U.S.-India relations and undermining decades of American efforts to align India away from Russia and China.^[195][196] Bolton later alleged that Navarro had attempted to provoke tensions between Trump and Narendra Modi during a meeting that was intended to focus on strategic issues such as "dealing with China." Bolton described the incident as a sideshow, adding, "If you left Peter alone in a room and came back an hour later, he would be in an argument with himself."^[197] On August 18, 2025, Navarro criticized India's continued purchases of Russian crude oil, calling them “opportunistic” and accusing India of acting as a “global clearinghouse” for embargoed Russian energy. Writing in the Financial Times, Navarro argued that India was undermining international efforts to isolate Russia and warned that if India “wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one.”^[198] On August 21, economist Jeffrey Sachs, while condemning the Trump administration's 50% tariffs on Indian goods as “the stupidest tactical move in U.S. foreign policy,” described Navarro as “probably the most incompetent PhD” from his former department, asserting that the policy backfired by weakening U.S.-India relations and strengthening BRICS solidarity.^[199][200] Later, Navarro described the Russia-Ukraine conflict as “Modi’s war,” linking India's purchase of discounted Russian oil to support for Russia's military efforts. In response, journalist Rick Sanchez dismissed Navarro's remarks as “absolutely laughable,” criticizing his understanding of geopolitics and arguing that such statements reflect a broader lack of awareness.^[201][202] Navarro further doubled down on these comments in an August 31 interview on Fox News, where he described Indian purchases of Russian oil as "Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people".^[203]

In September 2025, Navarro dismissed X's Community Notes as “propaganda” after the platform fact-checked his posts accusing India of profiteering from Russian oil and imposing tariffs that he claimed hurt U.S. jobs. Elon Musk defended the system as neutral and open to all perspectives, while the fact-checks reportedly highlighted that India's oil purchases were legal, did not violate sanctions, and served energy security needs.^{[204][205][206}] Navarro then accused Indian users of manipulating the platform and called them "keyboard minions".^[207]

Views

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Navarro_%2853911676739%29.jpg)Navarro speaking with attendees at the Believers Summit at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, July 26, 2024

Navarro has been a staunch critic of relations and trade with China and a strong proponent of reducing U.S. trade deficits. He has attacked Germany, Japan, and China for their currency manipulation. An advocate of protectionist policies, he has called for increasing the size of the American manufacturing sector, setting high tariffs, and repatriating global supply chains. He was a fierce opponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.^[208]

Navarro's views on trade are considered outside the mainstream of economic thought.^[209] According to Bloomberg News, Navarro had "roots as a mainstream economist"; he voiced support for free trade in his 1984 book The Policy Game. He changed his positions as he saw "the globalist erosion of the American economy" develop.^[3] He would later become a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).^[60] According to Politico, Navarro's economic theories are "considered fringe" by his fellow economists.^[210] A New Yorker reporter described Navarro's views on trade and China as so radical "that, even with his assistance, I was unable to find another economist who fully agrees with them."^[211]

:{The Economist described Navarro as having "oddball views".^[212] The George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen has described Navarro as "one of the most versatile and productive American economists of the last few decades", but Cowen noted that he disagreed with his views on trade, which he claimed to go "against a strong professional consensus."

210] [University of Michigan

...economist Justin Wolfers described Navarro's views as "far outside the mainstream," noting that "he endorses few of the key tenets of" the economics profession.^[1] According to Lee Branstetter, economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University and trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Navarro "was never a part of the group of economists who ever studied the global free-trade system... He doesn't publish in journals. What he's writing and saying right now has nothing to do with what he got his Harvard Ph.D. in... He doesn't do research that would meet the scientific standards of that community."^[213] Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, described a tax and trade paper written by Navarro and Wilbur Ross for Trump as "a complete misunderstanding of international trade, on their part."^[46]}:

In 2023, Navarro co-authored the chapter on trade for the ninth edition of the Heritage Foundation's book Mandate for Leadership, which provides the policy agenda for Project 2025.^[214] The chapter, called "The Case for Fair Trade" is part of a dueling chapter on trade policy in which Navarro argues for tariffs and trade restrictions while other authors argue for free trade. The chapter details Navarro's plans to counter China through trade policy.^[215] In the chapter, Navarro writes "America's record on trade – specifically America's chronic and ever-expanding trade deficit – says that America is the globe's biggest trade loser and a victim of unfair, unbalanced, and nonreciprocal trade".^[179] His view is that the tariff adjustments will spur the economy in the long run and yield enough revenue to pay for tax cuts.^[216]

Political positions

Navarro's political affiliations and policy positions are "hotly disputed and across the spectrum." While he lived in Massachusetts studying for his PhD at Harvard, he was a registered Democrat. When he moved to California in 1986, he was initially registered as nonpartisan and became a registered Republican in 1989.^[217] By 1991, he had again re-registered as an Independent, and carried that affiliation during the 1992 San Diego mayoral election. Around this time, he still considered himself a conservative Republican.^[218] Navarro rejoined the Democratic Party in 1994 and remained a Democrat during each of his subsequent political campaigns.^[217] In 1996, while he was running for Congress, Navarro was endorsed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and spoke at the 1996 Democratic National Convention, saying, "I'm proud to be carrying the Clinton-Gore banner." He positioned himself as a "strong environmentalist and a progressive on social issues such as choice, gay rights, and religious freedom."^{[14][219][220}]

Navarro supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008.^[13] Navarro supported President Barack Obama's phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, the adoption of wind power, and carbon taxes in order to stop global warming.^[221] During the 2016 presidential election, Navarro described himself as "a Reagan Democrat and a Trump Democrat abandoned by my party."^[222] Despite this, Navarro was critical of Ronald Reagan's defense spending, called GDP growth during the administration a "Failure of Reaganomics"^[223] and described the "10-5-3" tax proposal as "a very large corporate subsidy."^[224] During the early stage of the Trump administration, Navarro was still known to be a Democrat, but by February 2018 he had again re-registered as a Republican.^[85] In the 2024 Republican National Convention, Navarro said "Democrats come for your kids. They are indoctrinating them with poisonous attitudes on race and gender."^[18]

Border adjustment tax

Navarro supports a tax policy called "border adjustment", which, as commonly used in the VATs of most countries, taxes all imports at the domestic rate while rebating tax on exports, essentially transforming taxes from taxes on production to taxes on consumption.^[213] In response to criticism that the border adjustment tax could hurt U.S. companies and put jobs at risk, Navarro called it "fake news".^[213]

Criticism of China

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:President_Trump_at_the_G20_%2848162295291%29.jpg)Navarro joins U.S. president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping at their bilateral meeting, June 29, 2019.

Navarro is seen as very hawkish on China. According to The Guardian, Navarro sees China as a "despicable, parasitic, brutal, brass-knuckled, crass, callous, amoral, ruthless and totally totalitarian imperialist power that reigns over the world's leading cancer factory, its most prolific propaganda mill and the biggest police state and prison on the face of the earth".^[225] According to Politico, "Navarro is perhaps the most extreme advocate in Washington, and maybe in all of economics, for an aggressive stance toward China."^[210] According to Vox, "Aided by cartoonish and frequently offensive stereotypes of the Chinese national character, Navarro tends to believe that there is something fundamentally underhanded and evil about China, regardless of any evidence to the contrary".^[226]

In Politico's description of Navarro's book The Coming China Wars, "Navarro uses military language to refer to China's trade policies, referring to its 'conquest' of the world's export markets, which has 'vaporized literally millions of manufacturing jobs and driven down wages.' ... China's aspirations are so insatiable, he claims, that eventually there will be a clash over 'our most basic of all needs – bread, water, and air.'"^[34] Navarro has described the entry of China to the World Trade Organization as one of the United States' biggest mistakes.^[33] To respond to the threat posed to the United States, Navarro has advocated for 43% tariffs, the repudiation of trade pacts, major increases in military expenditures, and strengthened military ties with Taiwan.^[33][34] The New York Times notes that "a wide range of economists have warned that curtailing trade with China would damage the American economy, forcing consumers to pay higher prices for goods and services."^[31] Navarro has reportedly also encouraged Trump to enact a 25% tariff on Chinese steel imports, something that "trade experts worry... would upend global trade practices and cause countries to retaliate, potentially leading to a trade war".^[58]

Navarro has said that a large part of China's competitive advantage over the United States stems from unfair trade practices.^[24] Navarro has criticized China for pollution, poor labor standards, government subsidies, producing "contaminated, defective and cancerous" exports, currency manipulation, and theft of US intellectual property.^[24][227] In his 2012 documentary, Navarro said that China caused the loss of 57,000 US factories and 25 million jobs. Navarro has maintained that China manipulates its currency, and on August 5, 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department officially designated China as a "currency manipulator."^[33][228]

Of the more than a dozen China specialists contacted by Foreign Policy, most either did not know of Navarro or had only interacted with him briefly.^[33] Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago professor of Chinese History, said that his "recollection is that [Navarro] generally avoided people who actually knew something about the country."^[33] Columnist Gordon G. Chang was the only China watcher contacted by Foreign Policy who defended Navarro, but even he noted that he disagreed with Navarro's claims of currency manipulation, opposition to the TPP, and calls for high tariffs.^[33] James McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said that Navarro's books and documentary on China "have close to zero credibility with people who know the country," and are filled with "hyperbole, inaccuracies" and a "cartoonish caricature of China that he puts out."^[33] Some of Navarro's views on China fit within the mainstream, such as criticism of Chinese currency manipulation (pre-2015), concern that China's rapid ascension to the World Trade Organization harmed the Rust Belt, and criticism of China's weak environmental regulations and poor labor standards.^[15][24]

Fake expert "Ron Vara"

In six of his books about China, Navarro quotes a purported trade expert named "Ron Vara", whom he describes as a China hawk and former Harvard PhD doctoral student in economics. Vara makes Sinophobic remarks about China and the Chinese, such as "you've got to be nuts to eat Chinese food" and "only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel".^[229] However, a 2019 investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that no such person existed, and that "Ron Vara" (an anagram of Navarro) appeared to represent views that Navarro himself held.^[229][230] When he was asked about Vara by The Chronicle, Navarro admitted to making up the character, an author surrogate, and quoting him in his books.^[230]

In the wake of the disclosure, many news outlets have referred to Vara as a "fake expert" or "fake economist" (often in their headlines).^{[231][232][233][234}] Prentice Hall, the publisher of Death by China, said that it would add a disclaimer to later editions informing readers that Vara was not a real person.^[235] Economist Glenn Hubbard, who co-authored Seeds of Destruction with Navarro,^[236] said that he was not aware that Vara was fictional, and that he disapproved of Navarro attributing information to a fictional source.^[237]

In December 2019, a memo purportedly written by Ron Vara began circulating in Washington, D.C. The memo highlighted the "Keep Tariff Argument" and the use of tariffs against China a few days before implementing an additional 15% tariff on $160 billion of Chinese-made goods. Navarro later confirmed that he had written the memo.^[238] In response to the "Ron Vara" character, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China spokesperson Hua Chunying accused Navarro of "smearing China with lies".^[239]

Germany

Navarro drew controversy when he accused Germany of using a "grossly undervalued" euro to "exploit" the rest of the European Union and the United States.^[240] Politico noted that the German government does not set the value of the euro.^[34] Economists and commentators are divided on the accuracy of Navarro's remarks.^[241][242] Economist Paul Krugman said that Navarro was right and wrong at the same time: "Yes, Germany in effect has an undervalued currency relative to what it would have without the euro... But does this mean that the euro as a whole is undervalued against the dollar? Probably not."^[243]

Manufacturing

Navarro argues that the decline in US manufacturing jobs is chiefly due to "unfair trade practices and bad trade deals. And if you don't believe that, just go to the booming factories in Germany, in Japan, in Korea, in China, in Malaysia, in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in Italy – every place that we're running deficits with."^[244] However, many economists attribute the decline in manufacturing jobs chiefly to automation and other innovations that allow manufacturing firms to produce more goods with fewer workers, rather than trade.^[244][245]

Navarro has been a proponent of strengthening the manufacturing sector's role in the national economy: "We envision a more Germany-style economy, where 20 percent of our workforce is in manufacturing. ... And we're not talking about banging tin in the back room."^[213] The New York Times notes that "experts on manufacturing ... doubt that the government can significantly increase factory employment, noting that mechanization is the major reason fewer people are working in factories."^[31]

Opposition to trade deals

Navarro has criticized the United States–South Korea Free Trade Agreement.^[246] Navarro called for the United States to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement, and tried to convince Trump to initiate a withdrawal.^[58] Working together with former AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, a revised NAFTA agreement was put in place during the Trump administration.

Navarro opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Navarro claimed in an April 2015 op-ed, "To woo us, their spinmeisters boast the TPP will spur American exports to stimulate sorely needed economic growth. In truth, the American economy will suffer severely. This is because the TPP will hammer two main drivers of economic growth – domestic investment and 'net exports.'"^[247] Navarro said in March 2017 that TPP "would have been a 'death knell' to America's auto and vehicle parts industry that we "urgently need to bring back to full life.'"^[227]

Navarro also opposed Australian tariff exemptions; he asserted that "Australia is just killing our aluminum market," and that "what they do is they just flood our markets", despite Australia providing only 2.5% of U.S. aluminum imports.^[248][249] Australia ranked only 17th for exports of steel to the U.S. and eighth in exports of aluminum over the past 10 years.

Trade as a national security risk

Navarro has framed trade as a national security risk.^[34][250] Navarro has characterized foreign purchases of U.S. companies as a threat to national security, but according to NPR, this is "a fringe view that puts him at odds with the vast majority of economists."^[251] Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin noted that the US government already reviews foreign purchases of companies with military or strategic value, and has on occasion rejected such deals.^[251] Irwin said that Navarro had not substantiated his claim with any evidence.^[251]

Navarro has also said that the United States has "already begun to lose control of [its] food supply chain", which according to NPR, "sounded pretty off-the-wall to a number of economists" who noted that the United States is a massive exporter of food.^[251] Dermot Hayes, an agribusiness economist at Iowa State University, described Navarro's statement as "uninformed".^[251] Navarro has called for repatriating global supply chains.^[34][227] According to Politico's Jacob Heilbrunn, such a move "would be enormously costly and take years to execute".^[34] Navarro criticized the outsourcing of critical materials – like the production of essential medical supplies – to China, in light of the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.^[252]

Trade deficits

Main article: Balance of trade

Navarro is a proponent of the notion that trade deficits are bad in and of themselves, a view which is widely rejected by trade experts and economists.^{[253][254][255}] In a white paper co-authored with Wilbur Ross, Navarro stated, "when a country runs a trade deficit by importing more than it exports, this subtracts from growth."^[256] In a Wall Street Journal op-ed defending his views, Navarro stated, "If we are able to reduce our trade deficits through tough, smart negotiations, we should be able to increase our growth."^[257]

Harvard University economics professor Gregory Mankiw has said that Navarro's views on the trade deficit are based on the kind of mistakes that "even a freshman at the end of ec 10 knows."^[254][258] Tufts University professor Daniel W. Drezner said about Navarro's op-ed, "as someone who's written on this topic I could not for the life of me understand his reasoning".^[259] According to Tyler Cowen, "close to no one" in the economics profession agrees with Navarro's idea that a trade deficit is bad in and of itself.^[260] Nobel laureate Angus Deaton described Navarro's attitude on trade deficits as "an old-fashioned mercantilist position."^[255]

The Economist has described Navarro's views on the trade deficit as "dodgy economics",^[24] while the Financial Times has described them as "poor economics".^[261] Economists Scott Sumner, Olivier Blanchard,^[227] and Phil Levy^[262] have also criticized Navarro's views on the trade deficit. Dan Ikenson, director of the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, goes so far as to call Navarro a "charlatan" and says that "99.9 per cent of respectable economists would eschew" what he says: "He says imports deduct from output, and he calls that accounting identity the 'economic growth formula'. He thinks that for every dollar we import, our GDP is reduced by a dollar. I don't know how he got his PhD at Harvard."^[263]

Personal life

In 2001, Navarro married Leslie Lebon, a California architect. The couple lived in Laguna Beach, with Lebon's son from a previous marriage, while Navarro was a professor at UC Irvine.^[264] In late 2018, Lebon filed for divorce in Orange County.^[265] Their divorce became final in December 2020.^[266] At the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Navarro announced that he was engaged to a woman named Bonnie.^[267]

Bibliography

• Red Moon Rising: How America Will Beat China on the Final Frontier (2024)
• In Trump Time: My Journal of America's Plague Year (2021)
• Crouching Tiger: What China's Militarism Means for the World (2015)
• Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action (2011)
• Seeds of Destruction (with Glenn Hubbard) (2010)
• Always a Winner: Finding Your Competitive Advantage in an Up and Down Economy (2009)
• The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage (2006)
• The Coming China Wars (2006)
• What the Best MBAs Know (2005)
• Principles of Economics: Business, Banking, Finance, and Your Everyday Life (2005)
• When the Market Moves, Will You Be Ready? (2003)
• If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks^[268] (2001)
• Bill Clinton's Agenda for America (1993)
• Job Opportunities Under Clinton/Gore (with Craig Adams) (1993)
• The Policy Game (1984)
• The Dimming of America: The Real Costs of Electric Utility Regulation (1984)

References

...

---

OOPS JUST KUDLOW AND MOORE

MMA

Right-wing media distract from GOP sabotage of the Affordable Care Act

Trump's media apologists praise his lackluster replacement health care proposal

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 02/03/26

After Republicans let enhanced premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans lapse at the end of 2025, health insurance premium costs for many Americans have risen significantly — and are projected to more than double for those who received those subsidies — and the number of signups has plummeted.

Now that Trump has announced his “Great Healthcare Plan” — a vague set of health care policies — and a rural hospital fund established by Trump’s tax cuts announced its first round of funding, right-wing media have jumped on board, ignoring Republicans’ long history of sabotaging the ACA in favor of claiming that the program is unaffordable and praising Trump’s policy ideas, which fail to address the problems he and Republicans helped to create.

Analyses predict massive spikes in insurance premiums and millions losing their insurance from the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits

• • AP on January 1: “Health subsidies expire, launching millions of Americans into 2026 with steep insurance hikes.” The Associated Press reported on January 1, “Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees expired overnight, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year. Democrats forced a 43-day government shutdown over the issue. Moderate Republicans called for a solution to save their 2026 political aspirations. President Donald Trump floated a way out, only to back off after conservative backlash. In the end, no one’s efforts were enough to save the subsidies before their expiration date.” The Associated Press, [1/1/26]

• • A September KFF analysis estimated that the expiration of the enhanced premium tax cuts would “more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay annually for premiums—a 114% increase from an average of $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026,” and approved rate changes show an average increase of 20% for all enrollees, more than double the increase for the previous year. An analysis by the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker noted: “This is the largest rate change insurers have requested since 2018, the last time that policy uncertainty contributed to sharp premium increases.” KFF, [9/30/25; Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, updated 1/15/26]

• • In June, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 4.2 million people will become uninsured by 2034 from the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits. The CBO also estimated that permanently extending these tax credits would increase the number of people with insurance by 3.8 million in 2035. Congressional Budget Office, [6/4/25, 9/18/25]

• • According to KFF, January data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows that ACA Marketplace sign-ups this year so far are “down by over a million people.” KFF cautioned that “these data may not fully show how much the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits has affected enrollment in the Marketplaces. A better picture of the enrollment changes likely won’t be known until this summer, when effectuated enrollment data are typically released.” KFF, [1/29/26]

• ## As ACA tax credits lapsed, right-wing media criticized the ACA itself as unaffordable or blamed Democrats

• Right-wing media are claiming that the Affordable Care Act has caused Marketplace plans, which cover specific essential health benefits, to become unaffordable. Yet according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Marketplace costs are growing at similar rates as employer-sponsored health insurance, which is also heavily subsidized in that employer contributions are not taxed. And in fact, it was Republicans who controlled Congress and refused to extend the enhanced premium tax cuts before they expired, even though they extended Trump’s tax cuts for the rich before their scheduled expiration.

• • Fox contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier: “What happened is these insurance companies are being told that you have tvo cover all of these patients. You have all of these mandatory things you have to cover, which — that was a big flaw of the Affordable Care Act, which rose costs by essentially saying everything has to be covered.” Saphier continued: “Imagine if your car insurance covered your oil changes, covered everything about your car. That's not how insurance works. But the Affordable Care Act made that, which is why it got so expensive.” Saphier also said she was “frustrated” that “these politicians have failed” to extend the subsidies, even as she criticized the ACA. Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [1/1/26]

• • Newsmax guest Jennifer Kelly: “The nightmare for Americans remains many still paying premiums higher than their own mortgage payment. And the blame for that falls squarely on Barack Obama and the Democrats’ shoulders. So the GOP should just keep pounding that message all the way to the midterms.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [1/1/26]

• • Fox contributor Lisa Boothe called it the “Affordable Care Act that’s not affordable.”Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [1/1/26]

• • Fox host Julie Banderas: “Democrats, by the way, who backed Obamacare, … they are the ones that actually put a halt on Obama’s subsidies, which effectively are going to increase people’s medical care costs.” Conservative economist Stephen Moore replied, “What we don’t have in America today is affordable health care.” Fox News, *Fox News Live*, [1/1/26]

• • Newsmax guest host David Harris Jr.: “This is the real legacy of Obamacare, friends: skyrocketing prices, more government dependance, and a broken system that Democrats propped up with temporary handouts to mask the inevitable.” Newsmax, *The Chris Salcedo Show*, [1/1/26]

• • Fox Business host David Asman: “The premiums have not gone down. They have tripled. They have gone up three times with Obamacare. ... And now they're blaming Republicans for the rates going up.” Fox Business, *Kudlow*, [1/2/26]

• • Newsmax host Rob Astorino: “It’s not really debatable anymore that the so-called Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has been a very expensive failure. And Democrats don't care how unaffordable or broken the system actually is. They just want to shovel more money into the pit and add more people to it.” Astorinio added: “Democrats created the mess. Republicans are going to get the blame.” Newsmax, *Saturday Agenda*, [1/3/26]

• • Fox contributor Mollie Hemingway: “This Obamacare has been a failure, Democrats know it but don’t want to deal with it, and Republicans, too many of them probably don’t have the courage to tackle it.” Fox Business, *Varney & Co.*, [1/8/26]

• • Newsmax senior political analyst Rick Santorum: The enhanced premium tax credits were “all a farce to keep the gravy train rolling.” Santorum also downplayed the loss of more than a million ACA enrollees compared to the previous year, saying that many people were fraudulently enrolled and “the quote dramatic increases actually didn’t affect very many people.” Newsmax, *The Record*, [1/16/26]

• • Fox Business host Dagen McDowell downplayed enrollment losses from the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits. Citing conservative economist Stephen Moore, she said: “It was the fact that the number of people who dropped out of Obamacare was, for the current enrollment year, was incredibly small. And these super-sized subsidies going away had minimal impact on the number of people enrolling in Obamacare.” Fox Business, *The Bottom Line*, [1/16/26]

• • Fox Business host Elizabeth MacDonald: “Since Obamacare passed, insurance premiums have nearly tripled.” Fox Business, *The Evening Edit*, [1/19/26]

• • Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni onFox & Friends First: The premium increases from the lapsed tax credits are “once again exposing yet another lie of Obamacare, the so-called Affordable Care Act. Obviously it was the unaffordable care act.”Fox News, *Fox & Friends First*, [1/28/26]

• ## But Republicans have long been sabotaging the ACA in multiple ways

• Long before Trump’s second term tax cut for the rich further eviscerated the ACA, Republicans were sabotaging the health insurance expansion in numerous ways. This includes at least 70 separate attempts by Republicans in Congress to repeal or weaken the ACA, according to The Washington Post.

• • The first Trump administration undertook nearly 100 separate actions “to sabotage the ACA by destabilizing private insurance markets or reversing the law’s historic gains in health coverage.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ list of actions taken by the first Trump administration to sabotage the ACA spans from January 20, 2017, when Trump was first sworn into office, to January 19, 2021, his last full day in office during his first term. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, [2/2/21]

• • In 2015, The New York Times described a Republican campaign against risk corridor provisions of the ACA as “legislative sabotage.” The Times called a successful effort led by then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to limit funding to the “so-called risk corridor provision” of the ACA, which protected “insurance companies against financial losses,” “quiet legislative sabotage.” According to a later study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the insurers denied risk corridor payments in 2015 “had 7% higher premium increases over the next two years than did non-claiming insurers.” The New York Times, [12/9/15; Fierce Healthcare, 12/20/17]

• • In 2013, The Washington Post reported that Republicans promised to block any efforts to build a federal exchange and urged states to “refuse to build their own online insurance marketplaces.” The Washington Post, [11/2/13]

• • In 2013, Politico reported that “Republicans refused repeatedly to appropriate dedicated funds” for the ACA’s implementation. Politico noted that after “most Republican governors declined to create their own state insurance exchanges” and “congressional Republicans refused repeatedly to appropriate dedicated funds” needed for the federal government to “take at least partial responsibility for creating marketplaces serving [those] states.” Republicans’ stonewalling left “the Health and Human Services Department and other agencies to cobble together HealthCare.gov by redirecting funds from existing programs.” Politico, [11/1/13]

• • Many Republican-controlled states initially refused to participate in the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, leaving millions without insurance. The New York Times reported in 2013 that many states “largely controlled by Republicans … declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid.” The New York Times, [10/2/13]

• ## Right-wing media have also heaped praise on Trump’s health plan and rural hospital fund

• Instead of calling on Congress to extend the expired tax credits, Trump announced his “Great Healthcare Plan” and a rural hospital fund created last year announced its first disbursements. Right-wing media endorsed both.

• • Fox contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier: The rural hospital fund is “going to help health care tremendously.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [1/1/26]

• • Fox Business host Dagen McDowell: “The year of health care is here. Or hopefully fixing it. Supersized Obamacare subsidies have officially expired, and the Trump administration's sweeping changes to the industry are now taking effect.” Co-host Brian Brenberg added: “Beginning this month, all 50 states will receive a share of $10 billion in federal funding aimed at revitalizing and protecting rural health care systems.” Fox Business, The Bottom Line, [1/2/26]

• • Fox Business host Larry Kudlow introduced a segment by calling Trump’s plan “the greatest health care plan in the history of civilization.” Fox Business, Kudlow, [1/15/26]

• • Fox Business host Brian Brenberg: Trump’s health plan is “good economics” because it’s “getting consumers more in touch with the spending rather than all of the middlemen.” Fox Business, Kudlow, [1/15/26]

• • Newsmax host Katrina Szish: “The president putting decision-making power back into the hands of Americans. Seems practical to me.” Newsmax, Ed Henry: The Briefing, [1/16/26]

• • Newsmax host Shaun Kraisman called Trump’s plan a “new framework of ideas to revolutionize health care in America.” Newsmax, The National Report, [1/16/26]

• • Fox guest Steve Forbes: Trump’s plan “could cut out, over time, a trillion dollars [from] the cost of health care.” Fox Business, The Big Money Show, [1/16/26]

• • Newsmax White House correspondent Mike Carter: The rural hospital fund is “focusing on those folks, those Americans that live in more rural parts of the country, making sure they have great access to health care by funding rural hospitals.”Newsmax, Newsline, [1/16/26]

• ## Experts say Trump's plan will do little to improve health care affordability and will still result in millions losing their insurance

• The Washington Post described Trump’s plan as a “grab bag of initiatives” that “falls far short of President Donald Trump’s promises to deliver a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.” The Post continued:

Trump’s proposal includes a mix of initiatives that are already underway, such as Trump’s push to cut U.S. drug prices by linking them with the lower cost of drugs sold abroad, and some of his stalled ambitions, such as his desire to redirect billions of dollars in federal funding away from health insurers and toward average Americans. Trump also called to restore funding for the ACA’s cost-sharing reduction program, an insurance subsidy program that he ended in his first term, and to institute “maximum price transparency” by requiring hospitals and insurers to make more information available to consumers.

