White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro explained to Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum on Wednesday night how communist China is trying to take control of United Nations’ agencies and how China harmed the rest of the world by trying to cover-up the coronavirus outbreak in their country.
“Martha, let me — let me give you a kind of bigger look at the chessboard here, because the U.N. itself has 15 specialized agencies including the WHO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, things like that,” Navarro said. “And what China has been doing very, very aggressively over the last decade is to try to gain control of those by electing people to the top. It already controls 5 of the 15. And also by using proxies, colonial type proxies like Tedros, at the WHO.”
“And as you can see in this crisis, the damage that that kind of control by China, the key health organization, has been just absolutely enormous. They suppressed the human to human transmission. They refused to call this a pandemic… They basically discouraged travel ban,” Navarro continued. “So I mean this is one of the most serious things we’ve ever seen. And it all tracks to China’s view of the world and how they want to control different types of international organizations, even as they don’t play by the international rules.”
Navarro said that the problem and the threat that China poses to the world is unique to China and the U.S. does not have the same problems with other countries.
“I think any other country in the world would have been transparent about the problem, would have invited CDC people in. I mean we lost about five weeks because of China’s non-transparency,” Navarro said. “So if you’re asking me how are we going to fix this, it’s really kind of more of a China problem than anything else. And I don’t have the answer at this point. That’s outside of my lane.”
Navarro added, “All I can keep telling you is that China’s attempt to control basically every organization within the United Nations through their colonial powers, through bribery, through other things — [has done] tremendous damage to this country and to this world.”
WATCH:
TRANSCRIPT:
MARTHA MACCALLUM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Peter, thank you very much for being with us this evening. I want to start — good to have you sir. I want to start with asking you a little bit about the WHO. Should the United States not be part of this organization anymore? Should we cut off funding?
The president just outlined the huge disparity between the money that we put into it and the money that China puts into it.
PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: Yes, Martha, let me — let me give you a kind of bigger look at the chessboard here, because the U.N. itself has 15 specialized agencies including the WHO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, things like that.
And what China has been doing very, very aggressively over the last decade is to try to gain control of those by electing people to the top. It already controls 5 of the 15. And also by using proxies, colonial type proxies like Tedros, at the WHO.
And as you can see in this crisis, the damage that that kind of control by China, the key health organization, has been just absolutely enormous. They suppressed the human to human transmission. They refused to call this a pandemic. They — they basically discouraged travel ban.
So I mean this is — this is one of the most serious things we’ve ever seen. And it all tracks to China’s view of the world and how they want to control different types of international organizations even as they don’t play by the international rules.
So it’s going to be up to the president to look at this. But Martha, this is a really serious issue and the president is absolutely right about this.
MACCALLUM: Yes. So let me ask you this. You know, in the past we’ve seen three major viruses come out of China.
And so if we can’t rely on the World Health Organization, we need to perhaps have our own medical professionals or assessments similar to sort of the IAEA, or something along those lines, where you have independent people who can take a look at what’s going on in various countries around the world to give us a heads up in terms of the actual virus or the actual future pandemic that’s happening.
There has been some criticism that maybe some of those — those outreach groups don’t exist anymore under the current framework of the White House Organization. Is that something that should be put back in place, would you say?
NAVARRO: Well, I think the problem here is sui generis to China. I think any other country in the world would have been transparent about the problem, would have invited CDC people in. I mean we lost about five weeks because of China’s non-transparency.
So if you’re asking me how are we going to fix this, it’s really kind of more of a China problem than anything else. And I — I don’t have the answer at this point. That’s outside of my lane.
All I can keep telling you is that China’s attempt to control basically every organization within the United Nations through their colonial powers, through bribery, through other things — tremendous damage to this country and to this world.
MACCALLUM: OK. There’s been a lot of discussion about the memos that you sent out at the end of January and towards the end of February to the National Security Council.
Here’s what Steve Bannon said about that. He said — let’s put that up there. He said the principles reason — this is a quote, “The principle reason that Peter wrote this memo is to make sure that real information got to the president, because the real information was being suppressed by the chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney.” Is that true?
