A former White House official and Elon Musk’s own brother entered the fray of the billionaire’s verbal sparring with Peter Navarro as it appeared “boys will be boys.”
(Video Credit: CNBC)
In recent days, leftists weren’t alone in muddying the waters of President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy as Musk, his head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and Navarro, a senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, engaged in their own war of words on the matter as the former hoped for a zero-tariff agreement between the U.S. and Europe.
Tuesday, Trump’s former acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Kimbal Musk added their own two cents to assert of Navarro it was time to “Put America first and fire him!”
Appearing on CNBC’s Power Lunch, Mulvaney was prompted by anchor Brian Sullivan, pointing out, “There are people I know that text me that you know, that think that Navarro may have to go.”
“Look, I think you hit the nail on the head earlier. This is more than just about an inter, sort of squabble inside the White House. This is important, right?” began the former special envoy for Northern Ireland. “Why is that?”
“Yeah, Peter is really tough to work with. There’s no question about that. One of the things that makes him so difficult to work is that he pretends to speak for the president when he does not, alright? Peter was notorious back in Trump 1.0 to walk out of a meeting when everybody would sort of assume we’ve got sort of a consensus about something, and he would go on TV and say the exact opposite,” he went on.
“That has a tremendous demoralizing effect on the White House, and it does tend to mislead markets,” continued Mulvaney. “For example, when people think that Peter Navarro is — when he says, ‘We all know in the White House…’ that’s not the White House speaking — that’s Peter Navarro.”
When Sullivan interjected with a reminder about Navarro’s incarceration for contempt of Congress before asking if the adviser needed to be fired, the guest expressed, “I would have fired him a long time — I would’ve fired him when he got caught making up his academic sources for his papers with his Ron Vara imaginary friend. But I mean that was Donald Trump’s call then, it’s Donald Trump’s call now. I think folks watching this show are caring more about what is the policy of the White House; what is the policy on tariffs; what does the future hold on this. And Peter Navarro is not a reliable source for information about that.”
“Ron Vara” referred to an anagram of Navarro that had been cited as an economics expert in several of the adviser’s books.
That point had also been touched on by Kimbal Musk who wrote on X Tuesday evening, “Mr President, if Peter Navarro has lied to you about Ron Vara, what else has he lied to you about? Put America first and fire him!”
@realDonaldTrump Mr President, if Peter Navarro has lied to you about Ron Vara, what else has he lied to you about?
Put America first and fire him!
— (@kimbal) April 8, 2025
The addition from the world’s richest man’s brother came after Musk himself added to the public back and forth that he believed “Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” while also referring to the adviser as “dumber than a sack of bricks” and tagging the X account “Retard Finder” over Navarro’s smack talk about Tesla.
“By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content,” said Musk. “Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara.”
When pressed for an official statement on the conflict between Trump’s advisers, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded, “These are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs.”
“Boys will be boys and we will let their public sparring continue,” she added before insisting the press be “very grateful that we have the most transparent administration in history.”
Karoline Leavitt when asked about Elon Musk – Peter Navarro Conflict:
“Boys will be boys” pic.twitter.com/5eCtORgTZo
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) April 8, 2025
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Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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