The proposal does not include new ideas to expand health coverage or simplify America’s often-byzantine health care system.

Additionally, other existing Republican policies stemming from their latest tax cut for the rich are estimated to cause up to 15 million Americans, and possibly more, to lose their health insurance. Other experts said Trump’s plans are so vague that it is unknown what effects they may have but they put people with preexisting conditions at risk and don’t reestablish the expired subsidies:

• • Trump’s plan to shift funds from subsidizing insurance plan premiums to health savings accounts is “a terrible approach for” the part of the population that needs assistance with expensive health care bills, according to Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health health policy professor Gerard Anderson. Bloomberg, [1/23/26]

• • According to a December Cornell Health Policy Center survey of health care policy scholars, 70% “believed that depositing the value of a household’s enhanced premium tax credit into an HSA (rather than applying it directly to monthly premiums) would measurably worsen Marketplace affordability.” Health Affairs, [12/17/25]

• • KFF senior vice president Cynthia Cox: “The president’s plan is vague and, without knowing more, it is impossible to say what the implications would be for people with pre-existing conditions who rely on the ACA markets. The framework does not explicitly say people with pre-existing conditions are protected.” In a comment to NPR, Cox also said: “This looks much more like a compilation of Republican ideas, including some that are already in the Affordable Care Act. It doesn't appear to address the rising premium payments that we're seeing.” KFF, [1/16/26; NPR, 1/15/26]

• • Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy research professor Edwin Park: “The plan clearly opposes extension of the expiring ACA marketplace subsidies, without which roughly 4 million people will end up uninsured and many millions more will see their marketplace premiums double or increase by even more.” Park added that Trump’s plan also “appropriates the ‘cost-sharing reductions’ under the Affordable Care Act,” which he said would “have the effect of reducing premium tax credit amounts for those eligible for subsidies (while lowering unsubsidized premiums). The result would actually be more uninsured as low-income people see smaller subsidies and higher premiums they cannot afford.” The Guardian, [1/15/26]

• • University of Pittsburgh assistant professor Miranda Yaver: “The result would be inequity (and likely worse health outcomes) and further sabotage of the progress of the ACA.”She added that “it isn’t clear that the plans the Trump administration wants to help people to purchase would be ACA-compliant, which would mean that while healthy patients may enjoy cost savings, there won’t be remotely sufficient protection for the millions of Americans with pre-existing medical conditions.” The Guardian, [1/15/26]

• • NYU Grossman School of Medicine head of medical ethics Art Caplan: “It’s a broken plan and a broken idea.”He added: “The average consumer doesn’t really have time to go shopping when they need to go to the hospital for a premature birth or a car accident.” NBC News, [1/15/26]

• • Multiple studies have concluded that consumers simply don’t shop for cheaper health care.A 2018 New York Times report explained that even though “scholars have estimated that as much as 30 or 40 percent of care” is “shoppable,” studies show “very few people shop for this type of care.” It also covered a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper examining how people sought out nonemergency MRIs, which found that, “in the context of other studies … if people can’t shop for elective M.R.I.s, there’s hardly a chance they are going to do so with other health care procedures that are more complicated and variable.” A 2024 KFF analysis of Medicare beneficiaries also concluded that “the vast majority of the nation’s 67 million Medicare beneficiaries will not shop around among the coverage options for 2025 or switch plans,” even though it’s “a decision that could have a significant impact on enrollees’ coverage and costs.” The KFF analysis determined that “nearly 7 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries (69%) did not compare their Medicare coverage with other Medicare options during the program’s annual open enrollment period for coverage in 2022.” The New York Times, [7/30/18; KFF, 9/26/24]

• • KFF Medicare policy expert Juliette Cubanski: “Generally speaking, most people with insurance coverage will continue to be better off using their insurance to obtain medications rather than purchasing through the TrumpRx direct-to-consumer portal.” NBC News, [1/8/26]

• ## Trump’s rural hospital fund does not replace the rural medical funding he’s cut, and he’s using it to force states to adopt his policies

• The rural hospital fund was added to Trump’s tax cut bill for the rich to convince Republican holdouts to pass the law after they expressed concerns that the Medicaid cuts in the bill would devastate rural health care. The $50 billion fund doesn’t come close to replacing the rural Medicaid funding that was cut in Trump’s tax cut bill, and one state senator characterized it as a thinly disguised “sort of blackmail” given that it’s being used to coerce states into adopting Trump administration priorities and the money can be clawed back at a later date.

• • KFF explained that the rural hospital fund “provides $50 billion for state grants” over a five-year period, of which half is to be distributed “equally among all states with an approved application,” and the other half subject to the Trump administration’s discretion.KFF noted that “while the fund is described as a ‘rural’ program, the law appears to give states some ability to direct some of the dollars to urban and suburban areas, pending CMS approval.” KFF further noted that “while many of the major cuts related to Medicaid and the ACA Marketplaces under the law are not time limited, the rural health fund is temporary.” KFF, [8/4/25]

• • The reconciliation package also cuts an estimated $137 billion in rural Medicaid spending over 10 years. KFF explained that its estimate may undercount the lost funding for rural areas: “The analysis allocates each state’s estimated spending reductions from the KFF analysis of the reconciliation package to urban and rural areas using the percentage of Medicaid spending that paid for services used by rural enrollees within each state. The estimates may understate the effects on rural areas because they do not account for the full change in total Medicaid spending, which would include the federal spending reductions and the associated reduction in state Medicaid spending stemming from lower enrollment. The estimates also do not account for spending cuts related to Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace coverage from the reconciliation bill, the expiration of enhanced ACA premium tax credits that were enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of proposed Marketplace integrity rules.” KFF, [7/24/25]

• • CBS News: An analysis from the University of North Carolina's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research determined that 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closure due to the Republicans' cuts of Medicaid spending. The research was commissioned by Democratic senators. CBS News, [6/12/25]

• • AP: $12 billion of the fund is tied to “whether states are implementing health policies prioritized by the Trump administration’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ initiative” and can be clawed back if “state leaders don’t pass promised policies.” This includes further restricting the types of food that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds could be used to purchase. The Associated Press, [12/29/25]

//

1. ### Fox misleadingly claimed that a government shutdown would impede relief for winter storms, glossing over the real threat to disaster-stricken communities

02/03/26 1:38 PM EST

2. ### Fox won’t tell viewers that the UAE bought off Trump

02/03/26 11:00 AM EST

3. ### Border Czar Tom Homan in resurfaced Fox interview: “We need a judicial warrant for a search”

02/03/26

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Patel: FBI Thwarts 'Potential Terrorist Attack'

Home | Politics

Tags: peter navarro | walter giardina | donald trump | fbi

Navarro: Fmr FBI Agent Drove Partisan Cases Against Trump

By Jim Thomas | Wednesday, 20 August 2025

Former White House adviser Peter Navarro has called for a full investigation into retired FBI agent Walter Giardina, accusing him of orchestrating politically motivated operations against President Donald Trump and his allies, including Navarro himself, Breitbart reported.

Navarro, a senior trade adviser in Trump first administration, urged Congress and federal authorities to launch an inquiry into Giardina, whom he describes as the central figure in a long-running campaign of "weaponized justice."

Navarro's accusations are detailed in his new book "I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To," in which he argued that Giardina played a pivotal role in nearly every major investigation into Trump over the past decade, from the Steele dossier to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe and beyond.

"I still feel the cold steel of the handcuffs Giardina and his gaggle of armed agents slapped on me at Reagan National Airport," wrote Navarro, recalling his 2022 arrest. "I will never forget the sight of my fiancee being perp-walked out of that same terminal as part of the circus arrest Giardina staged for maximum humiliation."

According to Navarro, Giardina was among the first FBI officials to review the Steele dossier in 2016.

He claimed that whistleblowers told Congress that Giardina vouched for the dossier as "corroborated" despite its most explosive allegations later proving to be false. The document became central to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane probe and helped justify secret surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's 2019 report found 17 errors or omissions in the bureau's applications for surveillance warrants, including exaggerated claims about Steele's reliability. Navarro argueed Giardina's actions directly enabled what Trump has long branded the "Russia hoax."

Navarro also ties Giardina to the Mueller investigation, alleging the agent improperly wiped his government-issued laptop, potentially erasing key records from the inquiry. Despite that, Giardina reportedly received an internal award for his work on the team.

Whistleblower disclosures to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, further implicated Giardina in a separate 2017 case known as Crimson River, which pursued claims that Egypt funneled $10 million to Trump's campaign. That investigation, Navarro said, never produced evidence but was classified in a way that restricted oversight.

Navarro accuses Giardina of using the Constitution's Emoluments Clause as a "political fishing license" to target Trump's business dealings and later spearheading Operation Arctic Frost, a Jan. 6-related probe that led to the seizure of phones from both Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.

The most personal chapter of Navarro's allegations centers on his own 2022 arrest. Navarro said the bureau turned his indictment into "political theater," even subjecting his fiancee to a public walkout, though she was not accused of wrongdoing.

Navarro was held in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated Jan. 6. Sentenced to four months in prison, he described his conviction as the "partisan weaponization of the judicial system."

Navarro insisted that firing politicized FBI officials is insufficient.

"That's why Giardina, along with a long list of alleged lawfare perpetrators, must be investigated," he wrote. "Because if they are not, they will do it again.

"If they can come for me, they can come for you," Navarro said.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Jim Thomas ✉

Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.

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ON BOOK TOUR? BANNON?

AN 9 25

Senior Trump White House Counselor Peter Navarro is raging at “they” — seemingly Democrats and the left — for consequences he and fellow MAGA allies have brought on themselves, including prison time. And he appeared to blame the left for the assassination of Charlie Kirk as well.

In a Fox Business interview, Navarro, who has promoted conspiracy theories, highlighted on Tuesday his prison sentence and that of Steve Bannon, both for contempt of Congress. Both were sentenced to several months in prison.

But Navarro’s long litany of complaints went further. He blasted the disbarment recommendation of coup memo author John Eastman, and that of Jeff Clark—who reportedly “tried to help Trump subvert the 2020 election.”

He also suggested that “they” attempted to “bankrupt” former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t a Close Call’: Dem Floats Shutdown After Trump’s Reporter Threat

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And he appeared to blame the assassination of conservative commentator and activist Charlie Kirk on the left.

“As you know, ‘I Went to Prison, So You Won’t Have To’— it’s the book I wrote, and it’s just a warning,” Navarro told host Maria Bartiromo.

“Everybody involved in my imprisonment was a Democrat,” Navarro alleged, claiming he was a “political prisoner.”

“I’ll tell you this, this is the age of accountability, okay?” he declared. “If we don’t hold these people accountable, they’ll do it again.”

Navarro said that his book is “a warning to everybody in America that if they didn’t come for me and Donald Trump, put the Bannon in prison, bankrupt Rudy Giuliani, take away the law cards of Jeff Clark and John Eastman and kill, kill, kill Charlie Kirk, and try to kill President Trump — twice.”

READ MORE: ‘You Have a Lot of Hate’: Trump Threatens Reporter After Hate Speech Question

“There has to be accountability, ’cause they’re just gonna keep doing it,” Navarro declared, not specifying who “they” are, while having talked about Democrats.

Bartiromo chimed in, saying, “I mean, the level, the level that they have stooped to is so extraordinary, and it’s unbelievable. I mean, truly is unbelievable.”

She also did not explain who “they” are.

Navarro is also one of many on the right who appear to be placing blame on the left, as an entity, for the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

The Trump administration, and especially the President, has directly or indirectly blamed the “radical left” for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, even as the suspected shooter’s motives and political beliefs, if any, remain unclear.

“For years,” Trump said in an address from the Oval Office the night of Kirk’s killing, “those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans, like Charlie, to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

Vice President JD Vance echoed Trump’s remarks on Monday, saying, “we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday declared, “Yes, who killed Charlie [Kirk]?” Left wing radicals. And they will be held accountable.”

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an 8 25

Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump’s top trade official and the architect of his massively unpopular trade war and sweeping tariff plans, admits that the majority of economists do not agree with the administration’s stance that tariffs are actually “tax cuts.”

Tariffs are taxes paid by importers on goods and services as they enter the country, and those costs often make their way to consumers through higher prices. While some businesses initially absorbed the added expense when President Trump’s tariffs began, July’s wholesale prices jumped 0.9% — more than four times the 0.2% economists expected and the largest monthly increase in over three years — signaling that consumers will be bearing more of the burden.

Not according to Navarro, the Senior Counselor to the President for Trade and Manufacturing who was sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress after the first Trump administration.

“No tariffs, no tax cuts,” Navarro told CNBC on Thursday (video below), referring to the massive tax cut package— central to President Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill”—that the administration claims will be partly offset by collected tariff revenue.

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READ MORE: Inflation ‘Starting to Boil’: Dire Economic News for Trump — Worst in Three Years

“Are tariffs price hikes or tax cuts?” Navarro posed. “I say they’re tax cuts.”

“I mean, many, many economists would say that they’re tax hikes,” the CNBC host replied, “because ultimately, a consumer will pay for some of those increased prices.”

“Look,” a frustrated Navarro responded, “that debate has been going on since the first [Trump] term, and most economists just don’t agree with us.”

“The problem with most economists is they got it wrong the first time around, just, spectacularly wrong. So, who has credibility here? The Trump administration, or the economists?”

The CNBC host continued, saying, “we’re hearing from retail companies about passing on higher prices to the consumer. Who do you see is paying for all of these tariffs that are coming in? I mean, it’s either the people who buy the stuff, the people who make the stuff, or the people who sell the stuff.”

Navarro was quick to respond.

READ MORE: Trump Melts Down Over Elizabeth Warren’s Accusations

“It’s the foreigners, the exporters who are heavily dependent on this market, and we see this clearly in the data,” he claimed, contrary to multiple reports that show importers and retailers are increasingly passing on the tariff costs to consumers.

“We’ve collected over $100 billion in tariffs already,” he continued. “We’ve had zero inflation from that.”

Experts disagree.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said Trump’s tariffs will add about four-tenths of a point onto inflation, according to Reuters. Wholesale prices in July spiked 0.9%, far higher than expected.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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MMA

MAGA media knives are out for Trump’s tariff advisers

Trump supporters are blaming some of Trump’s economic appointees — instead of Trump — for confusion and general turmoil over his tariffs

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 04/14/25

Numerous right-wing media figures are placing blame for the chaos and confusion over Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs on two of his top economic appointees — senior trade adviser Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — rather than on Trump himself.

When announced, Donald Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs amounted to one of the largest tax hikes in American history, and despite being labeled “reciprocal,” they had absolutely nothing to do with foreign tariff rates. These new rates, the highest in more than 100 years, caused widespread market volatility and are projected to raise costs for the average American family by thousands of dollars while also increasing the risks of a recession — if they go into effect.

A week after announcing the various tariff rates on dozens of countries, Trump announced a 90-day “pause” — after his press secretary previously called reports of such a pause “fake news” — aside from a universal 10% rate on every country except China, which now has a 145% tariff rate. The Trump administration then amended the tariff rate for Chinese-exported consumer electronics to 20%. This followed comments from Lutnick about a *different* tariff for electronics, specifically a sectoral tariff on semiconductors.

Pro-Trump media figures on Fox and elsewhere have been blaming Lutnick and Navarro for tariff-related confusion over the past week:

• • Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich: “Some confusion was spurred from the mixed messaging” from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.Henrich aired a clip of Lutnick saying on ABC’s This Week that consumer electronics will be “exempt from the reciprocal tariffs” but will soon receive their own sectoral tariff. Earlier in the segment, Heinrich reported that Trump “said they are still subject to that 20% charge he imposed over fentanyl.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [_{4/14/25}_]
  • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo blamed confusion on Lutnick and Navarro saying different things on different news programs. In an interview with Trump National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Bartiromo said: “You had some of your colleagues out — Howard Lutnick was on one show, Peter Navarro was on the other show — and, you know, with some of them saying, well, there are no exemptions. And then somebody else saying, well, they’re going to be in a different bucket. It created some confusion.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [_{4/14/25}_]
  • Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone: “I'm so glad he made that clarification on Air Force One. That's why it’s so good to have the president himself come out, because they’ve had some messaging missteps — not him, people underneath him.” Host Maria Bartiromo agreed with a guest who said, “I think this back-and-forth, this confusion that I feel after reading about this all weekend long is definitely part of the strategy in keeping the other side guessing what’s going on.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [_{4/14/25}_]
  • Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon: “Let me be blunt. Lutnick, who was Elon’s pick for secretary treasury, I think he’s close to being an unmitigated disaster. We should see a lot less of Lutnick on TV.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [_{4/14/25}_]
  • Fox Business host Charles Payne: “Mixed and confusing messaging” from Navarro and Lutnick “has the same gut-wrenching impact as an unnecessary holding penalty that negates a touchdown.” Payne also wrote: “Some people said I was too hard on my old friend Peter Navarro on Wednesday, but I was hard on messaging from him and Lutnick.” Twitter/X, [_{4/13/25}_]
  • Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino quoted an anonymous “senior Wall Street executive w ties to the Trump White House,” saying: “Susie (Wiles) needs to get control of Lutnick. He is a wrecking ball.” Gasparino added that his source “described @howardlutnick’s comments about the temporary nature of the tariff exemptions as ‘off message.’” Gasparino’s quote continued: “Now the market will open way down again since it appears the administration is totally confused.” Twitter/X, [_{4/13/25}_]
  • The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “If you wanna see a real bull market, the president should fire Peter Navarro today.” Shapiro added: “It would be stupid to continue running full speed into a wall in the name of Peter Navarro's benighted idiocy with regard to trade.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [_{4/10/25}_]
  • Shapiro: Navarro “should be nowhere near trade policy.” Shapiro also said: “Peter Navarro, who is the architect of much of this trade policy, a man who used to be a zero-growther, actually, in his early career, and then called himself Ron Vara in his own writings to create a fake name under which to attribute many of his writings. It was like Voldemort. His last name is Navarro. Get it? Ron Vara? Get it? You don't? It's dumb.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [_{4/9/25}_]
  • MAGA personality Ian Miles Cheong: “Navarro is out. He f’d everything up.” In an earlier post, Cheong wrote: “Navarro needs to go. Thank God Bessent was there.” Twitter/X, [_{4/10/25}_, 4/9/25]
  • Trump operative Roger Stone: “The economy? More Bessent, less Lutnick.” Twitter/X, [_{4/9/25}_]
  • Washington Examiner senior writer David Harsanyi: “Navarro is the Fauci of finance. I hope he's done.” Twitter/X, [_{4/9/25}_]
  • Fox Business host Dagen McDowell ridiculed Navarro for “his reciprocal trade-girl math that's kneecapping the United States.” McDowell added: “The quicker that they get him off of TV and away from numbers, the better.” Co-host Jackie DeAngelis agreed, adding: “I actually think they realize that. I think they realize Bessent should be the point person on this, and they're putting him out there. I think they're gonna pull back on Lutnick, I think they're gonna pull back on Navarro a little bit too. They need to get clear on their messaging and make sure there's no nuance in there.” Fox Business, *The Bottom Line*, [_{4/7/25}_]

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mma

Fox Business host ridicules “Peter Navarro and his reciprocal trade–girl math that's kneecapping the United States”

Dagen McDowell: “The quicker that they get him off of TV and away from numbers, the better”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 04/08/25

Video

From the April 7, 2025, edition of Fox Business' The Bottom Line

DAGEN MCDOWELL (CO-HOST): To be clear, I am all-in on a fair, level trading field. I am all-in on level tariffs with all nations. But I am not all-in on Peter Navarro and his reciprocal trade–girl math that's kneecapping the United States, because the trade deficit is not a hallmark of all the cheating that goes on. And I go back to something he said last week, that "we have calculated the tariff rate required to eliminate the trade deficit."

The United States issues the world's reserve currency. You can't eliminate the trade deficit. The quicker that they get him off of TV and away from numbers, the better. And I'm not going to call it girl math anymore, I'm going to call it Navarro math.

JACKIE DEANGELIS (CO-HOST): I actually think they realize that. I think they realize Bessent should be the point person on this, and they're putting him out there. I think they're gonna pull back on Lutnick, I think they're gonna pull back on Navarro a little bit too. They need to get clear on their messaging and make sure there's no nuance in there.

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cruz and foghorn jump ship? 4 gop defect on bill 1 cda, 2? budget cut his pwr

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narvarro made up ron anagram, tossed under bus in 48 min recd?

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AN 4 25

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is allegedly leaping for a window after dashing his “credibility” against the rocks of Trump’s disastrous tariffs, claimed MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.

“Some [sources] have said to me, he’s looking for an exit door to try to get himself to the Fed, because in the last few days he’s really hurting his own credibility and history in the markets,” Ruhle told MSNBC’s Morning Joe,according to Daily Beast.

Bessent, who built a $500 million fortune as a hedge fund manager before working for Trump and entangling his name in Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff, was not a full-throated supporter of earlier tariff proposals. After Trump announced his new trade duties this week and went to play golf, Bessent found himself not to retaliate.

READ MORE: 'Mistake': Experts say Trump's 'lying about business deals' is a 'national security risk'

“I would advise none of the countries to panic. I wouldn’t try to retaliate because as long as you don’t retaliate this is the high end of the numbers and I think the market could have certainty that this is the number, barring retaliation,” Bessent told Bloomberg. “We got a ceiling, and we can see if there’s a different floor.”

Many international trading partners refused to let Trump trample them, however. China launched reciprocal tariffs, accelerating a trade war with US goods and sending the Dow Jones down more than 2,200 points by the Friday bell ring. Canada — once a staunch U.S. ally — also will match US tariffs, according to Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Ruhle said her sources claim Trump is “not listening” to his own treasury secretary, dangerously alienating one of the more serious voices familiar with market trends in the administration.

“[Bessent] actually understands how the markets work and, what’s happening right now, is only going to hurt markets," she said.

READ MORE:'Step down': Marjorie Taylor Greene blows up at GOP rep over help for new moms in Congress

As president-elect, Trump claimed in November that Bessent “will help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States.”

“Together we will Make America Rich Again, Prosperous Again, Affordable Again, and, most importantly, Great Again,” Trump said.

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GGL 3 25

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mma

After former White House chief of staff John Kelly criticized Donald Trump, right-wing commentators linked to the former president have called Kelly a “traitor,” a “seditionist,” “compromised,” a “threat to America,” and treasonous.

In a trio of audio interviews with The New York Times, Kelly “said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist,” and “discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as ‘losers’ and ‘suckers.’”

Reflecting the chaotic nature of the Trump White House, numerous former staffers have supported and bolstered Kelly’s warnings and recollections. Right-wing media figures, however, have dismissed, ignored, or cast doubt on his remarks.

They have also descended into retributive rhetoric, saying Kelly is a “traitor,” treasonous, and seditious. Such language echoes the words of Trump himself, who has promised to carry out a retribution tour if he’s elected president.

The following are several right-wing commentators who have connections with Trump who have lashed out at Kelly:

Sebastian Gorka is a radio host who pushes conspiracy theories and extreme rhetoric. He is a former Trump White House adviser. Gorka has interviewed and been praised by Trump.

During an interview with Salem Media Group colleague Mike Gallagher, Gorka said: “I've got a message for John Kelly. You're no Marine, John Kelly. You're a seditionist. You're a traitor. You tried to push me and Steve Bannon out.” He added: “I spit on his career because he is not a Marine and people like him are the threat to America.”

Peter Navarro is an election denier and Project 2025 author. He is also a Trump campaign surrogate who was recently released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for defying a congressional subpoena.

He wrote an opinion piece attacking Kelly with the headline “Trump’s four-star bully chief of staff John Kelly was a traitor within.”

Mike Flynn is a right-wing commentator who spreads conspiracy theories and toxic rhetoric. He is also a Trump ally and former national security adviser who left in disgrace. Trump told Flynn last year that Flynn would return to the White House if he wins. And CNN reported that “multiple foreign diplomats tell CNN they see Flynn as someone who will have influence if the former president retakes the White House and have privately speculated that he could be tapped for another high-level position if that comes to pass.”

He endorsed a post by conspiracy theorist Buzz Patterson that claimed: “Flag officers who perpetuate lies and fraud, like Kelly, Milley, Austin, Brennan, etc, have violated their oaths and, in some cases, the law. They are treasonous and, dare I say, the ‘enemy within.’ Yes, I said that.”

Flynn responded to Patterson: “What Buzz said!”

Tony Shaffer is a right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist. He advised Trump and is part of his Veterans and Military Families for Trump coalition.

During an interview, Shaffer said of Kelly: “I think he's compromised. He was part of — I'll be very clear. He was compromised when he was chief of staff to Trump.” As evidence of him being compromised, Shaffer claimed that Kelly wouldn’t let him talk to the president about concerns over the FBI being corrupted. He added on social media that “people like John Kelly were the inside men of the whole effort to conduct a coup to remove President Trump.”

//

Fox anchor Harris Faulkner on labeling Trump fascist: “This is hate speech now”

10/25/24

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an 10 24

Atlantic reporter John Hendrickson set out on one mission during a Gwinnett County, Georgia event sponsored far-right MAGA ally Charlie Kirk earlier this week, by asking attendees one question: "What do you think will happen if [Donald] Trump loses?"

Hendrickson reports that he "heard a range of answers," including "promises to accept the outcome," and even "predictions of a new Civil War."

One MAGA fan, Joshua Barnes, told Hendrickson that if Kamala Harris defeats Trump, "as much as I would hate it, you kind of do have to accept it."

READ MORE:['Outrageous abuse of power': Trump withheld aid to Dem and GOP governors who criticized him

Another attendee named Mark Williams — who says he runs "the biggest political printing business in" The Peach State — told The Atlantic reporter me that "there’s going to be some crazy people that do some crazy s—t; that just happens. But the actions of most of us, I mean, we’ll bi—h about it and scream at each other and all that kind of stuff, but we’re not going to break into the Capitol and stuff."

He continued, "I’m as big a Trump supporter as anybody, but I didn’t feel compelled to go breaking into the Capitol. And those people that did that did wrong. And I don’t know that all of them did wrong, but the ones that did, they needed to be punished."

However, Williams also told Hendrickson about words he overheard from MAGA supporters while attending "Kid Rock’s Rock the Country festival in Rome, Georgia, earlier this year."

Hendrickson writes:

He described some of the chatter he heard at the festival, such as When we have to go out on the field and fight these people, y’all going to be there with us? 'It did surprise me a little bit, the tone that some of these guys were taking; I think there’s people that are absolutely ready to take on a civil war,' he said. 'I think that if there was an overwhelming view of a crooked election or something like that—yeah, I could see it happening.'

READ MORE:['Trump whisperer': Republicans are betting on this GOP senator’s ability to 'tamp down' ex-president

Ex-Trump official Ben Carson also weighed in, explaining that he doesn't think another January 6 is likely.

"I think regardless of who wins or loses, we’ve got to tone down the dissension and the hatred that’s going on in our country, or it’s going to be destroyed," Carson told Hendrickson.

Another former Trump official — Peter Navarro — took a different approach.

"By asking that question you’re trying to stir up s—t, man," he said to Hendrickson. Claiming that The Atlantic reporter's "query would be better suited for President Joe Biden and the Democrats," Navarro added, "Those a—holes put me in prison. Do you hear me?"

READ MORE:['Shameful': Naval Academy cancels authoritarianism lecture After 'MAGA pressure'

*Hendrickson's full report is available at this link (subscription required).

===

mma

Project 2025 organizer Heritage Foundation gave $1 million for Trump’s convention

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published 10/18/24

The Heritage Foundation, the architect of Project 2025, gave $1 million to the 2024 Republican National Convention, according to a recently filed document. Because of a firestorm of criticism, Trump and Republicans have attempted to distance themselves from the embattled group.

Project 2025 is an extreme right-wing initiative that intends to provide policy and personnel to the next conservative administration. Its proposals include attacks on reproductive rights, education, and LGBTQ rights.

On September 16, the host committee that helped organize the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — whose official name is 170 Freedom Milwaukee 2024 Host Committee Inc. — filed its post convention report listing donors with the Federal Elections Commission.

