White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro made an appearance on Fox News morning talk and opinion show Fox & Friends to complain about the weekend's news programs.
The Trump administration official spouted typical rhetoric about the supremacy of President "Donald J. Trump"—as Navarro referred to him repeatedly.
Navarro remarked to the Fox & Friends hosts:
"That was a pity party yesterday on the Sunday shows."
You can see a clip of Navarro's segment here:
The White House staffer was so pleased with his performance he also shared the clip on Twitter.
The 70-year-old Assistant to the President is the first to hold his position of White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director as Trump created the title specifically for Navarro. Prior to joining Trump at the White House, Navarro was part of the 2016 presidential campaign staff.
He told Fox & Friends Monday:
"Anybody who thinks this is the Great Depression doesn't understand either history or economics."
"The Great Depression was a 10-year process that came out of the end of World War I and went through an inflation and then a deflation cycle. It was accompanied by catastrophic applications of currency and trade, fiscal and monetary policy and it lasted a very, very long time."
The White House official then threw in a conspiracy theory for good measure.
"President Donald J. Trump built up the strongest and most beautiful economy in three-and-a-half years and then the Chinese Communist Party dropped a virus on the world that within 60 days has temporarily shut us down."
"All we need to do here is focus on the mission, the original mission of Donald J. Trump, which is to bring manufacturing onshore, to have the American people make things here and we will move forward in a way where we will rebound."
He acknowledged that recovery will be a long process, but concluded:
"But this Great Depression pity party stuff I saw yesterday, this ain't that."
In both his Fox & Friends appearance and his Twitter post, Navarro mentioned adhering to the plan to bring manufacturing to the United States. But the Trump Organization and Trump campaign have been repeatedly criticized for preaching buy made in the USA goods while never doing any of their own manufacturing in the United States.
President Trump's properties have also been cited for hiring undocumented workers and applying for work visas to bring temporary foreign workers to the USA to work on all of their projects. Undocumented workers and foreign workers on temporary visas saved the Trump Organization money for things like workers' compensation insurance, benefits, taxes, social security, medicare and other state and local taxes.
The limited deductions allowed the President's companies to pay lower wages to these workers than they would to United States citizens or permanent residents. Navarro failed to address why the Trump Organization was not adhering to the "original mission."
Navarro's weekend was occupied with sharing more conspiracy theories.
In a Fox News appearance on Sunday, Navarro also used his Trump "built the most powerful and beautiful economy in the world in three years," but, "the Chinese communist party took it down in 60 days" rhetoric that he regurgitated almost verbatim on Monday. Since his January warning to Trump about the pandemic leaked, Navarro has been on an aggressive distract and deflect tour of right wing media.
Navarro added:
"This morning, Americans won't go to church because of the China virus. Sons and daughters of America won't be taking their mothers to brunch."
"Tomorrow, 33 million Americans won't be going to work and millions of children in America will be home climbing the walls instead of learning reading, writing and arithmetic."
While pointing fingers at other news programs and China, Navarro failed to acknowledge that two of his fellow Trump administration members participated in the so-called pity parties over the weekend. White House senior economic adviser Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin both appeared on some of the news programs Navarro disparaged.
Hassett said on Meet The Press Sunday:
"To get unemployment rates like the ones that we're about to see, which I think will climb up towards 20 percent by next month, you have to really go back to the Great Depression to see that."
Mnuchin also cited the Great Depression, in an appearance with Chris Wallace on Fox News.
In addition to ignoring Hassett and Mnuchin's weekend interviews, he also failed to mention some figures that more people are focused on than conspiracy theories or Donald J. Trump's "beautiful economy" that he inherited from the prior administration.
Whether Navarro got the message is unclear, but unlikely.
For more tales of Trump's ineptitude, check out A Very Stable Genius, available here.
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