White House trade adviser Peter Navarro denied a report that said he was verbally abusive to colleagues.
During a Wednesday morning interview on CNN’s New Day, Navarro called the Washington Post‘s story about how the White House Counsel’s Office investigated him in 2018 and found that he routinely harassed others “a total hit job” and “fake.” Navarro barely kept his job after the investigation, and the counsel’s office found that the abuse continued as he took on a role in the White House’s coronavirus task force response, the report said.
In the interview with host Alisyn Camerota, he said that “the good news” in the story is he was “portrayed as a tough, son of a bitch in Washington, D.C. That’s a plus.”
Navarro went on to say that he had never been admonished for his workplace demeanor nor had anyone complained about him. He argued that the story was “the quintessential Washington hit piece” that was only published as a result of his public feud with Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.
“One of my charges in this administration is to go in after strongly 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,” argued Navarro, who repeatedly referred to the outlet as the “Amazon Post.”
Camerota, at one point during the sometimes contentious conversation, read the relevant part of the story, to which he responded, “My mission in this administration is to serve as a soldier for the greatest commander in chief ever, and my job is to help this president do two things: Save American lives and create American Jobs. And if people get in the way of that, there will be conflict.”
He also called the claims a “character assassination.”
Earlier this year, Navarro publicly encouraged lawmakers looking into Big Tech monopolies to ask Bezos, a billionaire, about the sales of counterfeit goods on Amazon during his testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee. The administration claimed that such sales harm consumers and businesses and pose a risk to national security. Bezos testified in June that counterfeit products on Amazon are a “scourge” and the company has a team dedicated to fighting it.