One of them is the Heritage Foundation, which donated $1 million for the convention in February.

[no doc]

The nonprofit Energy and Policy Institute noted Heritage’s donation in an article last month.

Project 2025 contributor Tom Homan, a Heritage visiting fellow, and Peter Navarro, who authored a chapter of Project 2025’s guiding document, spoke at the convention. Heritage itself sponsored the convention and hosted a “policy fest” near the convention venue. Russ Vought, another chapter author, was the policy director of the RNC’s 2024 Committee on the Platform. And Heritage branding was also displayed at the Milwaukee airport.

Aside from the convention, Trump and his campaign have numerous connections to Project 2025.

===

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an 10 23

How Trump conspiracy lawyer Sidney Powell got chomped by her own ‘kraken’

:

Jordan Green

andRaw Story

October 22, 2023

MAGA attorney Sidney Powell rocketed to notoriety in 2020 amid her brash claims about election fraud and lawsuits based on esoteric technical jargon purported to support fantastical narratives about foreign interference.

She promised to “release the kraken” in a bid to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

But Powell’s plea deal on Thursday marks a significant win for prosecutors in the Georgia criminal racketeering case against Trump and his allies — including Powell — for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Her agreement stemming from her involvement in a secret effort to access and copy election files in Coffee County, Ga., increases pressure on her co-defendants, up to and including Trump his former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who competed with her for access to electronic voting machines at the center of their alleged conspiracy.

Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties, according to the Washington Post. As part of her deal, she is required to pay a $6,000 fine and $2,700 in restitution to the state of Georgia, turn over documents and testify truthfully against her co-defendants.

While Powell, along with the other 18 co-defendants in the case, was accused of participating in a larger conspiracy that includes a fake electors scheme, attempting to corrupt the U.S. Justice Department and harassment of two Georgia election workers, the specific accusations against Powell were limited to one relatively obscure episode.

In it, Trump’s allies dispatched a team to collect sensitive election data from Dominion Voting Systems machines in an elections office in rural Coffee County only one day after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Fulton County prosecutors alleged that Powell “corruptly conspired” with others, including a former local Republican official who signed on as a Trump elector, a Georgia bail bondsman, and the elections director in Coffee County, of unlawfully accessing “secure voting equipment and voter data,” including “ballot images, voting equipment software and personal voter information.”

The case against Powell was chiefly built around the claim, to which she has now conceded in her guilty plea.

Powell’s plea reflects a tacit acknowledgement that she contracted and paid SullivanStrickler, an Atlanta-based computer forensics company, to access and copy data from the Coffee County elections office. Her plea marks an about-face from a two-fold defense strategy in which her lawyer argued in a series of court filings last month that no crime had been committed and that if one had been, his client was not involved.

“Members of this conspiracy — of this enterprise — go to Coffee County — and they take things that aren’t theirs,” John Floyd, an expert on Georgia racketeering lawyer who is assisting Fulton County prosecutors, told Judge Scott McAfee during a hearing earlier this month. “They copy ballots. They copy data. They copy other information, and they copy software that belongs to Dominion.”

Floyd rejected an initial argument by Powell’s lawyer that the breach was lawful just because Misty Hampton, the former elections director, extended an invitation to Trump’s allies. Beyond arguing that Powell and her co-defendants defrauded the state by breaching the election equipment, he told McAfee that they also took Dominion Voting Systems’ private property.

Powell is the second defendant to plead guilty in the case, following Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, who pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties, and has agreed to testify against his co-defendants, including Powell.

With her guilty plea on Thursday, the “kraken” Powell promised to release has now come back around to envelop her.

How Powell reached this point is a story steeped in data, drama and betrayals on a most Trump-y team of rivals.

Deflecting blame on to allies and rivals

Powell’s defense, before she pleaded guilty, provides a window into the overlapping efforts by her co-defendants, most notably former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to access the voting machines in order to gather data that could be used to fuel dubious claims of election fraud and ultimately overturn the election.

Emails, phone texts and testimony unearthed in legal discovery for the case, as well as through the investigation by the now-disbanded U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, paint a most complicated picture of allegiance and antagonism among Trump’s closest MAGA loyalists.

They show that while Powell and Giuliani had become bitter rivals by the time of the Coffee County breach, they shared an interest in accessing voting machines, and their respective teams worked with an overlapping pool of lawyers, political operatives and technicians to achieve that objective.

Many of these individuals have not been charged to date, although texts, emails and testimony show they were involved in coordinating data collection and analysis. The materials also show that officials in the Trump White House were apprised of their efforts.

[Rudy Giuliani points to a map as he speaks to the press about various lawsuits related to the 2020 election, inside the Republican National Committee headquarters on Nov. 19, 2020, in Washington, DC. Also pictured, at center, is attorney Sidney Powell. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Evidence against Powell chiefly comprised a contract signed with SullivanStrickler on Dec. 6, 2020, to collect and analyze election data from Dominion voting machines — not in Coffee County, but in Antrim County, Mich., where Trump allies were then scrutinizing election-night irregularities. The Coffee County breach, which took place a month later, was performed under the same agreement, the government alleges.

Phone texts that Powell herself submitted as evidence to the Fulton County, Ga. court, if anything, bolstered the prosecutors’ case against her. They show the chief operating officer of SullivanStrickler instructing an employee two days after the visit to the Coffee County elections office that “we are not uploading/giving access to anyone until we are paid.”

Later, he added, “Let’s keep communications quiet for now. I am now negotiating directly with Sidney.”

The company’s director of data risk and mitigation testified in a separate civil case last year that Powell was the customer and paid the bills for the data collection in Coffee County.

But Powell’s lawyer, Brian Rafferty, seized on the fact that metadata from the contract shows that a man named Jim Penrose was the author of his client’s electronic signature.

“It shows right here in the middle of this document that Jim Penrose signed this,” Rafferty told the court earlier this month. “And if you look at the contract, it’s not even a signature; it’s somebody typed her name. So, when it says, ‘Sidney Powell,’ somebody typed it. And the person who typed it is James Penrose.”

ALSO READ: Trump insiders blindsided by Sidney Powell plea deal

Penrose is a cybersecurity consultant and former National Security Agency official who worked closely with Powell in the period following the 2020 election. Powell acknowledged in her testimony to the House Select January 6 Committee last year that Penrose was part of a group of Trump allies that joined her at Tomotley, defamation lawyer Lin Wood’s estate in South Carolina, beginning in mid-November 2020 to strategize how to overturn the election.

Penrose could not be reached for comment for this story.

In a court filing, Rafferty also deflected blame onto Giuliani’s legal team. He noted that a different attorney, Preston Haliburton, submitted an open records request to the Coffee County Board of Elections & Registrations. Haliburton is a professional boxer-turned-personal injury lawyer in Atlanta. At the time, he identified himself as “counsel of record for the Giuliani legal team.”

Texts from the encrypted Signal messaging app obtained in discovery show that an invitation letter from Coffee County Election Director Misty Hampton, in response to Haliburton’s request, then made its way to Katherine Friess, a member of the Giuliani legal team. Rafferty noted that yet another lawyer — Charles Bundren — was included in separate Signal chat to discuss the Coffee County election data that took place on the day of the breach.

‘Lives in both worlds’

Testimony by Powell and Giuliani to the House Select January Committee suggests their efforts to access the Dominion voting machines, leading to the Coffee County trip, were significantly more intertwined than either might want to admit.

Giuliani and his co-counsel Jenna Ellis — also a defendant in the Georgia racketeering case — had conspicuously distanced themselves from Powell with a public statement indicating she was working on her own and not representing the Trump campaign on Nov. 22, 2020.

But just two weeks later, Powell’s team was executing a contract with SullivanStrickler to collect and analyze the election data from Dominion voting machines in Antrim County, Mich., while Friess, with the Giuliani legal team, flew to the rural community to meet with Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy.

Another significant player close to both Powell and Giuliani — a retired Army colonel named Phil Waldron — was also involved in the effort to access the voting machines in Antrim County, according to Giuliani.

Giuliani told the House Select January 6 Committee that “Katherine Friess was in Antrim County with Phil Waldron when that was being done.” Powell also testified to the committee that she believed that Waldron inspected the voting machines in Antrim County.

A retired Army colonel who specialized in psychological influence operations, Waldron now owns a distillery in Texas. Although he has not been charged, his name would come up repeatedly in relation to the various efforts to access voting machines following the 2020 election.

ALSO READ: 'Devastating for Trump': Legal analysts expect others to follow Sidney Powell to plea deal

The committee subpoenaed Waldron after obtaining a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that he circulated among members of Congress, and that committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) called “an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election.” Waldron sued to block the committee, claiming that the information sought by Congress was part of a confidential and proprietary work product under a contract he signed with unnamed attorneys to investigate the 2020 election.

Giuliani testified to the committee that he considered Waldron to be part of his team. Powell also worked with Waldron and told the committee she valued his expertise.

“I know he was looking at logistics for, like, for example, if we could get access to the machines,” Powell testified. “He knew — or my understanding was he knew — people that would know how to analyze them — you know, reputable, unimpeachable, military, nonpartisan, bipartisan, whatever you want to call it, but professionals who would know how to look at whatever it was and make sense of it.”

Waldron is widely believed to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the Fulton County indictment. As one of the overt acts cited in the alleged conspiracy, Powell sent an email to SullivanStrickler Chief Operating Officer Paul Maggio on Dec. 21, 2020, instructing him that she, along with “Individual 6” and others, “were to immediately ‘receive a copy of all data’ obtained by SullivanStrickler LLC from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Michigan.” Numerous media outlets have identified “Individual 6” as Waldron.

Waldron could not be reached by phone or email for comment for this story.

Jim Penrose has described Waldron as the “crossover” between the Powell and Giuliani teams.

“Phil Waldron is the one who lives in both worlds,” Penrose told an Arizona woman named Staci Burk during a phone call on Christmas day in 2020. “Most of the remainder of the team operates independently of one another.”

At the time, the Powell team was cultivating Burk as a potential witness.

Burk is now suing Powell and five other defendants for civil conspiracy, violation of civil rights, false imprisonment and assault, alleging that Powell’s associates attempted to pressure her into signing an affidavit that could be used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to seize voting machines. Burk’s suit also alleges that the defendants frightened her into allowing a private security group to take up residence in her home. Members of the security group ultimately stole Burk’s cell phone and took it to the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., a hub for high-level Trump allies on Jan. 6.

Burk obtained a default judgment against Powell in the case on Oct. 2 from a federal court clerk in Arizona, after Powell failed to respond to her complaint.

ALSO READ: Trump's prison presidency? How he could run — and win — from behind bars.

But Powell’s lawyer, Robert H. Holmes, told Raw Story that “the default was taken fraudulently” and that “Ms. Powell was never served” with a summons for the lawsuit. Based on Burk’s request, ABC Legal Services, the process serving company, opened an investigation into the delivery of the summons. According to a report, the process server reported that he left the summons outside the door of an apartment in Dallas on Sept. 2.

Burk provided a copy of the report, which was completed on Wednesday, to Raw Story.

“When the server knocked on the door to the listed unit, the resident inside looked through the peephole and asked who he was and what he wanted in a hostile manner,” the report states. “The server stated his name, and told the resident that he was looking for Sidney Powell as he had some legal documents for her. The resident said to leave the documents at the door because she was not going to open the door. The server noted that he receives that reaction often since he is an African-American male.”

The report adds that the process server “left the documents outside the door,” and then from down the hallway, “saw the woman crack the door open and grab the documents” before returning inside.

The report concludes by indicating that ABC Legal Services is offering Burk the option of having the summons re-served on Powell.

If Penrose’s later actions called into question his loyalties, during the time period when Trump allies were trying to get access to the voting machines in Coffee County he made it clear that he was on Team “Kraken.”

“I’m investigating this on behalf of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, right, the people that are gonna take this right up to the president and the Supreme Court, and work on these cases,” he told Burk during the Christmas Day phone call in 2020.

Penrose told Burk at the time that the team had already spent $75,000 to investigate claims about illegal ballots on airplanes before determining that there was nothing to substantiate them.

Obsession with voting machines takes hold

Trump and other White House officials received frequent updates on the efforts of the Giuliani and Powell teams, working in tandem, to access the voting machines in late 2020 and early 2021.

Friess, one of the lawyers on Giuliani’s team, forwarded talking points and a press release about a report produced on the Antrim County election data to Giuliani around Dec. 14. The email also went to Bernard Kerik, the team’s chief investigator; and Boris Epshteyn, another lawyer.

“Here’s — the press release is approved,” Friess wrote in the email, which was obtained by the House Select January 6 Committee. “Needs to go to the White House. President and VP just briefed. They are thrilled.”

Kerik then forwarded the email to an aide to White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, the email chain shows.

The report contained the bold claim that “the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.”

Trump predictably seized on the report, tweeting, “WOW. This report shows massive fraud. Election changing result!”

But an analysis published in March 2021 by J. Alex Halderman, co-chairman of the Michigan Election Security Advisory Commission, concluded that the report “contains an extraordinary number of false, inaccurate, or unsubstantiated statements and conclusions.”

ALSO READ: Inside the 11 scenarios that deny Trump the presidency — without him actually losing Election 2024

The false claims about Dominion voting machines were at the heart of a contentious, late-night meeting at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020 in which Powell, along with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, urged Trump to use the military to seize voting machines and re-run the election.

The meeting reportedly devolved into a screaming match between Powell’s entourage and members of the White House counsel team.

Giuliani also joined the meeting after being alerted that Powell, Flynn and Byrne were at the White House. He proposed an alternative to the military option floated by Powell’s camp.

“His point of view was that in some way the campaign, I believe, was going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure,” Derek Lyons, a former Trump administration official who was present at the meeting, told the committee.

Lyons added that Giuliani argued that examination of the machines in Georgia could produce “evidence that could then be leveraged to gain additional access to additional machines.”

Giuliani confirmed in his testimony that “we were trying to use the civil process to get access to the machines,” adding that he vaguely recalled “negotiating with one of the boards for access to some of the machines.”

‘Name calling and misogynistic behavior’

After the Dec. 18 meeting, Powell found herself ostracized from Trump’s inner circle at the White House, most notably Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — also a co-defendant in the Fulton County case.

“It is imperative I be included in meetings scheduled today with you, Rudy, and with the President, about the machines and any of these issues,” Powell wrote in an email to Meadows on Dec. 21, which was obtained by the House Select January 6 Committee.

Powell would later explain to congressional investigators that the urgency of meeting with Trump, Meadows and Giuliani was that she didn’t trust the Giuliani team to handle the mission appropriately.

“Rudy was off, you know, in a couple different directions trying to access the machines,” Powell said. “And I was concerned that it needed to be a process that was completely transparent and preserved so that there could be no question about it and that the people doing it have military qualifications or credentials approved by both sides, however you want to put that, but, anyway, unimpeachable credentials, and perform the examination in a recorded, transparent process. And I don’t know how Rudy and people were doing that.”

The Fulton County indictment alleges that Powell made false claims to the House Select January 6 Committee through statements in her testimony that minimized her role in the efforts to access voting machines in Michigan and Georgia.

The feud between Powell and Giuliani reached a nadir during a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting in Meadows’ office at the White House, before Meadows shunted her away from a scheduled meeting with Trump. Powell recalled that Friess and Waldron were also there, and an email obtained by the House Select January 6 Committee confirms Waldron’s attendance.

Powell described the meeting as “the epitome of devolution into name calling and misogynistic behavior from Mr. Giuliani toward me.”

She added, “I do remember Mr. Giuliani just absolutely lashing out about me being unfit to practice law, called me several names. And, I mean, he just went on and on.”

Following the meeting in Meadows’ office, Powell made her disdain for Giuliani clear in a Dec. 22 email to the two men and to Molly Michael, Trump’s assistant, that was obtained by the committee.

“Also be advised Michigan trip was not set up properly on ground with locals,” Powell complained. “Team is there with no access. It has cost us great expense and should be reimbursed by Rudy’s funding. Georgia machine access promised in meeting Friday night to happen Sunday has not come through.”

‘Y’all are welcome any time’

Late on New Year’s Eve, the Giuliani team received a welcome surprise.

“We have received your open record request, and I will be speaking with my board, and per Georgia law I do not see any problem assisting you with anything ya’ll need [in] accordance to Georgia Law,” Hampton, the Coffee County election director, wrote in a response on official letterhead. “Y’all are welcome in our office any time.”

A Georgia Bureau of Investigation summary obtained by Powell through discovery indicates that Hampton’s letter came in response to an open records request by Preston Haliburton, the Atlanta lawyer who identified himself as “counsel of record for the Giuliani legal team.”

Haliburton also identified himself as counsel for Cathy Latham, the Coffee County GOP chair, when he told the Georgia Senate Election Law Study Subcommittee that she was claiming whistleblower status during a Dec. 30, 2020, hearing. Latham is also a defendant in the Fulton County case, and is accused of participating in both the Coffee County breach and the fake elector scheme.

Haliburton did not return a message left by Raw Story at his office last week.

A Signal group chat obtained by Powell through discovery also suggests that the Giuliani team initiated the Coffee County project. The chat opens with a message from a woman named Jennifer Jackson on Jan. 1, 2021.

“Just handed [sic] in DC with the Mayor,” Jackson’s text reads. “Huge things starting to come together.

“Most immediately, we were just granted access -by written invitation! To the Coffee County Systens. [sic] Yay!” the message continues. “Putting details together now with Phil, Preston, Jovan etc. Want to give you a heads up for your team.”

“Phil” and “Preston” appear to refer to Phil Waldron and Preston Haliburton, while “Jovan” appears to refer to Jovan Pulitzer, a former treasure hunter to whom Trump allies turned for advice on forensic analysis of ballots.

Jackson closed her message by writing that the message “was from Katherine,” likely referring to Katherine Friess, the lawyer on the Giuliani team.

While the Giuliani team celebrated the invitation, the Signal group chat shows the SullivanStrickler employees deferring to Powell’s team, likely in recognition that under their contract, she would be footing the bill.

“Should we reach out to Penrose for potential guidance?” SullivanStrickler employee Greg Freemyer wrote.

“Let’s wait for the request,” Paul Maggio, the chief operating officer, counseled. “If they need us, they will call.”

A separate Signal group chat entitled “Coffee_County_Forensics” shows Penrose — Powell’s associate — managing the project. In the first message on Jan. 6, 2021 at 7:35 p.m. — as police regained control of the U.S. Capitol after a deadly riot, and Congress prepared to reconvene to complete the certification of Joe Biden as president — Penrose sent the initial message to the Signal group — introducing Maggio to Scott Hall, the Georgia bail bondsman who has now pleaded guilty alongside Powell to conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties.

According to the Fulton County indictment, Hall conveyed his interest in the Coffee County expedition to Latham, the local GOP chair.

In the next message in the Signal thread, Penrose asked Maggio to take the lead on the project.

Another lawyer — someone who has not been publicly identified with either the Powell or Giuliani teams — was also in the Signal group.

A minute after Penrose delegated leadership to Maggio, Charles Bundren wrote, “We need cell numbers to identify who they are for the people at the elections HQ.”

Bundren is a Dallas-area lawyer who, with few exceptions, has attracted little notice in the public examination of the Jan. 6 saga. In 2014, Bundren joined fellow lawyer John Eastman — one of the defendants in the Fulton County racketeering case, who is accused of leading the effort to corruptly pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate Joe Biden electors — in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the University of Texas at Austin’s use of race-conscious admissions.

More recently, Bundren represented Waldron in his suit seeking to block the House Select January 6 Committee’s efforts to obtain his cell phone records. But then Bundren stepped aside as Waldron’s lawyer and joined him as a co-plaintiff to block review of his own cell phone records. In Waldron’s lawsuit seeking to block the congressional committee, he claimed that he was investigating the 2020 election under a contract with unnamed attorneys in Collin County, Tex., which is where Bundren’s law office is located.

Posting in the “Coffee_County_Forensics” Signal group chat in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, Hall instructed the SullivanStrickler team to text Hampton and Latham before they arrived at the election office. Hall was planning to fly down to Coffee County from Atlanta, and Latham texted Maggio the address for the Douglas Municipal Airport so he could pick up Hall, according to the indictment.

Just before 3 p.m., Maggio wrote in the chat: “Collection is going well. No real issues at this point. Looking to be here until 6-7 PM this evening.”

Then, at 7:47 p.m., Maggio reported that his team had completed the assignment and were driving back to Atlanta.

After each update, Bundren replied in the thread: “Thanks.”

Bundren has not been charged in the Fulton County case.

Double-cross?

Following the Jan. 7, 2021 visit to Coffee County, a man named Doug Logan — who would later lead the so-called “audit” of the 2020 election in Arizona — was tasked with analyzing the data. As Powell’s defense team emphasized before she pleaded guilty, texts exchanged between Logan and Penrose suggest that Charles Bundren was directly overseeing the project.

“If you can draft a report for review on Friday morning with Charles Bundren that would be best — we only have until Sat to decide if we’re going to use this report to decertify the Senate runoff election — or if we hold it for a bigger movement later,” Penrose wrote in a Jan. 20, 2021 text to Logan that was obtained by Powell through discovery.

“I’m not going to brief Sidney on these findings yet,” Penrose added. “I’d ask you to do the same, so we can maintain agility on how to use it.”

Logan would later testify under oath in a deposition for a separate lawsuit that Bundren was the lawyer “that we were doing work under.” He added that Penrose told him that Bundren “was the main attorney on this work.”

More than a year after Logan’s work on the project, congressional investigators asked Giuliani if he had received a report on the Coffee County voting machines.

“Yes, sir,” Giuliani testified. “Yeah.”

Asked who gave him the report, Giuliani replied, “I don’t want to guess at it. Probably was Phil Waldron.”

As for Powell, her guilty plea means there’s a good chance she will take the witness stand and testify against her co-defendant Giuliani, who has admitted to being a consumer of the work product that came out of the Coffee County breach.

Key players in Sidney Powell’s legal drama

Charles Bundren: Dallas area attorney. He oversaw collection and analysis of Coffee County election data, according to Doug Logan.

Katherine Friess: Lawyer on the Giuliani legal team. She was involved in the examination of the Antrim County, Mich. voting machines, which led to a bogus report claiming election fraud, and then reportedly received a letter inviting Trump allies to examine voting machines in Coffee County, Ga.

Rudy Giuliani: Trump’s former personal attorney and the former mayor of New York City. A member of Giuliani's legal team was involved in examination of the Antrim County election data, and he received a report on Coffee County election data.

Preston Haliburton: Atlanta personal injury lawyer. He submitted the open records request to the Coffee County Board of Elections & Registrations while serving as “counsel of record for the Giuliani legal team.”

Scott Hall: Georgia bail bondsman. He flew to Coffee County on a private plane to accompany contractors as they collected elected data, and has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties.

Misty Hampton: Former Coffee County election director. She invited the Trump allies to visit the election office in January 2021, and is a codefendant alongside Powell, Latham, Trump and 16 others in the Georgia RICO conspiracy case.

Cathy Latham: Former Coffee County GOP chair. She spoke with Scott Graham Hall, and appears to have helped him make arrangements to travel to Coffee County to accompany contractors as they extracted election data. She is a codefendant alongside Powell, Hampton, Trump and 16 others in the Georgia RICO conspiracy case.

Doug Logan: Owner of Cyber Ninjas firm that conducted the so-called Arizona audit. He worked as an analyst on the Coffee County election data, and submitted a report on it to Charles Bundren.

Jim Penrose: Former National Security Agency official. He allegedly signed Sidney Powell’s name on the contract with SullivanStrickler, oversaw the data collection during the team’s visit to Coffee County, and directed Doug Logan to write a report on the data for attorney Charles Bundren

Sidney Powell: Lawyer who filed “Kraken” lawsuits to try to overturn the 2020 election. Her signature is on the contract with SullivanStrickler under which the Coffee County election breach was carried out.

Donald Trump: Former president accused of leading a criminal racketeering conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. Trump is the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Phil Waldron: Retired Army colonel with a background in psychological influence operations. He reportedly traveled to Antrim County, Mich., to inspect voting machines and was reportedly briefed on the plan to breach the Coffee County election system.

===

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an 8 23

former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro, whose trial on contempt charges is set to begin next week, suffered a major legal blow on Wednesday when a federal judge ruled he cannot claim as president, Donald Trump invoked executive privilege to shield him from testifying before the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

"Navarro had not met the burden to establish that Donald Trump formally granted executive privilege or testimonial immunity, US District Judge Amit P. Mehta said at a pre-trial conference," CNN reports. "Navarro’s criminal case, which was brought by the Justice Department in June 2022, goes to trial next Tuesday. Navarro has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and Mehta’s new ruling severely hamstrings the arguments the former Trump aide will be able to present in his defense."

Speaking to reporters Wednesday afternoon, Navarro appeared to try to call out CNN, but instead chose to tangle with a protestor behind him holding up a sign that said, "Trump Lost (and you know it,)" which is contrary to Navarro's stated claims.

READ MORE: ‘Owes the Public an Explanation’: Amid Concern, Critics Call for McConnell to Retire After Another ‘Alarming’ Episode

At one point, apparently frustrated, Navarro attempted to grab the sign out of the hands of the protestor directly behind him.

“Bro, you’re already facing charges,” the protestor said, to which Navarro conceded, "Yeah, I get it."

He also attempted to turn two protestors with apparently different viewpoints into an "important kind of debate" about America.

Watch the videos at this link.

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an 7 23

former Trump Administration official is heard in a newly unveiled audio recording trashing an attorney arguing on behalf of the former president that the 2020 election was stolen.

In the audio obtained by MSNBC's Deadline White House with Nicole Wallace, Peter Navarro, who served as Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, is heard expressing his disdain for Powell during a conversation with Fox News producer Abby Grossberg.

The recording begins with Grossberg saying she'd received emails with confidential information in the case against Michael Flynn in which she was representing the former National Security Advisor of 22 days.

"She sends me stuff by mistake. There's an Abby in her office," Grossberg is heard saying. "There's an Abby in her office and this whole – through the Flynn trial she sends me this stuff and then she frantically calls me saying please delete it. It’s confidential."

The conversation then turns to Powell trying to prove election fraud.

"You have no idea how much damage she did to our – to our efforts," Navarro said.

"She really – she really, I'm telling you Abby, when the history is written on this, she was like the turning point in our inability to prove the case because she was like so far out there that people like pulled back. We were on the verge of breakthroughs in the states and state legislature level and then that (expletive) happened. And I was like …was like damn, damn this is not good."

Navarro stood by comments in a statement to MSNBC that said: "Sidney Powell is basically the worst thing that ever happened to the election integrity issue…As always I’m being candid with Abby Grossberg just as I am being candid with the American people."

---

6? 2020 an 22x?

when Peter Navarro, one of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers, appeared on CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday morning, July 7, he not only tried to put a rosy spin on Trump’s response to the coronavirus surge in Florida and other Sun Belt states — Navarro also refused to criticize Trump’s recent defense of Confederate symbols. But host John Berman didn’t let him get away with it, grilling Navarro relentlessly. And  instead of saying anything critical of Trump, Navarro recalled his own experience with Jim Crow laws in the late 1950s.

Navarro, now 70, told Berman, “My awakening on the race issue was when I was eight years old in a Woolworth's store in West Palm Beach, Florida when I walked over and I took a drink from the colored water fountain because I wanted to see colored water.And this woman came up to me and just gently said, ‘You can’t, can’t drink from that.’ And I go, ‘Why?’ She says, ‘That’s for colored people.’ It’s like — I mean, I’m eight years old, and that didn’t make sense to me….. I’m a Californian; we don't see race out there.”

Most of the interview was devoted to Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and Navarro tried to promote hydroxychloroquine — which Trump has touted as a miracle drug for fighting COVID-19. But the drug’s benefits against coronavirus are unproven, and health experts (including Dr. Anthony Fauci) have warned that it can have dangerous side effects. Nonetheless, Navarro doubled down on his support of hydroxychloroquine as a possible COVID-19 treatment, telling Berman, “It will save lives.”

