Not So Funny Anymore

In the land of the blind, the one-armed man is king. In an Administration filled with corruption and terrible ideas, it's not difficult to be the individual with the most sense. And Peter Navarro, critic of past trade deals made by the federal government, may be the best member of the Trump Administration. Asked on Trump TV last weekend about the coronavirus, the White House Trade Advisor maintained "And, what we have to do is unite around this central fact: China lied; people died. The CCP lied; Americans died."

He did not admit "Trump denied, and people died." Still, his statement was accurate, as was his observation "If China wants to regain the trust of Hong Kongers and the international community, it should honor the promises it made to the Hong Kong people and to the United Kingdom in the U.N.-registered 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration."

However, Navarro here is bonkers (very unlikely), self-delusional (plausible), or simply dishonest (likely).

You almost can't believe this guy would get on national TV and say this shit. https://t.co/R5WGabQMZ9

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) July 7, 2020

But you can believe it. Navarro was not the first to pretend not to see what is obvious and unavoidable. Asked in 2019 about an April, 2018 incident involving a black (non-) patron at Starbucks in Philadelphia, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz stated "As somebody who grew up in a very diverse background, as a young boy in the projects, I didn’t see color as a young boy and I honestly don’t see color now."

This "I don't see color thing" was supposed to be a joke:

Navarro will at least recognize reality in the matter of mainland China. On race, he will not. Regrettably, that is a pervasive affliction among the Trump gangsters and, ironically, not absent elsewhere.

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