President Trump today scolded Peter Navarro, an assistant to the president and Trump’s director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, after an op/ed Navarro wrote criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared in yesterday’s USA Today.
Dr. Fauci, who serves as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview published by the Atlantic today, “I can’t explain Peter Navarro. He’s in a world by himself.”
Asked about the Navarro op/ed, Trump responded, “He made a statement representing himself. He shouldn’t be doing that.”
In the op/ed, Navarro was listed as an “Opinion Contributor” on the piece titled, “Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on,” but the bio at the end states, “Peter Navarro, an assistant to the president, is the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.”
This morning, more than 12 hours after the op/ed appeared online, the White House started to distance itself from the piece, reports the Washington Post. Alyssa Farah is the White House Director of Strategic Communications and the daughter of Joseph Farah, the founder of World Net Daily.
The Peter Navarro op-ed didn’t go through normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone. @realDonaldTrump values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his Administration.
— Alyssa Farah Griffin (@Alyssafarah) July 15, 2020
The White House has been under deep scrutiny in the last week about its relationship with Dr. Fauci who, unlike Trump, is a widely trusted source on information on the coronavirus.
Before loosening the reins this week, the White House had restricted media access to Fauci over the previous two months, and sources say Fauci hasn’t spoken to Trump since June nor met with him since May.
Navarro’s circumventing White House communications staff to release the op/ed to a national newspaper is a highly unusual event, particularly with that op/ed openly criticizing an Administration official. Neither Trump nor the White House has hinted that Navarro would be disciplined for the extreme breach of protocol.