During the interview, Berman demanded to know why the number of new COVID-19 infections is “rising” in the U.S. even though infection rates have decreased in France, Italy, Germany, South Korea and other countries. “What is unique about the United States, where we’re seeing the increase?,” the CNN host asked.

Navarro was evasive, telling Berman, “That’s not my lane to answer that question” and echoing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about COVID-19 being a “China virus.”

Trump’s economic adviser told Berman that if the U.S. “locks down too hard,” it will hurt the country economically. But Berman noted that states that reopened non-essential businesses too soon are now seeing COVID-19 surges.

Berman went on to grill Navarro about Trump’s refusal to wear a mask, and Navarro complained that members of the mainstream media have “beat that one to death.” Berman, however, responded that prominent Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are now encouraging mask wearing — to which Navarro responded, “I’m not going to go there.”

Watch the video below:

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bak no lnx some bad format 12 22

is he ever right? does he ever win? see ben stein award

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mma 5 23

as the June 5 deadline to raise the nation’s debt limit approaches, right-wing media are attacking House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for allegedly capitulating to Democrats’ demands in a tentative deal.

The Treasury expects the government to run out of cash by Monday, June 5 if Congress does not raise the debt limit. The tentative agreement to raise the debt ceiling until January 2025 would limit spending, expand work requirements for SNAP recipients, end the pause on student loans repayments and interest accrual, andamend environmental impact statements. Despite these concessions from the White House, there are still many conservatives pushing for more.

Biden and McCarthy have both touted the agreement as a bipartisan deal and are urging Congress to pass it. While some conservatives have praised the deal, many in right-wing media are willing to risk a default, urging Congress to reject the agreement and criticizing McCarthy for supposedly striking a bad deal that favors Democrats:

• Fox News host Laura Ingraham complained that because the debt ceiling deal is being touted by Biden and the Chamber of Commerce, “It should be up to them to get the votes they want. There’s no reason for us to help.”
• In a series of posts on Gettr, former Trump adviser and current right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon decried the deal as a “total cave” to Democrats’ wishes and called McCarthy a “Total and Complete Sell-Out.” In a statement to Newsweek, Bannon said the debt ceiling agreement was “not acceptable” for conservatives, adding, "This shows no leadership whatsoever.”
• Bannon also called for conservatives to primary any Republican member of Congress that votes for the agreement: “If you vote for this, you should be and must be primaried.”
• Conservative radio host Buck Sexton wrote, “With the debt ceiling deal, we’re reminded that conservatism in 2023 is making a series of goal line stands, never crossing into the opponent’s half of the field, and calling that a win.”
• Appearing on Newsmax’s Eric Bolling The Balance, former Trump adviser Peter Navarro called the debt ceiling deal “the McCarthy Memorial Day Weekend Surrender,” and went on to say that McCarthy “got basically nothing” and “took the first off-ramp.” Guest host Carl Higbie urged the House of Representatives to reject the deal, saying, “I'm hoping that enough people see a problem with this and send it back and say, ‘No, no, no. Make it better.’”
• Former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs criticized McCarthy, tweeting, “The Speaker went to a horse-whipping, not a negotiation! … He got nothing and is waiting for a participation trophy!”
• Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk tweeted, “Mad about the debt ceiling deal?It’s the neocons who were holding this entire deal hostage. They refused to budge on any cuts to our woke military. We could have had a much better deal if we had a GOP willing to limit $ we send to countries that hate us.”
• Fox & Friends Sunday co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy said, “It's a win for McCarthy … but it's a loss for America because this is an unsustainable path, this printing and spending. Just look to Latin America. It doesn't end well, and I don't know how long we can keep doing this.”
• Right-wing Twitter account Catturd tweeted, “If you didn't know Kevin McCarthy would cave on the debt limit - you don't know Kevin McCarthy.”
• Fringe conspiracy theorist and failed GOP congressional candidate Laura Loomer wrote: “McCarthy debt ‘deal’ is a disaster,” adding that Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy “is one of the worst decisions he’s ever made.”
• During an appearance on The Story, Fox contributor and former Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz said, “I would not vote for this bill. I don't think it solves the problem. I think it perpetuates where we are. I just -- I could never vote as a fiscal conservative in favor of this bill. It perpetuates the status quo, I think.”
• Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked, “Should he [McCarthy] have just let it default?” She reasoned, “Everybody would have blamed Biden at that point if you are not going to get what you want.”
• On his radio show, Sean Hannitydenounced the debt ceiling deal for not cutting enough spending, lamenting it would still continue to fund “pet projects that the Democrats want.”
• Newsmax’s Eric Bollingsaid McCarthy “gave away the ranch” to the Democrats with the current agreement, saying McCarthy lost all his leverage and “handed Joe Biden a second term.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/eric-trump/hitler-promoting-antisemites-will-speak-trumps-miami-hotel-alongside-eric-trump-lara

ref mma 5 23

the Trump National Doral resort will host two antisemites who have promoted pro-Adolf Hitler propaganda and spread virulently antisemitic conspiracy theories. They will be speaking at an event in Miami alongside numerous Team Trump personalities, including Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and Devin Nunes.

Trump Doral speaker Scott McKay, who has a streaming show on Rumble, has claimed that Jewish people orchestrated 9/11 and were responsible for the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and William McKinley. He has also said that Jewish people routinely torture children and eat their hearts.

He has praised Hitler for supposedly trying to take down a Jewish banking system and said, “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today.”

Trump Doral speaker Charlie Ward, who also streams a show on Rumble, has shared posts praising Hitler for supposedly “warning us” about Judaism; claiming that “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made”; and attacking the alleged Jewish media for supposedly lying about the Holocaust. 

The two are featured speakers in the “ReAwaken America” tour, which is set to stop at  Trump’s Miami hotel on May 12 and 13. Scheduled to speak alongside McKay and Ward are numerous members of Trump’s orbit, including: Eric Trump, Lara Trump,former Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former senior Department of Defense official Kash Patel, former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes, and Trump ally Roger Stone. 

Numerous other far-right conspiracy theorists will be speaking, including Stella Immanuel, Mel K, Liz Crokin, Ann Vandersteel, Mike Lindell, and Patrick Byrne.

Media outlets have previously noted that the tour, which has been holding events across the country, has also featured QAnon supporters, conspiracy theories, and Christian nationalist rhetoric.

Michael Flynn co-founded the tour and also has a history of antisemitism.He stated on the tour that he wants the United States to “have one religion.” In 2016, he shared -- and then deleted -- a tweet stating “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.” And in 2021, he criticized Holocaust victims, stating: “Jesus, how could somebody stand there and just allow these people to do that to them? And then knowing what they knew, how could they get on that train? I would have rather attacked that machine gun nest.”

During a recent appearance on a QAnon program, tour co-founder Clay Clark told viewers that  “Eric Trump is a good friend of mine” and said “it's exciting … that Trump's inner circle is now going, they're all reaching out to our tour, to the ReAwaken America tour, to Gen. Flynn, to myself, to Kash Patel. And they're all saying, hey, can we come to the tour?”

Team Trump is hosting and participating in the tour and associating with its Hitler-promoting speakers despite heavy criticism over Trump’s meeting last December with Ye and Nick Fuentes, who have similarly praised Hitler.

The Trump officials’ association with McKay and Ward is part of a larger Republican Party pattern, with numerous officials promoting or speaking alongside antisemites.

Scott McKay claimed Jewish people torture children and eat their hearts and “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today”

[pix]From antisemitic commentator Scott McKay's Telegram page.

McKay, who also goes by Patriot Streetfighter, is a speaker at the Trump Doral event. He frequently makes antisemitic comments. Among the many examples:

• McKay claimed that Jewish people “built Hitler. … He was created by them” because they needed a catalyst to profit from a military conflict. He also praised Hitler for supposedly attempting to spurn his Jewish creators by trying to break “free of the Rothschilds’ corrupt money-magic fiat system” and create “a banking system for the people and the free world.”
• McKay said: “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today.”
• McKay claimed that 9/11 was perpetrated by “the same group of people that has done a very good job at hiding under the religion of Judaism."
• McKay claimed that many Jewish people are hiding “under the cover of this religion called Judaism” so they can “murder children.”
• McKay claimed that Jewish people practice “satanism, child sacrifice, bleeding them out, torturing them, consuming them, eating their heart.”
• McKay claimed that Jewish people created a banking system “in exchange for the child blood sacrifices.”
• McKay claimed that Jewish people were responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing and the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and William McKinley.

For more on Scott McKay, go here.

Charlie Ward shared posts praising Hitler for “warning us” about Judaism, claiming “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made”

[pix]

Ward is a speaker at the Trump Doral event. During a November ReAwaken America tour stop in Branson, Missouri, he said: “How many people in here know that more people have been killed by the jab than were killed in the Holocaust? And they're still doing it because nobody can stop them.”

He frequently promotes antisemitism and pro-Hitler content. Among the many examples:

• Ward shared a post embedding a speech by Hitler and praising him for “warning us” about Judaism.
• Ward promoted a book which claims to show “that the official narrative of the Holocaust cannot be sustained.”
• Ward shared a post claiming that “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made including influenza, Polio, Measles, AIDS so was Covid created as a 'excuse' to vaccinate (contaminate)... .”
• Ward shared a post that referenced the antisemitic publication the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “The vaxxx passports are for you the GOYIM not for the specially selected, some elites and the 33's and above - THE RULES DO NOT APPLY .. You are the EXPERIEMENT NOT THEM - Protocols of ZION.”
• Ward shared a post that stated: “On this Memorial Day please remember the sacrifices our soldiers make so that JEWISH DRUG DEALERS can grow Poppy Plants in Afghanistan and control the worldwide Heroin supply.” 

For more on Charlie Ward, go here.

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https://www.alternet.org/trump-advisor-appeals-court-documents/

trying to hold shield docs? 4 23

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cass [meadows burn perry docs]  navarro freq brought BS "from your Qanon friends? not sarcasm

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/politics/january-6-transcripts-key-findings/index.html

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https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2022/12/22/final-jan-6-report-cites-san-diegos-oan-peter-navarro-and-sdsus-christina-bobb/

no lnx

Final Jan. 6 Report Cites San Diego’s OAN, Peter Navarro and SDSU’s Christina Bobb

Ken Stone

Christina Bobb appears on Dan Ball’s show recently on One America News. Image via OAN.

San Diego’s One America News and ex-San Diego politico Peter Navarro are noted in the final report of the congressional panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Final report of Jan. 6 committee (PDF)

The 845-page report, released Thursday night, also cites testimony and emails mentioning Donald Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, a San Diego State University graduate.

:{:{}:

}:

Bobb produced materials for the House select committee.* But Navarro, the Trump aide who repeatedly failed in runs for San Diego office, refused to cooperate with the select committee and was indicted for contempt of Congress.

In end notes, the Jan. 6 committee said it interviewed Bobb on April 21 — but her deposition wasn’t among those released this week.

Bobb, a former OAN correspondent facing civil suits over promoting stolen-election lies, spoke Monday on “Real America with Dan Ball.”

Asked about the four criminal referrals — which Ball called “insane charges” — Bobb said they were all about preventing Trump from running in 2024 “because he’s not approved by the political elite. He doesn’t play by their rules. And he wants to return power back to the American people.”

“This is a show trial,” she said. “It’s trying to stir people up to believe that Donald Trump is somehow bad.”

She said Trump has a “very solid criminal defense team” in place.

“This has nothing to do with democracy or January 6th,” she said. “They tried this with the Impeachment Hoax 1 and the Impeachment Hoax 2 and the Russian Collusion Hoax. What hoax number are we on now?”

Click to see OAN segment featuring Christina Bobb.

The report said that less than two weeks after the election, President Trump pushed “Team Normal” aside because its members didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear.

“In their place, Trump promoted Rudy Giuliani and his associates — men and women who spread baseless and extreme claims of election fraud,” including Bobb, the report said.

But Bobb couldn’t point to any evidence of wrongdoing by Dominion Voting Systems — which is suing OAN, Fox News and others about airing lies about it “switching votes” to Joe Biden, the report said.

Arizona’s vote was a source of contention as well.

Trump retweeted a post by campaign lawyer Bobb that accused Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers of “intentionally misleading the people of Arizona.”

San Diego-based OAN was cited as a conduit of stolen-election lies.

On Nov. 19, 2020, Trump tweeted and retweeted a link to a segment on OAN titled, “Dominion-izing the Vote.”

“The segment claimed that Dominion had switched votes from Trump to Biden. OAN featured a supposed cyber expert, Ron Watkins, a key figure in the QAnon conspiracy movement,” the report said.

“On his own Twitter account, Watkins celebrated and thanked his supporters just minutes after President Trump tweeted the clip, and President Trump went on to share the clip again several times in the days that followed.”

OAN executives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though Navarro refused to cooperate with the committee, he referenced Steve Bannon’s “Green Bay Sweep” bid to overturn the election in his book “In Trump Time: A Journal of America’s Plague Year.”

:{:{}:

}:

“Although he doesn’t fully explain in his book … how Bannon’s sweep was intended to work, Navarro writes that Vice President Pence was envisioned as the ‘quarterback’ who would “assert his constitutional power” to delay certification of the electoral vote Jan. 6, the report notes.

“Navarro writes that his own role was to ‘carefully document the fraud and myriad election irregularities,’ while Bannon’s “role was to figure out how to use this information — what he called the ‘receipts.’”

:{:{}:

}:

The report says Navarro’s account helped explain why Trump and his loyalists became so fixated on Pence.

“They saw Vice President Pence as their last hope for keeping President Trump in office,” the report says. “Navarro writes of Pence’s supposed ‘betrayal.’ In a telling sentence, Navarro likens Vice President Pence to Brutus, a Roman politician and the most famous assassin of Julius Caesar.”

Navarro wrote in his book:

:{:{}:

}:

On this cold, momentous day, I shiver as I think to myself, “January 6 will be either Mike Pence’s finest hour or the traitorous ‘Et tu, Brute?’ end of both his and Donald Trump’s political careers.

:{:{}:

}:

The committee report outlines its case that Trump should face criminal charges of inciting the deadly riot.

The House of Representatives Select Committee also made public the transcripts of a number of its interviews and witness testimonies earlier on Thursday and on Wednesday.

The report is based on nearly 1,200 interviews over 18 months and hundreds of thousands of documents, as well as the rulings of more than 60 federal and state courts.

The report lists 17 specific findings, discusses the legal implications of actions by Trump and some of his associates and includes criminal referrals to the Justice Department of Trump and other individuals, according to an executive summary released earlier this week. It report also lists legislative recommendations to help avert another such attack.

OAN segment on House committee’s criminal referrals shows book by Christina Bobb. Image via OAN

On Monday, the committee asked federal prosecutors to charge the Republican former president with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection, for what they said were efforts to overturn results of the November 2020 election and sparking the attack on the seat of government.

“Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome,” the House panel had said earlier in a 160-page summary of its report.

In comments posted on his Truth Social network after the final report’s release, Trump called it “highly partisan” and a “witch hunt”. He said it failed to “study the reason for the (Jan. 6) protest, election fraud.”

The request by the Democratic-led panel to the Justice Department does not compel federal prosecutors to act, but marked the first time in history that Congress had referred a former president for criminal prosecution. Trump announced in November that he would run for president again.

Among the transcripts released on Wednesday and Thursday was one that showed a former lawyer for ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told her to “downplay” her knowledge of events leading to the Capitol riot, telling her “the less you remember, the better.”

Attorney Stefan Passantino advised Hutchinson in preparing for a February deposition before the panel to say that she could not recall certain events, she told the committee in September, according to the transcript of her testimony.

Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of Jan. 6, and publicly chastised Pence for not going along with his plan to reject ballots cast for Democrat Joe Biden.

The former president then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.

The 2020 election results were being certified by Pence and lawmakers when the Capitol was attacked after weeks of false claims by Trump that he had won that election.

Updated at 10:17 a.m. Dec. 23, 2022

Reuters contributed to this report.

*An earlier version of this report incorrectly said that Trump 2020 spokesman Tim Murtaugh was related to 2018 San Diego congressional candidate Morgan Murtaugh.

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https://www.factcheck.org/2022/12/the-whoppers-of-2022/

Coronavirus origin baloney. In May, former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro incorrectly claimed, as others have before, that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci “killed a lot of people” by funding research that led to the creation of the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2. Elon Musk, the new owner and CEO of Twitter, repeated the baseless claim earlier this week on the platform, less than a month after the company suspended enforcement of its COVID-19 misinformation policy. 

The U.S. indirectly funded some bat coronavirus research at a lab in Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 pandemic began, but as we explained, those experiments could not have generated SARS-CoV-2 because the viruses used were very different. Published research suggests the coronavirus spilled over into humans from the wildlife trade, as other coronaviruses have done in the past.

Fauci is stepping down from his government positions at the end of this month, after more than half a century in public service.

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ggl news 12 22

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see ben stein levels of wrong

i predicted his hiring by 12 min? bad econ trinity w/ stephen moore and kudlow

wiki 2x see lnk bottom:

bak 12 22

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navarro cited his "research" in his "report" --> infamous will be wild twt!

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msnbc chris hayes shows navarro praise liz truss BS econ plan --> crash & burn

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Moments after being sentenced to 4 months in prison, Steve Bannon returned to his show to sell books

10/21/22

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/infowars-host-steve-bannon-sentencing-our-only-hope-now-miracle-god

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mma 10 22

PETER NAVARRO: Look, in the War Room sometimes there's some surprises. And you know what Dave, I'm going to have to tell you to stand down now because I'm so honored to be sitting by a gentleman who is really the single most driving force in this year's election cycle. He is the signal, the rest of us in many ways are the noise. And I'm going to turn the microphone over to Stephen K. Bannon.

…

STEVE BANNON: Signal not noise, we're going to talk about real news. Right? That was, and is what it is.

NAVARRO: It's just about taking back the House and the Senate.

BANNON: Hey like I said at the courtroom, I was judged today by the judge. I have no complaints. The judge and the whole process was, how they ran it, I thought, very efficiently and very effectively. I've obviously got big issues with the Department of Justice but that's a separate issue. But the judge rendered judgment for me today. But the most important thing is, I told everybody, the American people are going to weigh judgment on this entire process and Pelosi's reign of terror in the House and Biden's illegitimate regime. And that's going to come on November 8th and that's why everything is focused, everything is focused.

That's why everybody's got to volunteer, everybody's got to get to the ramparts. We're not going to stop here. We're going to be all over the country and back here and in and out. You're a big part of this, right? Providing our support and platform to those people we believe in and those issues we believe in.

…

What's important here is to focus on the 8th of November. Your book lays out how you take back Trump's America, you can only do it by participating. They keep saying you guys are anti-democratic. In fact, one of the gentlemen outside the courtroom today had the "vote" on it, right? And he is not a fan of the War Room, I would say he was not there to support Stephen K Bannon. But my point is hey that's what we have to do, we have to vote. We're going to beat them by democracy.

…

We’re to take break and sell some ads. I want to thank everybody, I want thank the support, and particularly I want to thank, just tens of thousands of people that have come to me, reached out to me about they’re praying for me. Listen, like I say, pray for our enemies, OK? I appreciate your prayers, but our enemies need your prayers.

…

Dr. Peter Navarro, “Taking Back Trump’s America”, go to Amazon dot com right now.

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an 12 22

When the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren handed down its unanimous decision in New York Times v. Sullivan back in 1964, it established a tough standard that plaintiffs have to meet in defamation lawsuits. Plaintiffs, according to the Warren Court, have to prove “actual malice.” And that is what Dominion Voting Systems is trying to prove in the defamation lawsuits it filed against Fox News, Newsmax TV, One America News (OAN) and others in response to the false claims they promoted about the 2020 presidential election.

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes, many far-right MAGA Republicans at Fox News, Newsmax and OAN promoted the false claim that Dominion’s voting equipment was used to help Democrats steal the election — a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked. Fox News, in response to Dominion’s defamation lawsuit, has maintained that its hosts weren’t saying the claims about Dominion were true, and that they were just asking questions.

Dominion, meanwhile, is trying to show, in its $1.6 billion lawsuit, that hosts at Fox News acted with actual malice and promoted claims they knew were nonsense. And on Wednesday, December 21, attorneys for Dominion pointed to Fox News host Sean Hannity as an example of someone who knew that the Big Lie was a lie but promoted the claims of Trump attorney Sidney Powell anyway. Powell, who is also facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion, falsely accused Dominion of helping Democrats steal the election from Trump. Another MAGA Republican who made that false claim and is being sued by Dominion is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Dominion has sued former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well.

READ MORE: Supreme Court allows Dominion’s $1.3 billion defamation suit against Mike Lindell to go forward

Reporting for the New York Times on December 21, journalist Jeremy Peters explains, “On November 30, 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his prime-time Fox News program. As she had in many other interviews around that time — on Fox and elsewhere in right-wing media — Ms. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was ‘corruption all across the country, in countless districts,’ in a plot to steal reelection from the president, Donald J. Trump. At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Dominion machines, she insisted, were being used ‘to trash large batches of votes.’”

But when Hannity gave a deposition two years later on Wednesday, December 21, 2022 and was under oath, he admitted, “I did not believe it for one second.”

According to Peters, “The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April. Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.”

Under the New York Times v. Sullivan standard established by the Warren Court 58 years ago, defamation is very difficult to prove. An honest mistake doesn’t fit the definition of defamation — the plaintiff has to show actual malice. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against the Times and lost because Palin and her attorneys couldn’t prove actual malice.

READ MORE: Fox News chief Lachlan Murdoch to be deposed in $1.6 billion dominion defamation case

“The high legal standard of proof in defamation cases makes it difficult for a company like Dominion to prevail against a media organization like Fox News,” Peters notes. “Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were, in effect, saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite. And that requires showing a jury convincing evidence that speaks to the state of mind of those who were making the decisions at the network. In Delaware Superior Court on Wednesday, Dominion’s lawyers argued that they had obtained ample evidence to make that case.”

Peters adds, “One lawyer for Dominion said that ‘not a single Fox witness’ so far had produced anything supporting the various false claims about the company that were uttered repeatedly on the network. And in some cases, other high-profile hosts and senior executives echoed Mr. Hannity’s doubts about what Mr. Trump and his allies like Ms. Powell were saying, according to the Dominion lawyer, Stephen Shackelford. This included Meade Cooper, who oversees prime-time programming for Fox News, and the prime-time star Tucker Carlson, Mr. Shackelford said.”

Citing Cooper and Carlson as examples, Shackleford told the court, “Many of the highest-ranking Fox people have admitted under oath that they never believed the Dominion lies.”

READ MORE: Right-wing media outlets continue to rage against Dominion’s defamation lawsuits: report

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oops kudlow

mma 12 22 ted mcd

2022 was a banner year for the fossil fuel industry. Fueled by the rise in energy costs due in part to the war in Ukraine, major oil and gas companies brought in massive profits. By the end of 2022, the net income of the seven largest oil corporations is projected to hit a record high of $4 trillion.

Yet Fox News used major events in 2022 to claim that the industry is suffering under a vicious “war” on energy waged by the Biden administration.

Fox defended the industry’s profits and ran cover for its role in limiting oil production, on many occasions advancing the idea that the world needs to invest more heavily in oil and gas. This latter point flies in the face of what the global climate scientific community is saying about climate change: Emissions from fossil fuels are rapidly altering the Earth’s temperature, and the only way to stop this from worsening is to rapidly reduce our dependence on these fossil fuels. And it advances the wrong takeaway from the energy crisis resulting from Russia’s aggression. Rather, moving toward clean energy is the only way to shield the U.S. from the vagaries of the global oil and gas market.

Throughout the year, Fox used the same debunked narratives to both defend and promote the fossil fuel industry

One of Fox’s main narratives in 2022 has been that the Biden administration is crippling or trying to destroy the fossil fuel industry through burdensome climate regulations. This talking point does not reflect reality. Just last year, the U.S. set a record for natural gas production. Meanwhile, U.S. crude oil production has steadily risen under Biden, and there is expected record oil production in 2023. And instead of the administration telling companies not to drill, oil producers are holding back from even more drilling primarily due to Wall Street pressure.

As part of this contrived “war on fossil fuels” narrative, Fox has been pushing the Biden administration to allow companies to drill more in the U.S. to help alleviate high domestic energy prices. But since oil prices are set on the global market, the Biden administration’s energy policies make little impact on what we pay at the pump.

With each major climate and energy-related event this year, these narratives got recycled as Fox doubled down on its longstanding defense of the fossil fuel industry.

A timeline of major 2022 events which saw Fox defend the powerful fossil fuel industry

The Russian invasion of Ukraine

Fox News was quick to blame the Biden administration’s climate policies for emboldening Putin in his decision to invade Ukraine. As the invasion roiled global energy markets, the network launched a full-throttled defense of the fossil fuel industry and attacked the administration for its supposed crippling regulations on the industry.

In March, the administration banned Russian energy imports to the U.S., and Biden critiqued the industry for not drilling enough after finding out that companies are sitting on thousands of untapped oil leases. In response, Fox defended the industry and gave a platform to its biggest boosters:

Fox host Larry Kudlow: Oil and gas companies are “the greatest industry in this country … the greatest industry around the world.”​​ [Fox News, America Reports, 3/8/22]

American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers: “Some of the policies that are being pursued right now by this administration are putting us on a road to more dependence — not independence.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 3/9/22]

Fox Business host Charles Payne: “It’s unfortunate that the president of the United States would do this, but I’ve seen a whole lot of this kind of stuff. First of all, they get to attack the war. They don't like capitalism. The word profit is a four-letter word to them. And you know, these are companies that hire Americans. Why are you demonizing them? It's nuts. We are blessed to have the oil under our feet.” [Fox News, America Reports, 3/16/22]

Frequent Fox guest Rick Perry: Criticizing the oil and gas industry is “unpatriotic," and the administration needs to “take the food off of the neck of the oil and gas industry.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 3/9/22]

Gas price spikes and efforts to reduce the pain at the pump dominated energy news during the spring and summer

Month after month, Fox hammered Biden’s policies as supposedly the primary reason gas prices were increasing. A number of events during this time period saw Fox trot out such claims as that the fossil fuel industry is being unfairly maligned and that increased production would help alleviate high energy prices.

In April, the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hearing on Big Oil’s record profits and its role in driving high gas prices. In response, Fox carried the industry’s water:

API President Mike Sommers: “We all know that the real reason for high prices are a consequence of low production because of some of these Biden administration policies, but also some other factors that are going on throughout the world. So — but this is a typical blame game that we see all the time on Capitol Hill. It is pretty outrageous, though, that they're hauling American executives that supply 11 million American jobs up before Congress to blame them for something that they themselves can be blamed for.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 4/6/22]

Fox correspondent Chad Pergram: “Democrats who control the House, Senate, and White House are struggling to address the price surge, so they need a scapegoat. Oil companies. Attacking big business is good politics for the Democratic base. Democrats tried to focus on profits and turned on the witnesses.” [Fox News, America Reports, 4/6/22]

Fox anchor Sandra Smith: “That is an incredibly important picture that they are painting because they are being demonized for the billions in profits that they are making in 2021. And that is the case. We ran a brain room research here for all the witnesses, companies that were there, Shell, BP, Chevron, Exxon, and I have in front of me, Joe: BP making $7 billion in 2021 while it lost 20 billion in 2020. You got Shell making 20 billion in 2020; it lost more than that — 21 billion in 2020. This is the environment those oil companies have to navigate.” [Fox News, America Reports, 4/6/22]

In May, Biden suggested that high gas prices, which had reached a record high, are part of “an incredible transition that … when it's over, we'll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.” In response, Fox came out firmly on the side of fossil fuels:

Fox guest Wesley Hunt: “He's got his words wrong. It's not about energy transition; it's about energy addition. … The bottom line is this — it's an all-hands-on-deck approach to fulfill the energy needs of this country. … This administration is trying to kill our industry, but we are not going to allow that to happen.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends First, 5/24/22]

Fox host Brian Kilmeade: “We could be stepping up, an opportunity, as bad as things are, to step up with natural gas. That's what the president should be doing, saying I need my natural gas community to step up and help our allies in the time of war and the time of strife and the time of stress. Instead he said this could be a good thing. We'll all be doing -- we’ll all be having clean burning vehicles, which by the way natural gas is clean burning.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/24/22]

Fox Business correspondent Jackie DeAngelis: “This administration loves to attack Big Oil,” and the fossil fuel industry’s selfless act of producing oil it didn’t have to produce was for “the American people.” [Fox News, America Reports, 5/31/22]

In July, in an effort to stabilize global oil supplies, the administration conducted an entirely noncontroversial sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a move that actually helped temporarily alleviate gas prices. Additionally, Biden visited top oil producer Saudi Arabia in order to strengthen diplomatic ties. Fox responded with attacks:

Fox host Sean Hannity: “While Biden suffers more blunders abroad, ask yourself, why is Biden so hostile to American oil and gas and domestic production? Why has he been so soft on American adversaries like China because he's given them our Strategic Petroleum Reserves and he's giving them a pipeline to Vladimir Putin. [Fox News, Hannity, 7/14/22]

Fox host Katie Pavlich: “Instead of ramping up domestic energy production to combat sky high prices here, Biden left with no choice but to beg Saudi dictators for more oil.” [Fox News, The Five, 7/14/22]

Oil executives interviewed by Fox correspondent Lauren Simonetti: The oil industry is “demonized” by Biden and American energy is produced in an “environmentally responsible way.” [Fox News, America Reports, 7/15/22]

Finally, in July, Biden made a major climate announcement in Massachusetts.

