MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow criticized Peter Navarro—the official counselor to President Donald Trump—for inventing an economics expert named Ron Vara in his books to justify his pro-tariffs stance, noting that not only does "Vara" not exist, but that this whole episode explains where Trump got the idea for the tariffs in the first place.
Trump’s tariff crusade has pushed what was a bullish stock market to the brink of bear territory—a 20% drop from recent highs—faster than any president in modern history. If the market closes at that threshold, it would mark the swiftest collapse from bull to bear during a new administration since the S&P 500’s inception in 1957.
Maddow traced the origins of Trump’s tariff idea back to a fabricated memo—authored by a “fake person with a fake email address,” she said—that began circulating in Washington after Trump’s 2016 win and initially made headlines back in 2019.
That memo, Maddow revealed, was a creation by Navarro, who became a senior trade adviser in the Trump administration after Jared Kushner discovered his book Death by China. Navarro, in his books, frequently referenced an alleged expert named Ron Vara who, as Maddow pointed out, does not exist. In fact, “Ron Vara” is an anagram of Navarro’s own last name.
She said:
“You’d think it would take like a grand plan and some big brains to figure out how to destroy the economy of the richest nation on Earth, but that's not how it's working out. Turns out, it doesn't take a big idea or a lot of big brains working together.” ...
“At one point, Ron Vara wrote in the memo that Trump could, quote, ‘Ride the tariffs to victory.' The problem is, Ron Vara doesn’t exist. He never has. The economics expert that Peter Navarro has long cited to explain why he’s so gung-ho on tariffs, this person, Ron Vara, is a made-up person.”
“He is a fictional person. Peter Navarro invented Ron Vara as his expert source, so he could quote this expert source over and over and over again in his crackpot books. Who is Ron Vara? Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro, which is his last name.”
“That is, the intellectual basis on which Donald Trump today wiped $6 trillion of wealth out of existence and crashed America’s markets and brought America and the world to the brink of a self-inflicted, on purpose, global great depression, along the lines of what we had in 2008 and what the pandemic inflicted upon us in 2020."
"This time, the global disaster is Donald Trump's big brain.”
You can hear what she said in the video below.
You can watch Maddow's full segment below.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
The news sparked considerable anger online.
Maddow earlier highlighted recent spikes in the VIX index—which tracks stock market volatility—noting that two of the highest peaks came during historic crises: the 2008 financial meltdown and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. But the third, most recent spike, she pointed out, “was not caused by the biggest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression or a global pandemic that’s killing millions.”
She said:
“That one was caused simply by Donald Trump being president again with his great ideas.”
Maddow went on to reflect on the scope of the damage, noting:
“The scale of the destruction that he has wrought is a little bit hard to get your head around.”
What’s even more striking, she added, is how little effort it took.
“It is hard to get your head around how much damage this one man can cause,” she said, adding that it’s “even harder” to grasp that such damage came “with such a teeny, tiny, teeny, teeny, tiny amount of thought.”
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