Fox contributor Brian Brenberg: “I think most of America wishes the coal plant was still there because … more people could be in a cool environment and be safer.” [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 7/20/22]

Extreme weather and OPEC+ oil cuts pushed gas prices back into the headlines in early fall

Punishing extreme heat, fires, and drought affected vast swaths of the globe during the summer, with climate scientists saying that these events were made worse by the burning of fossil fuels, and a major hurricane hit the U.S. in September. Additionally, a major OPEC oil decision roiled gas prices again. Fox once again defended and promoted the fossil fuel industry.

In September, as Hurricane Ian hit Florida, Biden warned oil companies not to use the storm “as an excuse to raise gasoline prices or gouge the American people.”

Fox anchor Neil Cavuto: “I want to echo again, there is no evidence, there was no evidence, there has been no evidence that gouging was going on of the oil companies, or the gas giants, were, you know, colluding to rig prices or all of a sudden take advantage of a bad situation by doing this sort of thing.” [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 9/29/22]

In October, OPEC+ cut oil production.

Fox anchor Martha MacCallum: “There's no reason why we can't be energy independent. As you say, we have been before.” MacCallum continued, “We basically scolded a lot of our energy companies out of expanding and growing their businesses because they have been told by several administrations, not the last one, that they were going to be out of business soon. [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 10/12/22]

Fox anchor Dagen McDowell: “[Biden] won’t open our spigots wide open and start pumping all that delicious natural resources. … Four years ago, we were a net exporter of petroleum products, first time since 1949. We were the swing producer in the world; we controlled world oil prices. … Joe Biden could do that, but he won’t because he is obviously both a masochist because he likes taking it from Saudi Arabia and also a sadist because he likes inflicting pain on the people of the United States.” [Fox News, The Five, 10/15/22]

​​Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX): “Unleash the American energy sector, and oh by the way, don’t declare absolute total war on them, which is what the administration has done over the past two years. … We do it cleaner, so if you care about the environment, you should be rooting for American energy.” [Fox News, Fox Report with Jon Scott, 10/15/22]

The COP27 climate negotiations and oil sales to Venezuela in November provided fodder for Fox to boost the fossil fuel industry

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP 27, yielded an agreement for a global fund in which richer nations, which are vastly responsible for climate change, would contribute money to poorer nations to help the latter rebuild from climate-fueled extreme weather disasters. Fox heavily criticized the plan, instead claiming that more fossil fuel usage is the way to move forward. Additionally, the Biden administration allowed Chevron to resume drilling operations in Venezuela.

Fox contributor Sean Duffy attacked the fund for its lack of focus on fossil fuel usage: “This money isn’t free, right? So, when they offer money from this development fund to these poorer nations there’s going to be strings attached, which means you can’t develop carbon-based energy, and carbon-based energy is the cheapest energy. And If you want your economy to grow, if you want to manufacture and transportation, you need carbon.” [Fox News, The Big Sunday Show, 11/20/22]

Fox contributor Marc Thiessen claimed that it’s actually climate policies, and not fossil fuels, that will destroy the world: “If anyone owes poor countries anything, it is the climate extremists. … They would drive billions of people out of the middle class and stop billions more from getting into the middle class. So this would do more damage, the climate activists would do more damage to prosperity, more damage to the GDP of these countries than any of the solutions they offer and so the war on fossil fuels is what is hurting the developing world, not anything else.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 11/21/22]

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) suggested Biden’s energy policy is like something his dog would do: “President Biden's energy policy looks like something Roger used to keep under my back porch. It is a fact that America has the greatest economy, strongest economy in all of human history. We can't run it without fossil fuels, not today, not tomorrow. It is also a fact that through reserves and technology, America can produce every drop of oil and natural gas that we need and have extra left over to sell to our friends.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 11/30/22]

Fox Business host Charles Payne: “We've been indoctrinated in this over the last couple of decades to movies. You turn on a faucet and fire comes out instead of water. And you know how fracking became a four-letter word in this country for a long time, even though it created the energy independence that you described, it created an amazing number of jobs, it revitalized small or rural towns, it was seen as enemy number 1 by folks who don't care.” [Fox News, Hannity, 11/28/22]

Fox goes on an anti-climate justice marathon after COP27 reparations agreement

11/23/22 1:32 PM EST

Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida

09/30/22 2:52 PM EDT

Fox News platforms climate denial and the Great Reset conspiracy theory during COP27

11/14/22

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/factual-distinctions-matter-peter-navarro/

ct fail

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https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-december-19-2020

December 19, 2020

06:42:42 Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud 'more than sufficient' to swing victory to Trump https://t.co/D8KrMHnFdK . A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!

Retweets: 67211

Favorites: 218392

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twt ref

no lnx

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Washington Examiner

NEWS

Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud 'more than sufficient' to swing victory to Trump

by Andrew Mark Miller, Deputy Social Media Editor |   | December 17, 2020

[Just In...

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Former Disney star Demi Lovato back to female pronouns after stint as 'they/them'

Judge rebuffs request to toss out lawsuits against Trump over Jan. 6

CNN can't restore its reputation with the same partisan personalities

Into the weeds: Here's what's in Senate Democrats' long-awaited marijuana bill

Taiwan cancels leave of some soldiers ‘to immediately prepare for war’ ]

Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro published a lengthy report Thursday outlining several examples of voting irregularities that are “more than sufficient” to swing the outcome of the election in President Trump’s favor.

The 36-page report “assesses the fairness and integrity of the 2020 Presidential Election by examining six dimensions of alleged election irregularities across six key battleground states” and concludes that “patterns of election irregularities ... are so consistent across the six battleground states that they suggest a coordinated strategy to, if not steal the election, strategically game the election process in such a way as to ... unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket.”

The six dimensions of voting irregularities in the report include: outright voter fraud, ballot mishandling, contestable process fouls, equal protection clause violations, voting machine irregularities, and significant statistical anomalies.

All six of those voting issues were present in at least two key states, according to the report, and a total of six battleground states experienced multiple examples of the other dimensions.

Graph 1.png

“Evidence used to conduct this assessment includes more than 50 lawsuits and judicial rulings, thousands of affidavits and declarations, testimony in a variety of state venues, published analyses by think tanks and legal centers, videos and photos, public comments, and extensive press coverage,” the report claims.

Additionally, the report cites affidavits alleging the exploitation of the elderly and the infirm by “effectively hijacking their identities and votes” and accuses Democrats of using the coronavirus pandemic to relax voter ID requirements to the point that ballot harvesting and fraud could slip by unnoticed.

The report outlined incidents in the key states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where ballots allegedly were illegally harvested and dumped into drop boxes.

The election was marred with examples of dead people voting, according to the report.

“In Pennsylvania, for example, a statistical analysis conducted by the Trump Campaign matching voter rolls to public obituaries found what appears to be over 8,000 confirmed dead voters successfully casting mail-in ballots,” the report claims. “In Georgia — underscoring the critical role any given category of election irregularities might play in determining the outcome — the estimated number of alleged deceased individuals casting votes almost exactly equals the Biden victory margin."

The report concludes: “The ballots in question because of the identified election irregularities are more than sufficient to swing the outcome in favor of President Trump should even a relatively small portion of these ballots be ruled illegal.”

Navarro, who worked on the report in a private capacity, is scheduled to hold a news conference at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday to discuss the findings.

Trump has launched legal battles across the country since the November election, which has been called for President-elect Joe Biden by all major news networks and certified by the Electoral College, and as recently as this week stated that it’s “too soon to give up.”

Dozens of legal challenges across the country, however, have been lost, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear cases from both Texas and Pennsylvania challenging the election, which Trump’s supporters have decried as a politically motivated ducking.

Several Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have broken with the president and conceded that Biden is the winner of the election. McConnell congratulated Biden on Wednesday, declaring that “the Electoral College has spoken.”

Additionally, Biden slammed claims of voter fraud this week, saying, "Thankfully, a unanimous Supreme Court immediately and completely rejected" efforts to overturn the election.

News 2020 Elections Joe Biden Peter Navarro Donald Trump Voter Fraud Campaign 2020 Campaigns White House

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some lnx

...The 36-page report “assesses the fairness and integrity of the 2020 Presidential Election by examining six dimensions of alleged election irregularities across six key battleground states” and concludes that “patterns of election irregularities ... are so consistent across the six battleground states that they suggest a coordinated strategy to, if not steal the election, strategically game the election process in such a way as to ... unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket.”...

Trump has launched legal battles across the country since the November election, which has been called for President-elect Joe Biden by all major news networks and certified by the Electoral College, and as recently as this week stated that it’s “too soon to give up.”

Dozens of legal challenges across the country, however, have been lost, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear cases from both Texas and Pennsylvania challenging the election, which Trump’s supporters have decried as a politically motivated ducking.

Several Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have broken with the president and conceded that Biden is the winner of the election. McConnell congratulated Biden on Wednesday, declaring that “the Electoral College has spoken.”

Additionally, Biden slammed claims of voter fraud this week, saying, "Thankfully, a unanimous Supreme Court immediately and completely rejected" efforts to overturn the election.

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ref report

https://bannonswarroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Immaculate-Deception-12.15.20-1.pdf

...Concluding Observations

From the findings of this report, it is possible to infer what may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket. Indeed, the patterns of election irregularities observed in this report are so consistent across the six battleground states that they suggest a coordinated strategy to, if not steal the election, then to strategically game the election process in such a way as to unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket. A major part of this “stuff the ballot box” strategy has been aptly summarized in a complaint filed before the US Supreme Court by the State of Texas: Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, [Democrat] government officials [in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin] usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes. They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.146 According to the Texas complaint – which the Supreme Court sadly refused to hear – the goal of this strategy was to flood the battleground states “with millions of ballots to be sent through the mails, or placed in drop boxes, with little or no chain of custody.”

At the same time, Democrat government officials also sought to “weaken the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote signature verification and witness requirements.”147 The findings of the assessment conducted in this report are consistent with the Texas complaint. Key takeaways include:  The weight of evidence and patterns of irregularities uncovered in this report are such that it is irresponsible for anyone – especially the mainstream media – to claim that there is “no evidence” of fraud or irregularities.  The ballots that have come into question because of the identified election irregularities are more than sufficient to swing the outcome in favor of President Trump should even a relatively small portion of these ballots be ruled illegal.  While all six battleground states exhibit most, or all, six dimensions of election irregularities, each state has a unique mix of issues that might be considered “most important.” To put this another way, all battleground states are characterized by the same or similar election irregularities; but, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each battleground state is different in its own election irregularity way.  This was theft by a thousand cuts across six dimensions and six battleground states rather than any one single “silver bullet” election irregularity.

In refusing to investigate a growing number of legitimate grievances, the anti-Trump media

and censoring social media are complicit in shielding the American public from the truth.

This is a dangerous game that simultaneously undermines the credibility of the media and

the stability of our political system and Republic.

 Those journalists, pundits, and political leaders now participating in what has become a

Biden Whitewash should acknowledge the six dimensions of election irregularities and

conduct the appropriate investigations to determine the truth about the 2020 election. If

this is not done before Inauguration Day, we risk putting into power an illegitimate and

illegal president lacking the support of a large segment of the American people.

 The failure to aggressively and fully investigate the six dimensions of election irregularities

assessed in this report is a signal failure not just of our anti-Trump mainstream media and

censoring social media but also of both our legislative and judicial branches.

Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia together with Republican majorities

in both chambers of the State Legislatures of five of the six battleground states –

Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin 148

– have had both the

power and the opportunity to investigate the six dimensions of election

irregularities presented in this report.

Yet, wilting under intense political pressure,

these politicians have failed in their Constitutional duties and responsibilities to do

so – and thereby failed both their states and this nation as well as their party.

Both State courts and Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have failed the

American people in refusing to appropriately adjudicate the election irregularities

that have come before them. Their failures pose a great risk to the American

Republic.

 If these election irregularities are not fully investigated prior to Inauguration Day and

thereby effectively allowed to stand, this nation runs the very real risk of never being able

to have a fair presidential election again – with the down-ballot Senate races scheduled for

January 5 in Georgia an initial test case of this looming risk.

ENDNOTES

1 All witnesses who have signed sworn affidavits or declarations who are referenced in this report but whose names

are not referenced in the public record, e.g., a court case, are referred to as “Jane Doe” or “John Doe” based on gender.

This has been done to ensure their safety and security.

2 Ballotopedia, “Partisan composition of state legislatures,” December 4, 2020.

https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures

3 Bump, Philip. “The two states that almost always predict which candidate is headed for defeat,” The Washington

Post, 7 September 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/07/the-two-states-that-almostalways-predict-which-candidate-is-headed-for-defeat/

*The two Democrat candidate exceptions were John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Bill Clinton in 1992.

4 Williams, Pete. "Trump's election fight includes over 50 lawsuits. It's not going well.” NBC News, November 23,

2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-s-election-fight-includes-over-30-lawsuits-it-sn1248289

5 All witnesses who have signed sworn affidavits and declarations referenced in this report are referred to as “Jane

Doe” and “John Doe” based on gender, in order to ensure their safety and security.

6 Bannon, Steve, War Room Pandemic, https://pandemic.warroom.org/

7 Solomon, John, Just the News, https://justthenews.com/john-solomon

8 Kassam, Raheem, National Pulse, https://americasvoice.news/the-national-pulse/

9 Newsmax, https://www.newsmax.com/

10 One America News Network, https://www.oann.com/

11“Most Say Mail-In Voting Worked, But 47% Say Fraud Likely.” Rasmussen Reports, December 7, 2020.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2020/most_say_mail_in_voting_work

ed_but_47_say_fraud_likely

12 Legal Information Institute, “Bribery,” Cornell University, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/bribery

13 Bedard, Paul, “Pro-Biden effort offered Native Americans $25-$500 Visa gift cards and jewelry to vote,”

Washington Examiner, December 14, 2020. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/pro-bideneffort-offered-native-americans-25-500-visa-gift-cards-jewelry-to-vote

14 Pentochoukov, Ivan, “Illegal Money-for-Votes Raffles Conducted in Several States in 2020 Election,” Epoch Times,

December 2, 2020. https://www.theepochtimes.com/illegal-money-for-votes-raffles-conducted-in-several-states-in2020-election_3598915.html

15 Morgan, Jessy. Testimony. “A truck driver with USPS says he was suspicious of his cargo load of 288,000

completed ballots.” December 1, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0xaA4dYsbQ

16 Declaration of John Doe, Delaware County Pennsylvania, November 9, 2020.

17 Bedard, Paul, “20 House Republicans demand Barr investigate ‘suitcases’ of ballots in Georgia,” The Washington

Examiner, December 4, 2020. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/20-house-gop-demand-agbarr-investigate-suitcases-of-ballots-in-georgia

18 “Trump Campaign lawyers present video 'evidence' of ballot fraud,” Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, December 4,

2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ0xDWhWUxk

Real American Politics, December 4, 2020. https://twitter.com/RealAPolitics/status/1334754269052997635?s=20

19See, for example: Weber, Peter, “Georgia's top election investigator debunks a vote fraud conspiracy involving

'suitcases' of ballots, a urinal,” December 7, 2020. https://news.yahoo.com/georgias-top-election-investigatordebunks-115236191.html

20 In the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Tyler Bowyer et al v.. Doug Ducey, December 2,

2020. https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2020/12/Bower-Complaint-AZ.pdf

21 Affidavit of Jane Doe, Cobb County, Georgia, November 12, 2020.

22 Declaration of Jane Doe, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Nov 7, 2020 [more pp]

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no lnx many

https://lawandcrime.com/jan-6-committee/jan-6-committee-says-donald-trumps-will-be-wild-tweet-followed-craziest-meeting-of-his-presidency-and-electrified-extremists/

Jan. 6 Committee Says Donald Trump’s ‘Will Be Wild’ Tweet Followed ‘Craziest Meeting’ of His Presidency and ‘Electrified’ Extremists

ADAM KLASFELD

Jul 12th, 2022, ....

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an 8 22

the U.S. Dept. of Justice on Wednesday sued former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro, demanding he return email communications he allegedly sent or received without copying his government account. DOJ says these emails are presidential records and belong to the federal government. Legal experts are warning the government has an excellent case and others in similar circumstances should be “concerned.”

“Navarro, who worked for the White House during the entirety of Trump’s presidency, had used ‘at least one non-official email account … to send and receive messages constituting Presidential records,’ the Justice Department said in a court filing,” Politico reports. “Attorneys also accused him of ‘wrongfully retaining them’ in violation of federal record-keeping laws, as Navarro did not copy the messages into an official government account, nor did he respond to the National Archivist’s initial request for the emails.”

Top national security attorney Bradley Moss explained the case by saying, “Navarro walked out of the White House with hundreds of records in his possession and refuses to return them.”

READ MORE: ‘Claims Are False’: DOJ Tells Judge Peter Navarro Is Lying to the Public

The DOJ’s complaint against Navarro, a promoter of Trump’s “Big Lie,” suggests he tried to obtain immunity in exchange for returning the records but apparently DOJ refused.

“Prior to filing this suit, in an effort to avoid litigation, Department of Justice counsel contacted Mr. Navarro by email and United States mail to secure the Presidential records that Mr. Navarro had not copied to his government email account. Discussions with Mr. Navarro’s counsel to secure the return of Presidential records ultimately proved unsuccessful. Mr. Navarro has refused to return any Presidential records that he retained absent a grant of immunity for the act of returning such documents.”

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney writes, “DOJ, which has been busy this week, sued Peter Navarro for the return of comms on his private devices b/c they’re presidential records.”

READ MORE: Peter Navarro Goes for the Cash After Arrest: ‘I Need Everybody in America to Buy My Book on Amazon Today’

“The analysis is persuasive,” says Vance, who is now a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst. “Other presidential advisors who used private comms should be concerned.”

The Associated Press notes that the “legal action comes just weeks after Navarro was indicted on criminal charges after refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”

Back in June in Navarro’s criminal case the Dept. of Justice said that Navarro, arrested and charged with criminal contempt of Congress, is making “misrepresentations” and “false” claims, including that he was denied food and water and denied his right to call an attorney.

After he was arraigned and allowed to leave the courtroom in early June Navarro had repeatedly made seemingly wild claims, including that he should not have been arrested at the airport, that he was put in “leg irons,” that he was “strip-searched,” that law enforcement officials refused to allow him to call an attorney – despite also repeatedly stating he would be representing himself, including before a judge.

He also complained he had been placed in solitary confinement, in a tweet promoting his book with a link to purchase it on Amazon.

---

okafor cited 94% in oversight:

https://www.thetrace.org/2021/01/john-lott-trump-appointee-leave-justice-department-gun-data/

j m

Lott, a controversial pro-gun researcher who was hired last fall as a senior advisor for research and statistics at the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, left the position this week.

Lott’s departure was revealed in a January 16 email sent by the Crime Prevention Research Center, a nonprofit he founded that publishes research papers and articles with a pro-gun bent. The email, from Nikki Goeser, CPRC’s executive director, claims that Lott’s hiring “generated more opposition than almost any other Trump appointment,” and that “gun control activists also launched a fierce email and telephone campaign demanding Lott’s firing.” Lott will return to the CPRC as its president.

As The Trace reported in December, gun violence researchers were alarmed by Lott’s appointment to the DOJ, and the possibility that he could influence the release of firearms data. A trained economist, Lott rose to prominence after the 1998 publication of his book More Guns, Less Crime, which argued that the proliferation of civilian-owned firearms deters violence. Respected academics have repeatedly discredited Lott’s work.

Lott’s work during his short stint at the DOJ still remains something of a mystery. But documents provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by The Trace provide a glimpse. In October, Lott was slated to attend a meeting about the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) — a system he’s derided in the past. In 2018 he pushed the false narrative that NICS improperly blocked gun sales to “millions of law-abiding citizens” simply because they have names and birthdates that are the same as or similar to someone disqualified from possessing firearms.

Lott also had a meeting in late October about JustGrants, the DOJ’s grant payment management system, the documents show. The Office of Justice Programs, where Lott was an advisor, conducts research into violent crime and provides billions in grants to local, state, and federal authorities to implement crime-prevention strategies, and also funds research on firearm violence and prevention.

The documents also provide more clarity on the nature of Lott’s appointment at the DOJ. He was a Schedule C employee, a designation for political appointees. According to the Office of Personnel Management (OJP), which signs off on Schedule C employees, “incumbents of most of these positions customarily resign at the request of the new incoming administration or before a new agency head takes office.” His annual salary was listed as $116,353.

In the CPRC email, Goeser wrote that Lott’s “political appointee position ends with the end of the Trump administration.” Tannyr Watkins, a spokesperson at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of OJP, did not reply to a query about the exact date and circumstances of Lott’s departure.

The possibility that Lott may have been in a position to disrupt research that informs grantmaking had alarmed gun violence researchers, who feared he could manipulate or withhold federal data in order to support his agenda. “I’ve seen him in different venues literally start making stuff up,” Daniel Webster, the director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University, told me last month.

Lott has argued that mass shooters seek out gun-free zones, despite evidence to the contrary. And research has consistently demonstrated that states with less restrictive concealed carry laws actually have higher rates of violent crime than states with no such laws. Even conservative researchers have detailed issues with Lott’s work, and questioned why some media organizations continue to repeat his findings.

Lott’s hiring also concerned lawmakers. In a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr in December, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said his hiring “raises concerns about the continued integrity of the nonpartisan career civil service.”

During his time at DOJ, Lott also aided in former President Trump’s effort to overturn the election with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, producing a report in December that said 289,000 “excess votes” had been found across six decisive swing states due to “dead people voting, ineligible people voting, or even payments to legally registered people for their votes.” Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro used the findings to call for postponing the U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia.

---

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/peter-navarro-ridiculed-delay-trial/  to sell bk = legal def?

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ruling ~ him

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/peter-navarro-2657485264/

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navarro arrested, will rep himself tho not atty: https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/peter-navarro-has-fool-attorney/

---

i forgot ziegler:

an 6 22 raw story

Navarro, President Trump’s former trade advisor was indicted for contempt of Congress on Friday due to his refusal to cooperate with the January 6th Committee, which has signaled interest in his communications with the president.

Less attention has been paid to Garrett Ziegler, a Navarro aide and zealous Trump loyalist who both supported his boss’ efforts and coordinated with a network of outside operatives who were promoting an onslaught of false claims about election fraud and legally dubious schemes to preserve Trump’s hold on power.

Ziegler received an email from the senior investigative counsel for the committee, which is scheduled to begin public hearings on June 9, requesting a meeting to discuss information he might have that is relevant to the congressional investigation.

Among his extensive efforts from his office at the White House, Ziegler facilitated a now-infamous late-night meeting on Dec. 18, 2020 in which attorney Sidney Powell, retired Lt. General Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne tried to persuade President Trump to order the National Guard to seize voting machines and re-running elections in six battleground states he lost to Joe Biden.

Ziegler used his White House Worker and Visitor Entry System, or WAVES pass to let Powell, Flynn and Byrne into the White House, allowing them to hold an impromptu meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, as he later recounted in an interview with fellow election denier David Clements. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone were caught by surprise by the meeting, which reportedly descended into a shouting match. Ziegler’s efforts bypassed protocol for White House meetings, and he said when it was discovered that he had let the plotters into the White House, his visitor’s privileges were revoked.

In Navarro’s book In Trump Time, he wrote that “to support the challenge effort, he allowed “several members of my staff to help out in the battleground states on their own time.” Navarro’s book describes “the young and always earnest” Ziegler venturing to an Indian reservation in Nevada to investigate alleged vote-buying shortly after the election. The work eventually culminated in the three-part Navarro Report, which asserted without evidence that the election had been stolen from Trump.

Around the time of the election, a man named Mark Cook took a photograph of cardboard boxes stacked on metal shelves that were labeled “Dominion Voting” and “Made in China.”

“My good friend Mark Cook took this picture,” Ziegler, who is now 26, wrote on his Telegram channel in June 2021. “We infiltrated the election equipment storage facility in Sacramento County, CA, and documented all of the violations of law.”

Cook’s photograph would later be used on the final page of a PowerPoint presentation entitled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” put together by Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel with a background in psychological warfare that was shown to members of Congress on Jan. 4 and 5, 2021. The presentation recommended that Vice President Mike Pence set aside the electoral votes from the six battleground states carried by Biden, and also called on President Trump to order the National Guard to seize voting machines and re-count the ballots.

For his part, Cook remains active in the election denial movement. Last month, he and Clements, a former New Mexico State University professor, addressed a Republican-controlled board of commissioners in Surry County, NC. Introduced by Clements as “our hardware and IT cybersecurity expert,” Cook told commissioners: “If our Pentagon can’t secure a network, Department of Defense can’t secure a network, our Department of Homeland Security can’t secure a network, are we really so foolish as to think the only system that is completely impervious to any cyber-hack is our voting system?”

Cook’s 25-minute presentation omitted a simple fact — voting tabulation machines are not networked, and preliminary counts are transferred on a mobile drive to a computer to be uploaded from local election offices for election-night reporting.

Both Ziegler and Cook were trusted associates in the network of operatives and conspiracy theorists that worked under the competing legal teams headed by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and by Powell, alongside Flynn and Byrne.

In a private Telegram text to another election denier that has been reviewed by Raw Story, Waldron said, “Mark and Garrett have worked with us since 14 Nov 20.” He added that Ziegler and Cook “both passed rigorous background checks” after suspicions arose that CIA and British intelligence assets were attempting to infiltrate the network plotting to overturn the election.

“I have no idea what Waldron was alluding to,” Ziegler told Raw Story in an email. “None. I had an active [top secret/sensitive compartmented information] clearance at the time. I think he was just spinning a tale for others.”

Waldron declined to comment for this story.

Michael Trimarco, a Giuliani associate who rented a bloc of rooms at the Westin Arlington Gateway hotel in November 2020, also alluded to a dual role on Ziegler’s part in an interview with the far-right podcaster Ann Vandersteel earlier this year.

“I know some of the people that were his direct reports, because he wasn’t officially reporting directly to Peter,” Trimarco told Vandersteel. “So, I know some of these other people. And politically that didn’t make people around in Peter’s world very happy with Garrett in the inter-office kinda…. But from what I saw, he was well connected with Peter… and I know he furnished a lot of information for the report.”

While enmeshed with the outside election denial network, Ziegler also provided the external teams with a direct conduit to the White House and President Trump, to the extent that Trimarco said information about election irregularities would often reach Trump before even Giuliani knew about it.

“Ironically, a lot of the stuff that got back to Rudy didn’t end up coming through me,” Trimarco said. “Because once that connection was made, Garrett would give it to Peter, and Peter would give it to the president. And then it would circle back to Rudy.”

In his interview with Clements, Ziegler dated work on the three-part Navarro Report to Nov. 15 — one day after Waldron said he had started working with Ziegler. Ziegler said he and four other aides assisted Navarro with the reports.

“We prepared — Peter gave direction,” Ziegler told Clements. “He’s a fantastic, logical thinker, which is very hard — easier said than done. He laid it out, what his vision was. And our job was to get the first draft.”

Much of the information in the reports was funneled up from the outside team, Trimarco said.

“Peter put out a three-volume report together, and a lot of the information — not all of it — came from this group of analysts that work working out of the Westin that did not go to Tomotley,” Trimarco said, referencing attorney Lin Wood’s estate in South Carolina, where Powell and Flynn established a working headquarters away from DC.

One day after Powell, Flynn and Byrne’s Dec. 18 visit to the White House to promote their plan to have the National Guard seize voting machines and re-run the election, Trump tweeted out a link to the Navarro Report, with an invitation to his supporters to attend a “wild rally” in DC on Jan. 6, 2021.

Similar to his former boss, since leaving the White House Ziegler has continued to deride a coterie of officials he considers weak and insufficiently loyal to the president. In interviews and Telegram messages, Ziegler has particularly singled out Meadows for savage criticism.

In Telegram message in late January 2021, Ziegler wrote that he feared Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would take control of the country and impose a dystopian “technocracy.”

“And I can assure you, from my standpoint in the WH, I did everything I could to prevent this,” Ziegler said. “I broke rules, protocol, etc. If I had a decade more of life under my belt, I would have had the formal power to get rid of Meadows, Cipollone, etc.”

Ziegler’s Telegram messages suggest he viewed Meadows as an obstacle to efforts to overturn the election. In one message, in February 2021, Ziegler faulted Meadows for citing an audit in Georgia as evidence of due diligence, writing that the chief of staff was “so fckn dumb (or compromised)” that he didn’t question whether an auditing company could be corrupted by “mob-like cartels.”

Like Navarro, who was indicted for contempt of Congress on Friday, Meadows is fighting a subpoena from the January 6th Committee. Last December, the House voted to hold Meadows in contempt, referring his case to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Meadows played a critical role in shepherding an array of schemes entertained by Trump in his quest to hold onto power. That included hosting meetings with the president and members of the House Freedom Caucus to discuss a plan — much like Navarro’s “Green Bay Sweep” — to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to remand the electoral votes back to the battleground states and delay certifying the election for Biden, according to testimony to the January 6th Committee by White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Meadows also hosted a meeting in which Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who is now the chair of the Freedom Caucus, expressed support for the idea of sending Trump supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, while others in the meeting remained silent, the New York Times has reported. Hutchinson also reportedly testified to the committee that she saw Meadows burn documents in his office fireplace after a meeting with Perry.

Ziegler has positioned himself to the right of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, of which Meadows was a chair before he left Congress to serve as Trump’s chief of staff.

“He’s a Freedom Caucus guy,” Ziegler complained to Clements during his July 2021 interviewed. “And what this means is — I call them ‘permanent hearing holders.’ So, Benghazi, Killary…. Nobody ever gets indicted with these jokers. Mark Meadows comes from that ilk…. So, how does this relate to the president’s chief of staff? He just wasn’t effective. He would get steamrolled by people.”

Much of Ziegler’s rhetoric on Telegram is laced with racist vitriol that uses African nations as a stand-in for national decline, while Christian chauvinism as force for national rebirth.

“If we elect people like Mark Meadows — good, jolly, your brother next door — we’re gonna end up like Zimbabwe,” Ziegler said. “If I could do one thing — which is stop electing nice guys. We need Christian zealots, frankly.”

Ziegler expressed a similar sentiment in a March 2021 Telegram message, in which he wrote, “We could have a Third Great Awakening in the country, both religious and political. And the coup we just went through could be the flint that ignites it. Hopefully its ends will be a repentance to the Christ and a Republic that gets rid of this corrupt and satanic Oligarchy.”

Beyond the Dec. 18, 2020 meeting he arranged at the White House, Ziegler said he tried to help Powell get to the president on different occasion.

“I walked Sidney over to the residence one to try to get the president a binder full of evidence,” Ziegler said on a podcast in February 2021. “And we got blocked again there, too.”

Ziegler recalled that he would tell anyone who would listen to him in the White House: “Let’s just go look at the ballots. We don’t have to do it. Have the National Guard in Georgia do it.”

---

substack

Conclusion

As the House January 6 Committee reaches the critical days and perhaps even hours of its decision-making process with respect to sending a subpoena to Ginni Thomas, and as the U.S. House of Representatives quickly reaches the last drop-dead date for initiating an impeachment investigation of Justice Clarence Thomas—who continues to refuse to recuse himself from January 6 cases, but is closer to the progenitors of a Trumpist coup plot than any Supreme Court Justice in history has ever been to any federal crime of such magnitude—the evidence above, and the further information and investigation it implicitly and explicitly points toward, becomes as important as any revelation that’ll come from the Committee in a month of harrowing revelations.

The simple fact is that all of the coup plot progenitors mentioned above were echoing one another in unmistakable ways in Fall 2020 and early 2021. Of the federal divisions over which Congress has the constitutional duty of oversight, the Trump conspirators’ plot encompassed—at a minimum—the Supreme Court, the White House, DOJ, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Nor does it appear that the plot has run its course. The same individuals referenced above as being involved in a coup plot in 2020 and 2021 appear to still be involved in similar efforts in 2022.

Consider that former Department of Homeland Security employee Christina Bobb, whose role in Trump’s coup plot appears to have been in part to lobby her former employer to illegally interfere in national vote-counting processes, is now a member of Trump’s legal team. In the video below, she tells us what she’s working on now:

Twitter avatar for @RonFilipkowski

Ron Filipkowski

@RonFilipkowski

Trump’s attorney Christina Bobb tonight says things are in the works to overturn the 2020 election and possibly reinstate Trump. She says the plan is for 3 states to decertify their results and send resolutions to the next Congress after the midterms to overturn the results.

July 9th 2022

1,897 Retweets5,392 Likes

This shocking video isn’t from 2020 or 2021. It’s from this month—July—in 2022.

The plan Bobb details is identical to the one Ginni Thomas and others were working on before Trump left office, suggesting that Thomas requires House questioning not just about 2020 and 2021 but whether she has continued her covert lobbying of state GOP legislators and GOP members of Congress in 2022. After all, Bobb makes clear that, as a member of Trump’s legal team, her efforts to aid Trump’s candidly deranged plot to be “reinstated” as President of the United States following the 2022 elections requires action from the same individuals who Thomas was lobbying in 2020 and 2021—starting with the very same state legislators Thomas targeted. While Bobb admits that the current Congress wouldn’t attempt to further any such coup, she ends her summary of Trump’s current illegal scheme by saying, “After 2022, if we replace them [the current Democratic majority in the House of Representatives], who knows?”

Given that any such 2023 coup would eventually come before Clarence Thomas, the urgency of questioning Ginni Thomas now—before a possible Republican takeover of Congress in January 2023 ends the Committee’s brief lifespan—is urgent at a level that can’t be overstated. Any who doubt this should listen to what Trump himself has been saying lately, all of which dovetails with the statements coming from his lawyers and (again) were last heard from all his foremost 2020 and 2021 coup co-conspirators:

Twitter avatar for @RonFilipkowski

Ron Filipkowski

@RonFilipkowski

Trump’s attorney said yesterday that if they could get 3 states legislatures to pass these resolutions, then a 2023 GOP Congress could take this up, overturn the 2020 election, and reinstate Trump. Now this from her client.

Image

July 9th 2022

1,607 Retweets4,888 Likes

Meanwhile, following the recent Proof coverage of a little-noticed July 2021 Rumble interview between insurrectionists David K. Clements and Garrett Ziegler, there is now new attention being paid to the links between Team Kraken—which Ziegler let into the White House on December 18, 2020, without the proper authority to do so—and Trump’s administration, particularly top Trump adviser Peter Navarro’s office.

Twitter avatar for @RonFilipkowski

Ron Filipkowski

@RonFilipkowski

Peter Navarro’s aide Garrett Ziegler says he let Powell & Flynn into the WH without permission: “That was not scheduled. So when Meadows & Cipollone got called into that meeting and realized that Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn were there .. they had no idea how they got in.”

July 15th 2022

1,704 Retweets4,123 Likes

As evidence mounts that the December 18, 2020 meeting in question constituted an actionable Conspiracy to Commit Treason, the accusation that Trump and his many co-conspirators didn’t “merely” commit Conspiracy to Obstruct a Congressional Proceeding but a crime punishable by life imprisonment or even death are starting to appear in mainstream media—underscoring that what is at stake in the House January 6 Committee executing a thorough investigation of Trump’s plot before its time is up.

ABOVE: Garrett Ziegler.

Here’s MSNBC legal analyst (and former federal prosecutor) Glenn Kirschner on the appropriateness of treating the January 6 investigation as an investigation of Treason:

Twitter avatar for @ifindkarma

Adam Rifkin  @ifindkarma

“Donald Trump launched the attack on the Capitol and refused to call it off… He told those around him Mike Pence should be hanged. Donald Trump waged war — levied war — against the United States on and around #January6th.”

@glennkirschner2 #JusticeMatters

Adam Rifkin @ifindkarma

@glennkirschner2 “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them… is guilty of treason… and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

18 U.S. Code § 2381 — https://t.co/X1T73pDXc5

https://t.co/uvjuBCFDj2 https://t.co/uI7Qujveda https://t.co/wu4SYrqD2j

July 12th 2022

Indeed, evidence of the size, scope, depth, and duration of Trump’s coup plot—this last too little a topic of public discussion thus far—is only increasing as the summer of 2022 wears on, emphasizing that the House January 6 Committee will likely need to hold more hearings in August or even September of this year. For instance, and as Proof will now report for the first time, there is new evidence in the Clements-Ziegler interview above that, contrary to his claims of having no awareness of or support for Trump authorizing the illegal interference of the U.S. armed forces in a U.S. election, Peter Navarro may have been present at the December 18, 2020 Trump-Team Kraken meeting conference—and therefore been well aware that precisely such a plot was being pushed by Team Kraken and advanced by Trump.

In the July 2021 Clements-Ziegler interview, Ziegler says that during his time in the White House as Navarro’s top aide (notably, he says that he and not Navarro primarily authored, with one or two other aides, the Navarro “reports” that helped animate the January 6 insurrectionists) he was only in Trump’s presence at a private meeting five or six times. He makes clear that his most substantive involvement with Trump came on December 18, 2020, when he led Team Kraken, by fits and starts, to the Oval Office.

Now consider this section of his interview with Clements (which begins at 41:50 in the linked video), after Ziegler has just referenced “December 18” several times and the topic of the conversation is, unambiguously, December 18, 2020 (emphasis added):

ZIEGLER: The memory that sticks out to me the most [of being in a private meeting with then-President Trump and others] is the 18th. That’s the most that I had spoken to him one-on-one and he had directly listened to me. And Peter [Navarro] was actually ill at the time, so he was on the phone—they conferenced him in. You know, Cipollone was there, [Jared] Kushner was there, Meadows was there, and I was basically saying—

CLEMENTS (looking concerned): The 18th of what?

ZIEGLER: January.

CLEMENTS (looking relieved): January, okay.

ZIEGLER: So this was after the Federal Bureau of Insurrection [sic] did their thing [on January 6]. {NB: Ziegler here adopts the conspiracy theory that the FBI planned and executed the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021].

Is it possible that, of the five or six times Ziegler had meaningful encounters with the President of the United States, two of them occurred on the 18th of a month and both involved Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel? It’s possible. Or, this may’ve been a slip of the tongue that helps explain why—after the Trump-Team Kraken meeting ended in the wee hours of December 19—Trump tweeted about just two things: (1) the “wild protest” that was coming on January 6, and (2) the “Navarro reports” Ziegler had written and Navarro had put his name on.

In short, what has come into focus in the last two months is a ring of co-conspirators whose names are known and who nearly all have connections to either John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, or both. Eastman has now pleaded the Fifth Amendment a hundred times. It’s time for Ginni Thomas to answer questions to help protect our democracy or confirm herself—finally—as one of those who has secretly been trying to destroy it.

By Seth Abramson

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mma 6 22

logic/ refused to comply?

fear he wd destroy evid? on phone?

mma 6 22

mARK LEVIN (HOST): Peter Navarro is the former trade advisor to President Trump. The January 6 committee subpoenaed a wide swath of information they demanded from him, as well as his testimony.

As you know, it's been my contention that that committee is basically a front for the Justice Department's criminal investigation, which makes its activities utterly and completely unconstitutional. Not because of reasons other people have been saying, but because of separation of powers. And when you're using a committee as a Trojan horse to stalk individuals or to try and find individuals, and throw a very wide net, hundreds and hundreds of interviews and so forth, and your purpose is really to provide that information to a federal grand jury or a US attorney or the criminal division of the Justice Department, you are effectively violating the constitutional rights of individuals through the back door. And of course, the media play along.

Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, Dan Scavino, and now Peter Navarro all held in contempt of Congress. Two of whom have been indicted, Bannon and Navarro. Now, here's the deal. Today, they picked up Navarro at an airport and they put him in handcuffs and leg irons. Handcuffs and leg irons, because they said he was an escape threat. The man is seventy two years old, he's known all over the place, he's no escape threat. All they had to do is ask him to show up. Just to show up.

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DOJ signal

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/peter-navarro-2657459683/

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Navarro, the former Trump White House aide who on Friday morning was arrested, handcuffed, and indicted on contempt of Congress charges, appeared outside a federal courthouse after his arraignment Friday afternoon and urged people to buy his book.

Defiant, disrespectful, and disheveled, Navarro called the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack a “kangaroo committee.”

He then pivoted, declaring, “I need everybody in America to buy [my] book on Amazon today. That is for two reasons: One, that’s going to be my legal defense fund – these people are coming at me hard – and number two, that book is about why we need to take back the House of Representatives from the kangaroos on Capitol Hill.”

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indicted

https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2022/06/peter-navarro-indicted/

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mad at kush for testify 1/6?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/peter-navarro-impeach-joe-biden/

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msnbc 90's CA? dem convention speech  support Hillary, lost 5 races

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an 4 22

Former Trump White House trade advisor Peter Navarro was initially scheduled to appear on MSNBC’s The Beat on Tuesday, March 29. However, that appearance was abruptly canceled following the House Select Committee's vote on Monday in favor of holding Navarro in contempt of Congress for his failure to cooperate with the Jan. 6 investigation.

Sharing the news with viewers, MSNBC host Ari Melber said, “Late today, [Navarro] then indicated he could not do an interview tonight."

While the exact reason for Navarro's cancellation remains unclear, there is speculation that it may be due to the House's reference to a previous Navarro appearance on Melber's show. Back in February, Navarro became embroiled in a heated debate with Melber and made remarks that ultimately conflicted with his assertion of executive privilege.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) highlighted the discrepency.

“[Navarro] has so much knowledge to share with a journalist, but he refuses to share that knowledge in response to a lawful subpoena,” Murphy said. “Evidently, Mr. Navarro is only concerned with executive privilege with keeping certain matters confidential when it’s convenient to him.”

In addition to speaking out about his involvement during the last MSNBC appearance, Navarro also shared a pertinent piece of information with The Daily Beast. Back in December of last year, Navarro detailed the “Green Bay Sweep” strategy he and former Trump White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon had laid out in hopes of keeping Trump in office.

“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Beast. “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.

The committee is now recommending charges for both Navarro and Dan Scavino, who served as former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for the Trump administration.

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see ziegler 2/10 ari transcript:

MYSTAL: He talked about -- in his book about how he`s had conversations with Steve Bannon about this Green Bay Sweep without Trump in the room, right?

So I wouldn`t -- I would ask him, did you have conversations with Steve Bannon without Trump in the room? Did you have conversations with Giuliani without Trump in the room or Bernard Kerik?

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pop-up couple times recently carping on biden ? rescue?

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/trump-2656976697/

The report used by former President Donald Trump to push his big lie about the 2020 presidential election was reportedly written by one of his own White House staffers, new details reveal.  GUK

The Guardian has reportedly reviewed the original version of the reference document. While the public version of Trump's reference is said to have been authored by Katherine Friess, who served as a volunteer member of the former president's post-election legal team, new developments have revealed the report "was, in fact, produced by the senior Trump White House policy aide Joanna Miller."

Per The Guardian, the report on Dominion Voting Systems, which was titled, “OVERVIEW 12/2/20 – History, Executives, Vote Manipulation Ability and Design, Foreign Ties” claimed the election technology company "corruptly ensured there could be 'technology glitches which resulted in thousands of votes being added to Joe Biden’s total ballot count.'”

According to an inside source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, "the original version of the Dominion report named Miller — who worked for the senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro — as the author on the cover page, until her name was abruptly replaced with that of Friess before the document was to be released publicly."

The report was supposed to be used as a tool to support Trump's efforts to have election results overturned in battleground states President Joe Biden won. However, Trump administration officials also began using the report to support other tactics they were reportedly considering to overturn the outcome of the election so the former president could remain in power.

After the report was made public, Navarro, according to the inside source, began referencing the baseless claims in his own report which he compiled with help from Miller and, Garrett Ziegler, who also worked as a policy aide for the Trump White House.

“Two weeks before the election, we were doing those reports hoping that we would pepper the swing states with those,” Ziegler said of former White House advisor Navarro's report.

The latest development comes as the House Select Committee continues its investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection and the circumstances surrounding it.

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closer to jail

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/peter-navarro-melber/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/peter-navarro-2656458566/

navarro peaceful 1/6 ari melber

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January 5, 2022

Brad Reed @ Raw Story: Trump abruptly cancels planned Jan. 6th speech — then throws tantrum at Capitol riot probe.

Summer Concepcion @ Talking Points Memo: Navarro Planned A Coup With Bannon On Jan 6. But He Doesn’t Want You To Call It That.

Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: Steve Bannon Praises Peter Navarro After Combative Ari Melber Interview: ‘We’re Not Reasonable Men.’

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/peter-navarro-election/

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top Trump aide: Vaccinating children is 'child abuse at a minimum and murder in some cases'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement January 04, 2022

Peter Navarro, the Trump White House’s Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy and a conspiracy theorist who has called Dr. Anthony Fauci the “father” of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is falsely stat...

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trump coup?! substack willard war rm?

https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/major-breaking-news-team-trump-had

NO LNX MANY  VID?

Team Trump Had a Second Pre-Insurrection War Room

An investigation of who was in this second Insurrection Eve war room has now begun.

Seth Abramson

Jun 6

Introduction

As this publication has exclusively and exhaustively detailed, on the eve of the January 6 insurrection Team Trump convened a 23-person war council at Trump International Hotel in D.C. to plot out—as attendees have since confessed—what would happen the following day. It is now clear that a second, contemporaneous pre-insurrection war council was held at a nearby Washington hotel and that it may well have been linked, through either phone or video conferencing, to the first.

This previously unreported news could significantly swell the size of Donald Trump’s pre-insurrection planning team, even as it remains possible (indeed, a possibility that has been extensively investigated here at Proof) that any remote conferencing that occurred the night before the January 6 insurrection also included the White House.

The Two War Rooms

The group that convened at Trump International on January 5 included, per eyewitness accounts previously compiled by Proof, the following members of Trump’s family, legal team, campaign staff, advisory corps, donor class, circle of friends, allies in Congress, and presidential administration:

Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Corey Lewandowski, David Bossie, Michael Flynn, Peter Navarro, Adam Piper, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Nebraska GOP gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Lindell, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Doyle Beck, Daniel Beck, Layne Bangerter, and two additional unnamed U.S. senators, one of whom prior Proof reports suggest was Ted Cruz (R-TX). Domestic terrorist Ali Alexander “attended” by phone.

Other possible attendees—whose status is still being investigated in light of evidence they were present—include Alex Jones, Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne, and Guiliani cybersecurity adviser Phil Waldron. As Proof has previously noted, and as will become vital to the account below, four individuals from the two lists above now claim (or have had it claimed by legal counsel) that they weren’t, in fact, part of any meeting involving Trump International Hotel on January 5, despite eyewitness accounts to the contrary. Those individuals are Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Peter Navarro, and David Bossie.

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an 12 21 me

A former Trump White House advisor has revealed he collaborated with a right-wing agitator to execute a behind-the-scenes effort to halt the certification of President Joe Biden's election victory.

Speaking to The Daily Beast last week, Peter Navarro —ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump— touched on his role in the plans and how he and former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon corroborated with Republican lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to halt the certification of the election results.

“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Daily Beast. “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”

The commitment Navarro discussed came as lawmakers were affirming the presidential election certification highlighting Biden's victory over Trump. Although they failed to successfully overturn the election, their goal was to stall as much as possible in hopes of pressuring Vice President Mike Pence (R) to send election results back to the six states Trump and his allies fought to overturn.

As reputable news outlets refused to circulate Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud, The Daily Beast noted that Navarro and Bannon "hoped to force journalists to cover the allegations by creating a historic delay to the certification process."

“The Green Bay Sweep was very well thought out. It was designed to get us 24 hours of televised hearings,” he said. “But we thought that we could bypass the corporate media by getting this stuff televised.”

Navarro went on to highlight what his exact role was in the plot. He was responsible for providing what has been described as "raw materials" such as the report he created with subtitles like “The Immaculate Deception” and “The Art of the Steal.”

“My role was to provide the receipts for the 100 congressmen or so who would make their cases… who could rely in part on the body of evidence I'd collected,” he told The Daily Beast. “To lay the legal predicate for the actions to be taken.” (Ultimately, states have not found any evidence of electoral fraud above the norm, which is exceedingly small.)

In his memoir titled, In Trump Time, Navarro also shed light on Bannon's role in the plot.

“Steve Bannon’s role was to figure out how to use this information—what he called ‘receipts’—to overturn the election result. That’s how Steve had come up with the Green Bay Sweep idea,” he wrote.

Navarro added, “The political and legal beauty of the strategy was this: by law, both the House of Representatives and the Senate must spend up to two hours of debate per state on each requested challenge. For the six battleground states, that would add up to as much as twenty-four hours of nationally televised hearings across the two chambers of Congress.”

During a segment on his podcast, "War Room Pandemic," Bannon also alluded to elements of the plot.

"We are right on the cusp of victory,” Bannon said on the show. “It’s quite simple. Play’s been called. Mike Pence, run the play. Take the football. Take the handoff from the quarterback. You’ve got guards in front of you. You’ve got big, strong people in front of you. Just do your duty."

Although Navarro had a role in the plot, he admitted that it was likely best that someone canceled his scheduled appearance to speak at the "Save America" rally shortly before the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

“It was better for me to spend that morning working on the Green Bay Sweep. Just checking to see that everything was in line, that congressmen were on board,” he said during the interview. “It was a pretty mellow morning for me. I was convinced everything was set in place.”

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denier BS 9 22

biden US sp AGW ~ w/ s moore MMA

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https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/peter-navarro-thanks-newsmax-helping-him-raise-legal-defense-funds

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/peter-navarro/

Peter Navarro, one of former President Donald Trump's top White House trade advisors, attempted to stress the importance of acquiring critical medical supplies at the onset of the pandemic. At the time, Trump is said to have ignored the advice.

Now, new documents released as part of a congressional investigation show how Navarro took matters into his own hands as he "pursued his own ad hoc strategy that committed more than $1 billion in federal funds and has since prompted multiple probes," according to The Washington Post.

On March 1, 2020, Navarro penned a memo urging the former president to "MOVE IN 'TRUMP TIME'" to acquire critical items such as "ingredients for drugs, handheld coronavirus tests and other supplies" and protective gear needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

"There is NO downside risk to taking swift actions as an insurance policy against what may be a very serious public health emergency. If the COVID-19 crisis quickly recedes, the only thing we will have been guilty of is prudence," Navarro wrote to the president.

At the time of Navarro's memo, the United States had only confirmed 100 coronavirus cases. While the White House ignored Navarro's recommendations, the trade advisor developed his own strategy way of acquiring the items. However, this was reportedly done with very little oversight.

To do so, the Post reports Navarro "subsequently steered a $765 million loan to Eastman Kodak to produce ingredients for generic drugs, a $354 million sole-source contract for pharmaceutical ingredients to a start-up called Phlow, and a $96 million sole-source contract for powered respirators and filters from AirBoss Defense Group."

The investigative findings also detailed some of the arrangements Navarro made with a number of companies who were employed as drug manufacturers. Details about the Trump administration's loan to Kodak, known for its photography equipment as opposed to drug manufacturing, prompted a litany of congressional committee probes.

Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the subcommittee chair, on Wednesday released a statement urging Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and a number of other senior officials to disclose more information about Navarro's dealings.

Details about the letter have been published by The Washington Post.

The letter said, "These documents provide further evidence that the Trump administration failed to react quickly to the coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020 despite urgent warnings, failed to implement a national strategy to alleviate critical supply shortages that were putting American lives at risk, and pursued a haphazard and ineffective approach to procurement in which senior White House officials steered contracts to particular companies without adequate diligence or competition."

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late stop steal

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-coup-2649538441

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-coup-2649538441

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Four chilling signs Trump's attempted coup is escalating

Bob Brigham December 18, 2020

President Donald Trump continues to refuse to concede that he lost the 2020 election to President-elect Joe Biden.

There were four major signs on Thursday evening that the Republican effort to overthrow the election is escalating.

The first sign was when former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn suggested on NewsMax Trump could use "military capabilities" to overturn the election in swing states hold do-over elections.[mart law used 64x]

The second sign occurred a short time later on Fox News when White House advisor Peter Navarro said President-elect Biden would be an "illegal and illegitimate president."

The third sign was when White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany argued on Fox News that Congress could use "alternate slates" of electors to steal the election.

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1339758838535180288

The fourth sign was Trump's Twitter account.

Trump complimented Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) for saying he would back Trump's efforts to overturn the election in Congress.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1339758142381551629

Trump then falsely claimed he won Wisconsin and that the vote was rigged.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1339759289234317312

And then Trump complained about the United States Supreme Court refusing to go along with his efforts to overturn the election.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1339759289234317312

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an 920 beware cherry schadenfreude, but 2nd time?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/watch-cnns-tapper-shuts-down-navarro-interview-over-insults-and-lies-about-trumps-19-response/

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Trump’s economic adviser says president ‘led wisely’ when he downplayed the deadly potential of COVID-19

Alex Henderson September 11, 2020

President Donald Trump has been widely criticized this week because of the bombshell revelations in veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” which shows that back in February, Trump was…

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-white-house-is-trying-hard-to-throw-peter-navarro-under-the-bus-lets-wish-them-well/

The sheer number of sources on this Washington Post report of abusive behavior by and the belligerent wrongness of Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has for some reason inserted himself into a position of prime and unqualified decision-making on the administration’s COVID-19 pandemic responses, sends a clear message: Team Trump is trying very hard to push Peter Navarro under the bus, but Navarro is such a nasty old cuss that nobody can quite get him to stay under there.

That Navarro’s pandemic decisions have been questionable is not news. Navarro’s focus on hydroxychloroquine sent the administration far down a useless path. His push for reforming Eastman Kodak into a drug producer quickly turned into a federal investigation on possible insider trading. His self-lauded contract purchasing ventilators at a near-500% markup from what they might normally go for was met with derision and, eventually, scaled down drastically. Those are all known instances of Navarro screwups.

What we didn’t know, but should have guessed, is that Navarro is a living bloody terror to work with, something akin to putting mittens on a rabid wolverine, giving him his own office, and Just Seeing How That Goes. Navarro was so consistently abusive towards women on his staff, reports the Post, that then-Chief of Staff John Kelly ordered the White House Counsel’s office to launch an investigation. Navarro only kept his job because that investigation concluded Navarro was a raging asshole to absolutely everyone.

Indeed, the Post‘s sources seem to indicate that every last person in the building hates him, as do Republican lawmakers, as do Trump’s other allies. “Navarro is often hostile and overbearing in arguments, prone to attack anyone who disagrees with him as a representative of the ‘deep state,'” reports the Post. And Navarro’s one notable instance of being right—warning that the emerging COVID-19 pandemic could become a severe threat in the United States—was apparently dismissed inside the White House precisely because Navarro was similarly frothy about other things, all the time.

so what we have here, then, is a White House that collectively has gotten so fed up with Navarro’s toxic behavior that they’re willing to go to the Post and give as much anonymous dirt as they can. Trump, though, won’t fire him—yet. If the wider Team Trump is successful in tying Navarro to the consequences of his many pandemic failures, however, it is possible that he will be reassigned to a new position as human speed bump.

Really, though, we can’t overemphasize how on board we are with this particular White House plan. Navarro has long been a notorious crank even in areas of his supposed expertise—the man’s sole proven talent has been an ability to fling himself onto American television screens. He’s been a paranoid, “deep state”-screaming-about jerk in every interaction because, like Trump, that’s how he blusters his way through being provably incompetent at his actual job.

Of course everyone hates him! Everyone in the White House hates absolutely everyone else—that’s why seemingly every story about the White House for nearly four years now has consisted of anonymous Trump someones telling tales about other someones! The whole place is a zoo with no keepers, broken locks on every gate, and the gorillas have gotten hold of Tasers.

It’d be lovely if Navarro’s dozens of enemies manage to get him under that bus tire, but nobody should count on it really happening. Donald Trump fires people for making him look bad, not for gross and abusive incompetence. Gross and abusive incompetence is, after all, the Trump family motto.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-a-fraud-trade-deficit-soars-to-12-year-high-despite-the-presidents-promises/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/watch-trump-trade-adviser-loses-it-when-cnn-corners-him-on-complaints-about-his-professional-conduct

on  CNN Thursday, anchor Alisyn Camerota confronted White House trade adviser Peter Navarro about his reported misconduct allegations — and he lost his temper and accused it of being a fabrication by Amazon and Jeff Bezos to railroad him.

“There’s a few investigations that have come to light about your style and your handling of the procurement, so let’s go through them,” said Camerota. “The House Oversight Committee is looking at your procurement of ventilators, and they say that you were working with Phillips which is a technology company, and that you — they believe, wasted half a billion dollars — $500 million by agreeing to pay Phillips to make ventilators at price five times the amount that the Obama administration paid. So is that true and why?”

“No, it’s not true,” said Navarro. “All that stuff you’re seeing in the fake news — look, Alisyn, let’s be honest here. When somebody from the Democratic-controlled House does an investigation of this administration, that is a partisan witch hunt.”

“Okay, next is the investigation or probe into your personal style,” said Camerota. “So The Washington Post reports—"

"I’m referring to the one that Don McGahn looked into your personal style of accusations—” said Camerota.

“Let me explain something here,” said Navarro. “The Amazon Post, through four reporters and anonymous sources with 20 different fake allegations, okay? … one of my charges in this administration is to go in after strongly the — the people who engage in counterfeit trafficking, and one of the biggest enablers of counterfeit trafficking is none other than Amazon and Jeff Bezos, and you are well aware that there’s been a public feud between Bezos and I, it’s well publicized.”

“Let me read what The Washington Post says and I’ll give you the floor,” said Camerota. “‘Navarro’s harsh manner and disregard for protocol had alienated numerous colleagues and Republicans. The White House counsel’s office in 2018 investigated Navarro’s behavior in response to repeated complaints and Navarro narrowly avoided losing his job, but the abuse has continued as the White House has grappled with the coronavirus, multiple White House officials have said.’”

“There’s a lot of people in this swamp town that really are not on the Trump Train that really don’t want to bring our jobs home from Asia,” said Navarro. “They’re the globalists who don’t want to close our borders.”

“The Washington Post said they had 28 sources in and around the White House,” said Camerota. “Are your colleagues the deep state?”

“They’re all anonymous,” said Navarro. “If this were you, wouldn’t you want the sources to say who they are? What is this anonymous source stuff? This is like — this is like nothing but character assassination. By the way, I had a better day yesterday than Nancy Pelosi. That was pretty funny.”

“Just to be clear, so none of your colleagues — none of your female colleagues — you haven’t addressed the female colleague part,” said Camerota.

“You’re not going to cross-examine me on the show,” snapped Navarro. “Why am I here? What are your viewers wanting to hear? They want to hear from the Defense Production Act policy coordinator about how their lives are going to be better saved. How things are going to get better and you’re wallowing in the Amazon mud. And that’s fine. That’s fine.”

Watch below:

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-trump-administration-is-backing-out-of-a-647-million-ventilator-deal-after-investigation-revealed-evidence-of-fraud-waste-and-abuse/

the federal government is backing out of a controversial $646.7 million deal to buy ventilators from Royal Philips N.V., acting before the company had delivered a third of the order.

The deal has been the focus of several ProPublica stories since March. That reporting prompted a congressional investigation that last month found “evidence of fraud, waste and abuse” in the acquisition of the Philips ventilators.

This week, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy announced it is expanding its probe to look at other coronavirus-related deals negotiated by Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, who served as the point man on the Philips deal.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the Philips contract, confirmed that the deal is the subject of an internal investigation and legal review.

“It was ProPublica’s reporting that got my subcommittee interested in this contract,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement. “It prompted our investigation where we uncovered unfathomably inept dealmaking by top Administration officials like Peter Navarro.”

Navarro did not respond to a request for comment. But Sarah Matthews, a White House spokeswoman, defended Navarro on Tuesday, saying he has “played a vital role in our response” to the pandemic, helping to oversee the use of a federal act that compelled production of critical supplies and created “thousands of jobs in the process.”

“While the Trump Administration has been focused on saving lives, House Democrats continue to focus on pointless investigations,” she wrote.

Philips, a Dutch company, announced Monday that its U.S. factories had stopped making the ventilators covered by the contract after receiving an early termination notice from HHS. Philips has delivered 12,300 ventilators, less than a third of the 43,000 the federal government had originally sought.

The congressional investigation determined that the deal would have resulted in the U.S. overpaying for the ventilators by as much as $500 million, thanks to “inept contract management and incompetent negotiating by the Trump Administration.”

ProPublica first wrote about the U.S. government’s relationship with Philips in March, detailing how a decade ago government planners had paid Philips millions of dollars to develop a low-cost ventilator that could be stockpiled and deployed if ever there were a pandemic. The U.S. ordered 10,000 once the company received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration.

But when COVID-19 cases overwhelmed hospitals in New York in the spring, Philips hadn’t delivered any. Instead, ProPublica found, Philips was selling a commercial version of that ventilator — manufactured at its Pennsylvania factory — overseas at far higher prices.

Rather than force production of low-cost ventilators, a White House team led by Navarro cut a new deal for more ventilators, agreeing to pay more than four times the price.

ProPublica in April revealed that this new deal boosted the price of what appeared to be similar ventilators from $3,280 each under the Obama administration deal to $15,000 under the Trump administration. Neither Philips nor HHS would explain how the two models were different.

In its investigation of the deal, the House subcommittee asked Philips to turn over a trove of records and discovered that the more expensive ventilators were “functionally identical” to the cheaper ones.

Navarro and his team “appeared gullible” and there was no evidence that they even tried to negotiate a lower price, the House investigators found.

The U.S. government paid the highest price for the ventilators among American buyers, the investigators found. The company’s records show that Philips had sold more than 5,000 of that model at far lower prices before May 27.

Philips CEO Frans van Houten said earlier this summer that his company did not raise prices to cash in on the coronavirus crisis and did not agree with the conclusions of the congressional investigators.

This week a Philips spokesman said that the list price of the ventilator was $21,000 and that the negotiated price of $15,000 reflected the “higher costs for the expedited delivery schedule.”

“While we are disappointed in light of these vast efforts, we will adjust our plans and work with HHS to effectuate the partial termination of this contract,” van Houten said in a written statement Monday.

It’s not clear how much the deal will ultimately cost taxpayers. Philips, HHS and the White House all declined to say whether the company would be paid an early termination fee.

Stephanie Bialek, a spokeswoman for the HHS office in charge of the Strategic National Stockpile, said in a statement that the government has 120,000 ventilators available and didn’t face any shortages. She said her agency had also terminated two other smaller ventilator deals early as it balanced “federal stockpile requirements with commercial market demand for ventilators.”

“As a result, HHS is saving the U.S. taxpayer millions of dollars by halting delivery of additional ventilators that are no longer required,” Bialek wrote.

Separately, the HHS Office of Inspector General announced in July that it was auditing the five largest ventilator contracts to determine whether the awarding and monitoring of the contracts complied with federal requirements and HHS policies.

As for the 10,000 low-cost ventilators the U.S. ordered for the stockpile years ago, they will arrive eventually. Philips spokesman Steve Klink said the company still planned to deliver them by September 2022, when they are due.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/christian-nationalists-are-willing-to-toss-the-constitution-aside-because-trump-gave-them-exactly-what-they-want/

no lnx twt

Christian nationalists are willing to toss the Constitution aside because Trump gave them exactly what they want

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 11, 2020

On Sunday, Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro attempted to justify the president’s memorandum on coronavirus relief by suggesting that God had something to do with creating executive orders.[twt]

The narrative is that congress is simply a “swamp” and so Trump took action via something that was created by God and our founding fathers to bypass the legislative body. Of course, that is the opposite of what was written into the Constitution when it describes three separate, but equal branches of government. In a sense, Navarro is claiming that our founding fathers created a mechanism for the president to act as king. He backs that up with the idea that God was involved with doing so.

None of that is going to be a concern for Trump’s base among Christian nationalists. Over the weekend, Elizabeth Dias published a piece in which she reminded us of that one time when Trump actually told the truth by saying that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and his supporters wouldn’t abandon him. She noted that it was during that same speech at a Christian college in Iowa that Trump said this:

“I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Trump said.

Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country, he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: “And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.”

If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger.

“Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.”

Over the last four years, we’ve heard endless attempts to explain why Christian nationalists have been so loyal to a man who has lived the opposite of everything they have claimed to value. But there you have your answer: he promised to give them power. That is precisely why Katherine Stewart titled her book about Christian nationalists, The Power Worshippers. She explains that we miss the mark if we assume that this movement is all about the so-called “culture wars.”

This is a political movement that wants power. I do think it is helpful, in understanding this movement, to distinguish between the leaders and the followers. The foot soldiers may believe that they’re fighting for things like traditional marriage and a ban on abortion. But over time, the movement’s leaders and strategists have consciously reframed these culture war issues in order to capture and control the votes of a large subsection of the American public. They understand if you can get people to vote on just one or two issues, you can control their vote. So they use these issues to solidify and maintain political power for themselves and their allies, to increase the flow of public and private money in their direction, and to enact economic policies that are favorable to their most well-resourced funders.

In commenting on the Christian right’s comparison of Trump to King Cyrus, Stewart wrote this:

Today’s Christian nationalists talk a good game about respecting the Constitution and America’s founders, but at bottom they sound as if they prefer autocrats to democrats…The great thing about kings like Cyrus, as far as today’s Christian nationalists are concerned, is that they don’t have to follow rules. They are the law. This makes them ideal leaders in paranoid times…

This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

They want it all. And in Mr. Trump, they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership.

This is why you’ll find no objections from Christian nationalists to the prospect of Trump upending Constitutional norms like the separation of powers among the three branches of government. They want the tyrannical power associated with an autocrat in order to enact their agenda.

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self correction?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/two-big-news-outlets-express-regret-after-letting-trump-officials-lie/

although President Donald Trump often rails against the mainstream media and insists that countless journalists are out to get him, he and his officials will manipulate or deceive major news outlets whenever they can get away with it. This week, two such outlets have apologized for letting Trump officials get away with lying: USA Today and National Public Radio.

Earlier this week, USA Today published an op-ed by Peter Navarro — one of Trump’s top economic advisers — that claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci has repeatedly been wrong about the coronavirus pandemic. But Bill Sternberg, USA Today’s editorial page editor, is now saying that some of Navarro’s anti-Fauci claims don’t hold up when fact-checked.

According to Sternberg, “Several of Navarro’s criticisms of Fauci — on the China travel restrictions, the risk from the coronavirus and falling mortality rates — were misleading or lacked context. As such, Navarro’s op-ed did not meet USA Today’s fact-checking standards.”

USA Today’s Ledyard King cites some specific examples of things Navarro wrote that were inaccurate. For example, Navarro wrote:

In late January, when I was making the case on behalf of the president to take down the flights from China, Fauci fought against the president’s courageous decision — which might well have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.

King, however, explains: “Trump and his supporters have touted the restrictions on travel from China as a travel ban, but the move stopped short of that. As Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters January 31, the country was denying entry to foreign nationals, ‘other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, who have traveled in China within the last 14 days.’ In addition, experts said there isn’t enough data to conclude the restrictions made a significant difference. A study in the journal Science found the various travel limitations across the globe helped slow the spread of the pandemic, but more was needed to contain it.”

Navarro also wrote:

When I was working feverishly on behalf of the president in February to help engineer the fastest industrial mobilization of the health care sector in our history, Fauci was still telling the public the China virus was low risk.

But according to King: “There’s no evidence of a large-scale effort by the Trump administration to mobilize supplies for the pandemic as early as February, although experts contend that a forceful response then would likely have limited the spread and saved lives. Trump said little in public about the virus during that time period and downplayed the threat.”

Meanwhile, on NPR’s website, Public Editor Kelly McBride criticized the outlet for letting Attorney General Bill Barr get away with lying during a “Morning Edition” segment that aired on June 26 and was hosted by reporter Steve Inskeep. That day, McBride writes, NPR listeners “heard U.S. Attorney General Barr falsely declare that mail-in ballots will jeopardize the security of the upcoming presidential election.”

Barr told NPR:

There’s so many occasions for fraud there that cannot be policed. I think it would be very bad. But one of the things I mentioned would be the possibility of counterfeiting.

According to McBride, the claim that mail-in voting promotes fraud is contradicted by “extensive reporting — including by NPR before Inskeep’s interview — fact-checking and academic research. The overwhelming consensus is that there’s no credible evidence that counterfeit mail-in ballots have posed any substantial threat to election security.”

“I felt it was such a ridiculous set of claims because he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about,” said Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT, in response to Barr’s claim that ballots could be stolen from mailboxes and counterfeited on a large scale and argued,

McBride writes: “I agree with the audience members who have cried foul at how this was presented. While some would argue that when a powerful government (official) offers an outrageous point, listeners should get to hear it, this interview made it too easy for those listeners to come away with an incomplete understanding — or even believing that Barr’s widely debunked statement is a credible concern.”

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also 720 fauci fail, trump navarro under bus?!  https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/white-house-is-waving-the-white-flag-on-fauci-attacks-after-trump-throws-navarro-under-the-bus-cnns-acosta/

on  CNN Wednesday, chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta reported that White House officials are backing down from their attacks on top public health official Dr. Anthony Fauci, following an op-ed by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro attacking his judgment.

“After days of attacks, Dr. Anthony Fauci has had enough and he is firing back,” said Acosta. “He is describing the attacks on him as a, quote, ‘major mistake’ on the part of the White House, and White House officials are jumping into damage control mode, insisting that aides across the West Wing are not happy with trade adviser Peter Navarro, saying he violated instruction from Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who had warned staffers to stop going after Fauci.”

“After waging a campaign to discredit one of the nation’s most trusted experts on the coronavirus … the White House appears to be waving the white flag, at least for now,” said Acosta. “President Trump and his top aides are now backing off on their attacks of Fauci, but only after Peter Navarro blasted Fauci in a USA TODAY op-ed. Asked about that, the president all but accused him of going rogue.”

“Now, White House officials are trying to distance themselves from Navarro, with one top aide saying in a tweet, ‘the Peter Navarro op-ed is the opinion of Peter alone. The president values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his administration,’” said Acosta. “One White House official went further, saying Navarro had been told by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to de-escalate the situation with Fauci, but that he violated those instructions by writing the op-ed anyway.”[vid]

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==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trump-trade-advisor-peter-navarro-slammed-for-ridiculous-op-ed-attacking-expert-immunologists-credibility/

Millions of Americans, fearful of being infected with the deadly COVID-19, have been paying close attention to Dr. Anthony Fauci — who has been warning against reopening non-essential businesses prematurely and is stressing that the pandemic is far from over. Trumpistas have responded by offering “opposition research” in the hope of discrediting the expert immunologist. Some of the attacks on Fauci have come from Peter Navarro, who is one of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers and slams him in a ridiculous July 14 op-ed for USA Today — and many people have been rising to Fauci’s defense on Twitter.

Headlined, “Anthony Fauci Has Been Wrong About Everything I Have Interacted With Him On,” Navarro’s op-ed briefly tries to make an argument against Fauci’s credibility. Navarro, for example, argues that Fauci has been wrong about hydroxychloroquine’s efficacy against COVID-19, but in fact, many health experts have warned that the drug could be dangerous. And the Trump advisor also claims that Fauci has been “flip flopping on the use of masks.”

“When you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice,” Navarro writes, “my answer is: only with skepticism and caution.”

But if Navarro’s goal was to discredit Fauci, he did an incredibly poor job. USA Today conduced an online survey on the op-ed, and around 77% of readers responded that they “strongly disagree” with Navarro. Another 6% voted that they “disagree.”

Kyle Griffin, a producer for MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” tweeted, “The White House assault on Dr. Fauci continues” and cited Navarro’s op-ed as an example. Twitter users were quick to express their disdain for Navarro.

@Dennisclaude3 posted, “We. Stand. With. Dr. Fauci, and @russ_hjelm asserted, “To the best of my recollection, Navarro has been wrong about everything, period.”

Read some more tweets below:

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says there's a new study, but it is US and negative of chloro

Trump official spins out-of-control anti-China conspiracy theory

720 an

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Moveme

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tried to raise alarm on covid in Jan? noam c? partially grounded in anti-china sentiment? lindsey graham?

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/cnn-host-spars-with-trump-economist-peter-navarro-for-touting-his-social-scientist-credentials-in-hydroxychloroquine-fight-why-should-we-listen-to-you-and-not-fauci

CNN host spars with Trump economist Navarro for touting ‘social scientist’ credentials in hydroxychloroquine fight: ‘Why should we listen to you?’

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Alex Henderson April 6, 2020

Axios’ Jonathan Swan has reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci and Peter Navarro (policy coordinator for the Trump White House’s trade policy) had a heated argument in the White House’s Situation Room over the benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a way to possibly treat coronavirus. Navarro, like President Donald Trump, has been pushing chloroquine aggressively  — while Fauci has strong reservations. And the merits of hydroxychloroquine (which has been used to treat malaria) in relation to coronavirus were hotly debated on Monday morning, April 6 when Navarro appeared on CNN’s “New Day” and was aggressively grilled by host John Berman.

Berman emphasized that Navarro lacks Fauci’s medical expertise, asking why someone would believe Navarro over a well-respected “infectious disease doctor” like Fauci. When Navarro described himself as a “social scientist,” Berman responded that being a “social scientist” is not the same as having medical expertise.

“I’m sorry, that doesn’t qualify you to treat patients,” Berman said. “You know it doesn’t qualify to you treat patients.”

“Why should we listen to you and not Dr. Anthony Fauci?,” Berman maintained. The CNN host demanded to know, “Why is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lead infectious disease doctor in this country, wrong about this?”...

after spending several minutes grilling Navarro and noting some of Fauci’s assertions on hydroxychloroquine, Berman offered Navarro an olive branch, saying, “We all want the same thing, which is people to get better.” And Navarro replied, “I’m not sure we do sometimes.”

Berman, testy, asserted, “What are you talking about?…. Don’t you dare for a second suggest that I don’t want people to get better from this. I got two friends in bed right now with coronavirus.”

Navarro replied, “That’s not what I said: don’t put those words in my mouth. When you say that when we come on here and we say we all want the same thing, there’s this political overtone — this battle between… You know, you’re trying to create this false dichotomy.”

Presumably, the “two friends” Berman was referring to were his CNN colleagues Chris Cuomo and Brooke Baldwin — both of whom have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

After the interview, a “New Day” panel continued the discussion — and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, often featured as a medical expert on CNN, clearly agreed with Fauci. According to Gupta, chloroquine can suppress one’s immune system — which is not what one should be doing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Watch the video below:

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/jared-kushner-creating-confusion-by-coordinating-covid-19-response-with-trumps-corporate-allies-wapo-reporter

no lnx

Jared Kushner creating ‘confusion’ by coordinating COVID-19 response with Trump’s ‘corporate allies’: WaPo reporter

Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story April 6, 2020

Reporter Robert Costa revealed that Jared Kushner has been coordinating the distribution of medical supplies with Republican donors.

The Washington Post national political reporter said President Donald Trump’s son-in-law has sparked confusion in those efforts by placing himself in the chain of command, and both Kushner and trade adviser Peter Navarro were contradicting advice from White House medical experts.

“When you ask about the inner circle, it is clear to me,” Costa told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “based on my reporting, that Peter Navarro, more than anyone now, whether it’s on urging the president to take a position that’s different than Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, or when it comes to the Defense Production Act, nudging corporations, sometimes pushing corporations to do what the White House wants, that Navarro is at the center.”

“Jared Kushner is there and he’s really being a liaison to different donors, to different corporate allies of this administration, which has created confusion about the chain of command, about whether corporations should work through Jared, whether they should work through Vice President [Mike] Pence and the task force,” he added.

Navarro and other Trump advisers, including Rudy Giuliani, have been overriding medical experts on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus, and Costa said the president’s confidence in that unproven drug was not matched by science.

“That scene at the [Centers for Disease Control] from weeks ago, where the president says he is quite familiar with medicine, even though he is not a medical professional, is a statement that you often hear inside of the White House,” Costa said. “Top officials say the president has confidence that’s not backed up by experience or data. This is an alarming situation for not only people in the White House but many governors. They say if the president keeps talking about hydroxychloroquine in a way that is encouraging people to go seek it out, you’re going to have a medical, chaotic situation in this country, where people are trying to get a drug that’s not truly proven as efficacious for treating coronavirus and COVID-19.”

==

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CNN’s Jake Tapper tangles with Trump adviser Navarro: ‘Economist after economist says you’re not being straight with the American people’

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story August 18, 2019

In a highly contentious interview on CNN’s “State of the Union”, host Jake Tapper confronted Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Peter Navarro, with a seemingly endless list of economists, analysts…

==

no lnx

Wall Street Journal torches top Trump adviser for being the architect behind US economic chaos

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story August 15, 2019

In a blunt and uncharacteristically sarcastic broadside aimed at Donald Trump’s administration, an obviously furious editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal trashed adviser Peter Navarro for being the driving force behind policies that appear to be driving the entire world’s economy into recession.

With the market plummeting and the president trying to blame the Fed for the crashing economy, the editors of the Journal said the source of the economic chaos can be found in the White House.

“After we warned last week that U.S. trade policy was courting recession, White House aide Peter Navarro took to Fox Business to denounce us for sounding like The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist propaganda arm,” the editorial began before snarling, “That was novel as criticisms of these columns go, but perhaps Mr. Navarro would care to comment again after Wednesday’s recession warning from the bond and equity markets? Are they Commies too?”

Noting the economic chaos worldwide with “bad economic news [coming] out of Germany, China and the bond markets,” the Journal took a hard look at what Navarro has done in the service of the president.

“Mr. Navarro and President Trump spent Wednesday blaming the Federal Reserve for the market meltdown, and we suppose any scapegoat will do in a storm. The Fed isn’t blameless, and we argued it shouldn’t have raised rates last December,” they wrote before adding, “We’ve been warning for two years that trade wars have economic consequences, but the wizards of protectionism told Mr. Trump not to worry. The economy was fine and the trade worrywarts were wrong.”

“But we never said tariffs would produce an immediate recession. We said they—and the climate of uncertainty they were creating for business—would chill global trade and undermine the surge in capital investment spurred by tax reform and deregulation,” they added. ” The growth momentum from tax cuts and a strong labor market were able to mask the impact of helter-skelter trade policy for a time. But that old economic disciplinarian, Adam Smith, sooner or later exacts a price for policy blunders.”

The editors then offered a stern talking to to President Trump.

“Stop the trade threats by tweet. Call a tariff truce with China, Europe and the rest of the world while negotiations resume with a goal of reaching a deal by the meeting of Pacific nations in November. Someone should tell Mr. Trump that incumbent Presidents who preside over recessions within two years of an election rarely get a second term,” the editorial concluded.

You can read it here — subscription required.

AN 819

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nyt

BUSINESS

|

Steve Bannon and a Fugitive Billionaire Target a Common Enemy: China

Steve Bannon and a Fugitive Billionaire Target a Common Enemy: China

Stephen K. Bannon, the former strategist to President Trump, and Guo Wengui, who is wanted in China, have teamed up.

Just months after being pushed out of the White House, Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, met with a fugitive Chinese billionaire at a suite in the luxurious Hays-Adams Hotel in Washington.

The billionaire, Guo Wengui, who is also known as Miles Kwok, was living in New York City and had landed on China’s most-wanted list, accused of bribery, fraud and money laundering. He was also a dissident and fierce critic of Beijing, seeking political asylum in the United States. And Mr. Bannon — increasingly obsessed with the emerging China threat — was eager to talk about the Communist Party, corruption and American naval operations in the South China Sea.

Since their first discussion in October 2017, they have met dozens of times — in Dallas, on Mr. Guo’s yacht and, more often, at the billionaire’s $67.5 million apartment in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, overlooking New York’s Central Park. The two shared a stage two weeks ago in Manhattan, at a news conference they organized to announce plans to set up a $100 million fund to investigate corruption and aid people they deem victims of Chinese government persecution.

“We both naturally despise the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Guo said in an interview last week, referring to Mr. Bannon. “That’s why we’ve become partners.”

It’s an unusual partnership between two political gadflies with a common, if overly grand, objective: bringing about the demise of the Chinese Communist Party.

One is an exiled businessman who claims to have evidence of corruption at the highest levels of government in China. The other is a former Goldman Sachs banker who delights in lobbing political grenades at what he calls the “party of Davos,” a band of global elites that he says has undermined America’s interests at home and abroad.

As tensions between the United States and China grow, the two men are hoping to stoke them even further, by effectively calling for the overthrow of Beijing’s leadership. Mr. Guo is dipping into his fortune, while Mr. Bannon has agreed to provide a strategy.

Mr. Bannon is, in effect, reprising the role of political provocateur he played before joining the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. Back then, he was running the conservative news site Breitbart, and helping promote conspiracy theories through the publication of books like “Clinton Cash,” which aimed to destroy Hillary Clinton’s White House bid.

In an interview in his hotel room two weeks ago, Mr. Bannon, 65, said the new China-related fund he will head, without pay, will gather evidence, share it with authorities — in the United States and elsewhere — and publish it in the media. The fund also targets Wall Street banks and law firms, which he says are complicit in China’s misdeeds.

The project, he says, is consistent with his populist and nationalist agenda. China’s reckless behavior, he contended, is endangering the global economy, and sapping America’s strength.

“As a populist, this is outrageous,” Mr. Bannon said, noting that American financial institutions have helped back the worrisome global buying sprees of Chinese companies, with cash raised from ordinary people, including government pension funds. “The elites in this country have to be held accountable. We have to get the facts on the table.”

Mr. Guo, 50, insists that the fund offers a way to strike back at Beijing. China has pressed the Trump administration to extradite him so that he can face a raft of charges in China — allegations he strongly denies. Billions of dollars in assets he controlled have been frozen by Beijing. And Interpol, the global police organization, has issued a warrant seeking his arrest. He now travels with a phalanx of security guards, saying he fears for his life.

The Chinese Embassy could not be reached for comment. But the Guo-Bannon alliance has alarmed some analysts, who view the two men as purveyors of conspiracy theories fueling anti-China sentiment.

“The problem with these types of reckless, loose-cannon accusations is that they undermine the ability of responsible analysts and policymakers to identify the genuine cases of Chinese wrongdoing and fashion realistic and effective policy responses,” said Michael D. Swaine, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

For Mr. Bannon, the new effort plays to a longstanding and complicated interest in China. As a young naval officer in the 1970s, he patrolled the South China Sea. He also lived for a time in Shanghai, where he ran a small online gaming company. In recent years, he has come to view China as a military threat to the United States, and a fierce economic rival that refuses to play by the rules.

In helping elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Bannon counseled him to take a tough line on China and step up trade pressure on Beijing. Mr. Trump obliged by tapping the Harvard-trained economist Peter Navarro, a longtime China critic known for his book “Death by China,” and Michael Pillsbury, a China hawk at the Hudson Institute, as top trade advisers.

The effort has bristled some of Beijing’s friends like President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic, right, who met with President Xi Jinping of China in Prague in 2016.

It was during his time at the White House, Mr. Bannon says, that he first heard about Mr. Guo. The Chinese billionaire was living in New York, broadcasting allegations of high-level government corruption in China on Twitter and YouTube — some credible, some outlandish and still unproved. By then, he had also applied for political asylum.

Alarmed by his social media campaign and his public denunciations of the Communist Party, Beijing began pressing the Trump administration to extradite Mr. Guo. Chinese investigators said he has ties to Ma Jian, a former spy chief now imprisoned in China on charges of bribery and abuse of power.

Inside the White House, there were disagreements over how to deal with Mr. Guo. Several Western businessmen, apparently eager to cozy up to Beijing, lobbied President Trump to accede to China’s demands, according to people familiar with the talks.

Mr. Bannon said he sided with those in the administration who opposed any handover, viewing Mr. Guo as a potentially valuable “intelligence asset.”

They met only after Mr. Bannon was forced out of the White House. Mr. Bannon says he received a call from Bill Gertz, a Washington journalist who has long been critical of China. Mr. Gertz told him that Mr. Guo was scheduled to give a talk in Washington at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. The talk was canceled at the last minute.

Over lunch, Mr. Guo and Mr. Bannon discussed China’s military capabilities, as well as the financial implications of Beijing’s rule, including what impact the country’s mounting corporate debt might have on its economy. A friendship emerged.

“It was fantastic. He really impressed me,” Mr. Bannon said of his first meeting with Mr. Guo. “We talked about President Trump’s approach to China, and he went into corruption in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Mr. Bannon later introduced Mr. Guo to people in the hedge fund community, including J. Kyle Bass, who has soured on China and sought to profit by short-selling the Chinese currency.

As Mr. Bannon sharpened his critique of China’s rise, he also began meeting privately with some of America’s leading experts on China, to seek their counsel and outline his agenda. Few welcomed his strident remarks, according to people who attended some of the sessions. But more recently, analysts say, his positions have gotten a warmer reception.

“The tectonic plates are shifting,” says Orville H. Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. “Many analysts would have totally rejected him two years ago. But people are more sympathetic now that engagement with China has been defrocked.”

Mr. Schell adds, “On the China question, he’s no longer the skunk at the party.”

But Mr. Bannon is getting blowback from some of Beijing’s friends. On a trip abroad this year to drum up support for nationalist and populist leaders in Eastern and Central Europe, Mr. Bannon says, he was scolded for his positions on China by Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic and one of Beijing’s closest allies in the region.

“He threw down on me hard,” Mr. Bannon says. “He said: ‘Tell Trump you didn’t learn from Hitler. You can’t fight on two fronts. You can’t take on radical Islam and China. You will end up in the bunker, like Hitler.”

A spokesman for President Zeman said that he had challenged Mr. Bannon on American tariffs against China, and that the two men had parted ways in a very “cold atmosphere.”

Mr. Bannon is unbowed. He has agreed to serve as chairman of the so-called Rule of Law Fund, the $100 million effort that Mr. Guo is financing. The fund plans to publicize its findings and offer financial support to businessmen, government officials and others who run afoul of the Chinese authorities — including those who flee overseas, like Mr. Guo himself.

Mr. Bannon has also joined Mr. Guo in targeting the HNA Group, the huge Chinese conglomerate that borrowed heavily and spent billions around the world, before debt and regulatory pressures forced the company to curb its global ambitions.

Until Twitter suspended his account late last year, Mr. Guo was waging an online war against HNA and its top executives. He claimed, without proof, that the company was engaged in bribing top officials and their relatives, and has even spun conspiracy theories about the death of the company’s co-chairman Wang Jian in an accident in France last summer. HNA declined to comment.

At their joint news conference last week, Mr. Bannon took the stage at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to say, “Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of the best and brightest” in China have disappeared, been imprisoned or committed suicide under unusual circumstances and without due process.

“Today is about recklessness and accountability,” he added, noting that American financial institutions have close ties to political elites in Beijing. “Who profited off this? Who looked the other way?”

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 4, 2018, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Bannon and Exiled Critic Find Mutual Foe in China. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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Jan. 10, 2018

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hubbard a pow

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro

Peter Navarro (born July 15, 1949) is a professor of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. Navarro holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.[1] He has received multiple teaching awards for the MBA courses taught.[2] Prior to teaching, Navarro served in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia and worked in Washington, D.C. as an energy and environmental policy analyst.[3]

On December 21, 2016, Navarro was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to head a newly created position, as director of the National Trade Council.[4]

Contents  [hide]

1 Political career

2 Personal life

3 Bibliography

4 Notes

5 External links

Political career[edit]

Navarro ran for office in San Diego, California, three times. In 1992, he ran for mayor, finishing first in the all-party primary, but losing to Republican Susan Golding in the runoff.[5] In 1996, he ran for the 49th Congressional District as the Democratic Party nominee, but lost to Republican Brian Bilbray.[6] In 2001, Navarro ran in a special election to fill the District 6 San Diego city council seat, but lost in the primary.[7]

In 2016, Navarro served as a policy advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign.[8][9] On December 21, 2016, Navarro was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to head a newly created position, as director of the National Trade Council.[10]

Personal life[edit]

Navarro is married to architect Leslie Lebon (born March 6, 1961). They reside in Laguna Beach, California.[11]

Bibliography

Professor Navarro is a professor in University of California-Irvine for more than 20 years. Professor Navarro's books include the following:[12]

If It’s Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks

The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage

What the Best MBAs Know

When the Market Moves, Will You Be Ready?

The Coming China Wars

Always a Winner

Seeds of Destruction (with Glenn Hubbard)

Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action

Crouching Tiger: What China's Militarism Means for the World

Navarro's work has appeared in Barron’s, Business Week, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and The Journal of Business.[1]

Navarro has appeared on Bloomberg TV and radio, BBC, CNN, NPR, Marketplace, and all three major network news shows.[citation needed] He is a contributor to CNBC and has appeared on 60 Minutes.[1] Additionally, he often produces investment videos for thestreet.com.[13]

Navarro has directed and produced a low-budget film based on his book, Death By China.[14]

==

https://www.alternet.org/wall-street-journal-hammers-out-touch-trump-economic-adviser-peter-navarro-trashing-us-economy

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editors of the very conservative and very business-oriented Wall Street Journal have taken President Donald Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro to the woodshed for pushing the president's tariffs that is having a devastating effect on U.S. manufacturers.

Under an ominous headline that reads "The Trade Casualties Mount," the editorial board laid out the case on the toll the Trump tariffs are taking on U.S. economic growth.

"President Trump is escalating his trade rhetoric, threatening China and Europe with more tariffs on more goods if they don’t agree to his terms. Mr. Trump says winning these trade wars is 'easy,' so let's take a look at the early returns on his steel and aluminum tariffs and the retaliation they’ve inspired," the editorial began.  "Consider Alcoa , the top U.S. aluminum manufacturer whose shares plunged 13% Thursday and another 3% Friday after the company reported that tariffs are crimping earnings," the piece explained. "The tariffs could wipe out $100 million of income this year, equal to about 18% of profits last year. 'Tariffs will not solve the challenges facing the aluminum industry,' Alcoa CEO Roy Harvey said on an earnings call."

Noting, "...many businesses are delaying investments in the U.S. because of the uncertainty caused by the tariffs," with one pipeline manufacturer announce this past week that they have "frozen [their] plans to invest $75 million in expanding production" in a Texas town, the Journal then called attention to Navarro's dismissive wave at U.S. economic chaos.

"Meanwhile, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told CNBC on Thursday that the damage from the trade war so far is no big deal," the WSJ reported, quoting him as saying, "We got two economies that add up to around $30 trillion in annual GDP. The amount of trade we’re affecting with the tariffs is a rounding error compared to that."

"All of this and more are examples of the real and growing damage that Mr. Trump’s arbitrary and punitive trade policy is doing to U.S. companies and workers," the editors scolded. "Businesses have been relatively quiet so far because they are happy with the tax reform and deregulation."

The editors then issued a dark warning, "If Mr. Trump escalates his protectionism, the pain will increase and so will the political backlash before November."

==

https://www.alternet.org/first-casualties-trade-war-are-trump-supporters

For President Trump, all questions have simple answers: US “immigration laws are the weakest and worst anywhere in the world”, the Mueller investigation is a “Rigged Witch Hunt”, and “trade wars are good, and easy to win”. While many of Trump’s presidential actions will have negative consequences over time, for his burgeoning trade wars, the bills are already beginning to come due. They are high, they are primarily hurting states that voted for him, and they are harming business people who want to succeed as he did.

International trade is central to the US economy. In 2014 (the latest data available), trade represented an estimated 30 percent of US GDP and supported 41 million US jobs, up 300 percent from 1992.  In 2016, US exports alone supported an estimated 10.7 million U.S. jobs.  Small entrepreneurs play an outsized role in US trade, exactly the people businessman Donald Trump says he respects. In 2014 (the most recent available figures), small- and medium-sized US firms (SMEs) made up 98 percent of US exporters, 97 percent of US importers, and concluded one-third of all US merchandise trade. In fact, in 2014 US companies with0-9 employees exported $190 billion, 161 percent more than its closest G-7 competitor’s companies of the same size.

READ MORE: What Neoliberals dont get about Trump

Donald Trump disrupted global trade for three reasons. First, he made a key campaign promise to bring jobs back home by renegotiating America’s trade deals. Second, because he could: unlike immigration, taxation, and health care, President Trump has full control over US trade policy without requiring Congressional approval. Third, gleefully unconstrained, he offered a confrontational and catastrophically simplistic solution to a complex issue.

He stated that the US was “losing” in trade because it had large bilateral trade deficits, particularly a $375 billion goods deficit with China. Trade deficits occur for many reasons and economists generally can’t agree on any of them, but for Donald Trump, trade deficits were bad, he could fix them by himself, and he was spoiling for a fight.

On June 1, Trump first imposed steel and aluminum tariffs affecting countries including Canada, Mexico, and Germany, alienating America’s NAFTA and EU partners over less than two percent of America’s total imports. They responded with their own tariffs. Then, on July 6th, Trump installed $34 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, China retaliated with $34 billion of its own tariffs, whereupon Trump threatened a further $200 billion. Approximately $75 billion of US goods are now subject to retaliatory, and completely unnecessary, tariffs, which fall heavily on the Rust Belt and the Farm Belt, both areas of strong Trump support.

The economic damage from these decisions is considerable. Estimates project that Trump’s tariffs will reduce US economic growth by between 0.3 to 1.3 percent — economists expect 2.4 percent growth next year. The US Chamber of Commerce, America’s business voice, states that these actions threaten 2.6 million U.S. jobs. 468,790 US jobs are estimated to be lost from the steel and aluminum tariffs alone. Over 41 percent of clothes, 72 percent of shoes, and 54 percent of non-leather handbags sold in the US are made in China and will likely now be more expensive. As a result of the EU’s retaliatory tariffs, Harley Davidson is moving some production of its iconic American motorcycle out of the US to the EU, which it says “is not the company’s preference”.

Trump’s trade wars promise both immediate and longer-term economic effects.  BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink stated that intensifying trade tensions could reduce stock prices by 10 to 15 percent, spur a broad market downturn and slow down the U.S. economy. In June, investors withdrew $12.4 billion from global stocks, the fastest withdrawal since the 2008 financial crisis. That same month, the market values of US corn, soybeans, and wheat crops dropped $13 billion, about 10 percent. Reflecting a 25 percent Chinese tariff, US soybean prices fell by 16 percent to their lowest level in ten years, after having exported some $12 billion to China last year (56 percent of all US soybean exports).

In the US, who will be most affected? The emerging conclusion is Republican states, Trump voters, and small business people.  Moody’s Analytics projects that China’s tariffs will significantly affect 20 percent of the counties that voted for Trump (with a total population of eight million Americans), as opposed to only three percent of the countiesthat voted for Hillary Clinton (1.1 million total population).  Soybean farmers in the Great Plains, car manufacturers in the Midwest, and oil producers in the Dakotas and Texas have all been hit by China’s tariffs, and they are predominantly from red states.According to Mr. Rusty Smith, a corn and soybean farmer in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, this price drop is “like $100,000 that has disappeared into thin air. We were already in the red, and now it’s even worse.” Bloomberg Economics estimates that all these tariffs could cost the global economy $470 billion, reduce global trade by 3.7 percent, and shrink the US economy by 0.9 percent by 2020.  ...

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this node one day before announcement:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-fi-trump-navarro-trade-20161221-story.html

Donald Trump, signaling that he intends to follow through on his tough talk on trade, is establishing a new White House-based trade council to be headed by a vehement critic of China’s economic policies.

Trump on Wednesday named Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained business professor at UC Irvine, as director of trade and industrial policy and the head of the newly created White House National Trade Council.

The move sends a strong message: The Trump administration will take a much more aggressive posture to shrink the nation’s large trade deficit and combat what the president-elect and Navarro believe are forces behind America’s manufacturing woes — unfair and mercantilist practices on the part of China and other trading partners. In his campaign Trump threatened to slap a 45% tariff on all Chinese imports.

But conservative and liberal economists alike questioned the value of forming another agency in the White House to deal with the harmful effects of trade and globalization, core elements of Trump’s economic platform.

The government already has an entire agency devoted to trade negotiations, the U.S. Trade Representative, whose offices are less than a block from the White House, as well as two Cabinet departments and two other White House offices with a hand in trade policy.

Trump’s transition team has indicated that Wilbur Ross, his pick for Commerce secretary, was likely to lead the charge on trade. Traditionally, trade policy has been largely the purview of the Trade Representative, for which Trump has not selected a nominee. The Treasury Department has the role of scrutinizing foreign currency practices, a hot issue in trade — especially involving China. Then there are the two White House economic groups, the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisors.

“I hate the notion of another bureaucracy and another example where the White House is trying to do everything itself,” said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar and China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

“It is hard to get things done across the government, and you just created another group to sit at the table and have its own interests.”

Trump’s team, in announcing the new trade office, did not spell out how it would relate to the other agencies. But their statement described the mission of the trade council as advising the president and carrying out initiatives such as the Buy America, Hire America program.

Navarro, 67, was one of Trump’s early supporters and served as an economic advisor during the campaign, co-writing with Ross the white paper on Trump’s economic plan on trade, regulatory and energy policies.

Over the last decade, Navarro has come to be known for casting a harsh spotlight on Chinese economics and politics. He is the author “Death by China: Confronting the Dragon  — a Global Call to Action.”

Although Navarro first met Trump during the campaign this summer, Trump endorsed Navarro’s 2011 book as well as the film version of his polemical work.

“I read one of Peter’s books on America’s trade problems years ago and was impressed by the clarity of his arguments and thoroughness of his research,” Trump said Wednesday in the statement announcing the appointment. “He will fulfill an essential role in my administration as a trade advisor.”

Clyde Prestowitz, a former top trade negotiator in the Reagan administration who knows Navarro and his works, said his selection “is a strong signal from Trump that he definitely wants to see a different trade policy.” Prestowitz, like a growing number of other trade analysts, has challenged the view that free trade is always a win-win deal.

“He’s a logical guy for Trump to put on the job. Give the guy a chance,” said Prestowitz.

Critics of China’s economic policies have accused Beijing of manipulating the exchange rate of its currency to gain an edge in trade as well as subsidizing Chinese firms, stealing intellectual property and erecting barriers for American and other foreign companies doing business in China.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration, through the Trade Representative’s office, issued an annual list of prominent markets “notorious” for counterfeit products and services. The list included Taobao.com, an online marketplace operated by Alibaba Group, which the trade office said was among the 15 most popular websites globally.

Alibaba Group’s president, Michael Evans, said he was disappointed by the decision and said it “leads us to question whether the USTR acted based on the actual facts or was influenced by the current political climate.”

Trump has cited China’s policies as a major source of America’s huge trade deficit. The accusation found particular resonance during the campaign in the industrial Midwest and other manufacturing centers in the U.S., which helped Trump get elected.

But other economists expressed reservations about Navarro and his positions. Jared Bernstein, former chief economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, credited Navarro for “his elevation of the downside of trade [which] brought an important reality missing in the campaign.”

But “his policy ideas seemed uniformly misguided,” Bernstein said. “His obsession with China seems out of step with what’s going on in international economics.”

Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said he had mixed reactions to the new trade council and Navarro’s appointment.

“We’re big critics of the Washington trade consensus,” Atkinson said of the notion that free trade and globalization are unreservedly good. “At the same time, at what point do you start having the U.S. behave like other countries,” he said, concerned about Trump’s threats for high tariffs and protectionism.

Separately, Trump also is naming one of the nation's richest men to be a special advisor on issues regarding regulatory reform.

Carl Icahn, a veteran of Wall Street who founded his own securities firm, will serve as an outside advisor, Trump said. He will not have a  government position or receive a salary. As a result, he will not have to comply with government conflict-of-interest rules the way he would if he had a formal appointment.

Icahn, an early Trump supporter, is estimated to be worth more than $16 billion. Trump said a statement that the 80-year-old Icahn, one of the nation's leading investors, is “not only a brilliant negotiator, but also someone who is innately able to predict the future, especially having to do with finances and economies.”

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http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/peter-navarro-genius-or-idiot-or-neither

Tyler Cowen says that UCI professor Peter Navarro is "one of the most versatile and productive American economists of the last few decades." Matt Yglesias says Navarro is an idiot. Who's right?

I think there's a category error here. Back in September, Navarro co-authored a paper about Donald Trump's trade policy. Roughly speaking, Navarro relied on the following accounting identity:

GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Trade Balance

So if our trade balance goes up from -$500 billion to $0, Navarro said, GDP will go up $500 billion and the government will collect a lot of extra taxes. Hooray! But as Yglesias points out, this is comic-book-level nonsense.1 Let me offer an analogy:

Corporate profits = Revenue + Investment Income - Labor Costs - Other Costs

So if I cut labor costs in half, corporate profits will go up. Right? I think you can see that this is unlikely. If you fired half your workers, you probably could no longer produce anything and your company would go bust. If you cut everyone's wages in half, you'd suffer a steady exodus of your best people and probably end up far less profitable. If you replaced half your workers with machines, profits might indeed go up, but not by the amount of payroll you save. You'd have to account for the capital cost of the machines—which would probably reduce investment income—and the cost of maintenance—which would increase other costs. Bottom line: depending on how you do this, lots of different things could happen.

In the case of GDP, it's true that everything in the formula has to add up, since this formula defines what GDP is. But if the trade balance goes up, there are several obvious possibilities. Consumption might go down. Investment might go down. Government spending might go down. In fact, once all the dust has settled, overall GDP might ultimately go down, stay the same, or go up. The real answer is that you'd need to model out an actual plan and figure out where it reaches equilibrium. Navarro knows this perfectly well.

So what is Navarro? Brilliant economist or idiot? Neither one. He's someone who used to be a versatile and productive economist and is now a China-obsessed fanatic2willing to say anything for the chance of a job in the Trump administration. He hasn't lost 50 IQ points, he's merely become so fixated on the dangers of Chinese trade that he no longer cares about economics. He cares only about saying things that might build support for his preferred policies, regardless of whether they're true.

In other words, he's now just another dime-a-dozen political hack. Trump will keep him around as long as his PhD is useful and then toss him aside.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-01/peter-navarro-is-the-economist-whose-ideas-guide-trump

When talk turns to Donald Trump’s economic advisers, Lawrence Kudlow and Stephen Moore are the two most familiar names. Yet there is another economist associated with Trump who is perhaps the most influential of the lot, and that is Peter Navarro at the University of California at Irvine.

Trump praised a Navarro book and documentary film critical of China, and while the economist has never met the candidate, he describes a campaign role as follows: "I now work closely with the campaign on issues related to the economy, trade, China, and foreign policy in Asia." He endorsed and defended Trump in a March essay, and given that relatively few academic economists have embraced the Trump candidacy, Navarro is plausibly a leading candidate for a top job in a Trump administration.

It’s easy enough to imagine Navarro working in government. He teaches at a highly regarded research university, has extensive private sector, investment, and media experience, has a Ph.D from Harvard, has written on management and wrote an investment newsletter. His documentary, "Death by China," is available on YouTube and Netflix.

He has largely operated under the radar, perhaps because he is a successful but not famous academic. In reality, he has been one of the most versatile and productive American economists of the last few decades, and has played a leading role in turning the Republican Party away from what's left of its historical optimism about U.S.-China relations.

Navarro's best-cited article is on why businesses might give to charity, and he has pieces on energy topics like electricity deregulation and the costs of nuclear power.

Some of the more unusual topics he has researched include the suitability of the business school curriculum, the quality of online learning (he has done extensive online teaching), the costs of terrorism and the economics of household trash collection. In a time when academic specialization was becoming much more the norm, Navarro carved out a career as an economic generalist.

In the 1990s, Navarro ran for public office four times as a Democrat, losing races for mayor of San Diego, City Council, County Supervisor, and Congress. He described himself in a recent e-mail as "a Reagan-Trump Democrat abandoned long ago by my party on the economy, trade and foreign policy."

After his electoral attempts, he emphasized investment advising. In 2002 he published "If It’s Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks." The book tells investors that if they understand the right macroeconomics, they will reap superior returns, a phenomenon he calls “macrowave investing.”

Yet there’s scant evidence that individuals can make money this way. Other market players know the same macroeconomics and most investors are better off avoiding the trading costs and simply buying and holding. Similarly, Navarro’s investment precept, “Never buck the trend,” is at best an oversimplification, at worst outright wrong.

His 2009 book, "Always a Winner: Finding Your Competitive Advantage in an Up and Down Economy," also promises too much, this time on the management side. He overestimates the ability of the individual businessman to forecast the business cycle, or to learn forecasting from a popular book. The phrase “always a winner” comes across as an overreach.

Navarro has lately been in a China phase, with three books, numerous articles and the documentary, and that is the work that has resonated with the Trump campaign. But which Navarro shows up on this topic, the scholar or the salesman? Both.

I expected to hate his "Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World," but instead I found it to be an intelligent discussion of the problems likely to result from a more assertive China. That said, Navarro does not come close to demonstrating his opening prediction that future war with China is “very likely.” In contrast, his "The Coming China Wars" is mostly a series of emotional diatribes against the Chinese government, opening with charges of cheating and slave labor and never much considering the positive side of Chinese economic growth.

His film is in this same polemical, neo-mercantilist vein. In an e-mail to me he writes: "The film features a priceless history of how Bill Clinton sold America down the Shanghai River." Trump's endorsement read: “DEATH BY CHINA is right on. This important documentary depicts our problem with China with facts, figures and insight. I urge you to see it.”

Navarro’s other writings on China have hovered between these extremes of tone, but in general he has been pushing the line that the U.S. should be tough on trade, crack down on intellectual property theft, tax Chinese exports, combat Chinese mercantilism, bring jobs home, and yes, make America great again. If you want to read one thinker to understand Trump on China, it is Navarro.

Navarro has yet another side, expressed in the 2010 book he wrote with the Columbia University economist Glenn Hubbard, "Seeds of Destruction: Why the Path to Economic Ruin Runs through Washington, and How to Reclaim American Prosperity." At the time, I took this to be a manifesto for the Republican presidential campaign to come in 2012. It is mainstream market-oriented Republicanism, with a section on trade that balances Navarro’s tough stance and Hubbard’s more classically free market approach. In retrospect, it is a kind of transition document showing cracks in the previous Republican globalist facade.

If Navarro makes it to the White House, he’ll have plenty of ideas to draw upon, but which ones will they be? Looking at his career as a whole, the most central idea seems to be that there are diverse paths to influence, and on that he is surely right.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Tyler Cowen at tcowen2@bloomberg.net

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hubbard a pow

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro

Peter Navarro (born July 15, 1949) is a professor of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. Navarro holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.[1] He has received multiple teaching awards for the MBA courses taught.[2] Prior to teaching, Navarro served in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia and worked in Washington, D.C. as an energy and environmental policy analyst.[3]

On December 21, 2016, Navarro was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to head a newly created position, as director of the National Trade Council.[4]

Contents  [hide]

1 Political career

2 Personal life

3 Bibliography

4 Notes

5 External links

Political career[edit]

Navarro ran for office in San Diego, California, three times. In 1992, he ran for mayor, finishing first in the all-party primary, but losing to Republican Susan Golding in the runoff.[5] In 1996, he ran for the 49th Congressional District as the Democratic Party nominee, but lost to Republican Brian Bilbray.[6] In 2001, Navarro ran in a special election to fill the District 6 San Diego city council seat, but lost in the primary.[7]

In 2016, Navarro served as a policy advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign.[8][9] On December 21, 2016, Navarro was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to head a newly created position, as director of the National Trade Council.[10]

Personal life[edit]

Navarro is married to architect Leslie Lebon (born March 6, 1961). They reside in Laguna Beach, California.[11]

Bibliography[edit]

Professor Navarro is a professor in University of California-Irvine for more than 20 years. Professor Navarro's books include the following:[12]

If It’s Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks

The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage

What the Best MBAs Know

When the Market Moves, Will You Be Ready?

The Coming China Wars

Always a Winner

Seeds of Destruction (with Glenn Hubbard)

Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action

Crouching Tiger: What China's Militarism Means for the World

Navarro's work has appeared in Barron’s, Business Week, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and The Journal of Business.[1]

Navarro has appeared on Bloomberg TV and radio, BBC, CNN, NPR, Marketplace, and all three major network news shows.[citation needed] He is a contributor to CNBC and has appeared on 60 Minutes.[1] Additionally, he often produces investment videos for thestreet.com.[13]

Navarro has directed and produced a low-budget film based on his book, Death By China.[14]

Notes[edit]

^ Jump up to:a b c "Peter Navarro". The Paul Merage School of Business. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up "Teaching Awards". The Paul Merage School of Business. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up "Peter Navarro". The Globalist. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up https://www.ft.com/content/71a201d2-c7b3-11e6-8f29-9445cac8966f

Jump up "Election Results – Mayor, City of San Diego" (PDF). City of San Diego. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up "California's 49th Congressional District Elections". Ballotpedia. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up "Election History – Council District 6, City of San Diego" (PDF). City of San Diego. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-navarro-trump-trade-china-tariffs-20160721-snap-story.html

Jump up Lee, Timothy B. (August 5, 2016). "Trump's economic team has a lot of billionaires, very few economic experts". Vox. Retrieved August 7, 2016. ...the list includes only one academic economist.

Jump up https://www.ft.com/content/71a201d2-c7b3-11e6-8f29-9445cac8966f

Jump up Flaherty, Somer (October 12, 2012). "Architects at Home". Laguna Beach Magazine. Retrieved 2013-10-17.

Jump up "Peter Navarro – Books". ISBN Search. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up "Articles by Peter Navarro". TheStreet. Retrieved 26 August 2016.

Jump up http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/death_by_china/

Cite error: A list-defined reference has no name (see the help page).

External links[

Official site

UCI Faculty Profile

Stub icon This biography of an American economist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Categories: 1949 birthsCalifornia DemocratsHarvard University alumniLiving peopleUniversity of California, Irvine facultyAmerican economist stubs

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