NAVARRO: Let me make something crystal clear about this memo, because I heard a lot of chatter this morning on some of the left wing side of the cable news. That memo was a memo that went not to the president but to a small distribution list to the task force.
So people this morning who were criticizing the president for not bothering to read the memo or whatever, he never got the memo. It was not sent to him.
And what’s interesting to me, Martha, even as I was trying to present a significant issue to the task force itself, the president was one step ahead of me, because as I was advocating for the travel ban in that memo to the task force, the president was already moving to do that. And he did that on January 31st.
So I think that’s what important to understand about this.
MACCALLUM: Yes, we’re aware of that.
NAVARRO: And what I can tell you about the task force itself, why that memo went there is that there was disagreement. And that’s not a bad thing. I think part of the strength –
MACCALLUM: So it went to the –
NAVARRO: Go ahead.
MACCALLUM: It — I just want to ask you — it was addressed, I believe, to the National Security Council. Is that correct? There was no task force on coronavirus at that point.
NAVARRO: It was addressed – well –
MACCALLUM: So it was addressed to the National Security Council?
NAVARRO: That’s — that’s not exactly right. The task force began kind of unofficially that Monday. I appeared Tuesday at the task force to present the case verbally and based on the discussion there I felt the need to write that memo.
So that — and the chief of — the memo went to chief of staff Mulvaney.
(CROSSTALK)
MACCALLUM: So — OK. That’s — that’s what I want to ask you about. You say based on the situation there —
NAVARRO: — to the NSC, yes.
MACCALLUM: OK. Did Mick Mulvaney — is Steve Bannon right — did Mick Mulvaney push back at you? And did you feel the need to push harder and that’s why you put this memo out, is that true or not true?
NAVARRO: So what happens in the Situation Room, by definition, Martha, needs to stay there. I can tell you simply that there was disagreement among the taskforce about this, and I tried to provide some clarity with a fairly straightforward analysis of the costs of the travel ban which would entail disruptions to business and travel, versus the bigger cost in case the — and we didn’t know this at the time, but in case the seriousness of the pandemic emerged.
So I think what’s important here is that the president independently of that memo made, what I think in the history books will be judged as the pivotal decision in the crisis, and it started in motion a set of events that have led to the largest industrial mobilization since World War II.
It’s led to the use of the Defense Production Act for the first time since the Korean War, it took (ph) great effect. It led to a quarantine which we’d never done before, which — and all these things the president got tremendous resistance, but as every day goes by we see that he was exactly right in doing what he did.
He has a greater sense of the chessboard, I think, than anyone. And I’ve said — and I’ve said this repeatedly prior to the crisis, I think he will go down as the greatest president in modern history for his positions on trade and immigration. But I think in this particular case what we’re seeing is somebody playing the chess game better than anyone.
And Martha, we’ve just got to beat this virus. We are at war, he’s a wartime president. And all this stuff about memos and things like that – you know, we need to focus on getting medicines to the people.
MACCALLUM: Well, absolutely. And that’s been our focus in terms of watching this virus and looking at it. It is instrumental at some point to figure out how it all went down in terms of the response which has been, I think, very strong in many ways with the possible exception of the testing—
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Can I say just one quick thing?
MACCALLUM: — that was a little bit botched at the beginning.
NAVARRO: Just one quick thing—
MACCALLUM: Yes, real quick — thank you, go ahead.
NAVARRO: Yesterday we got 9 million doses of hydroxy out to Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and New York. Today as we speak–
MACCALLUM: Yes.
NAVARRO: — (inaudible) arriving, that will — there’ll be another eight million doses going to 10 different cities.
This is moving in Trump time. These are the kinds of things I do every day in an office about 40 yards across the street. And we’re going to beat this virus.
MACCALLUM: All right. We’re going to talk about that drug as well, coming up.
Peter Navarro, thank you very much.
NAVARRO: Thank you, Martha, appreciate it. Bye-bye.
MACCALLUM: Good to see you tonight. Thanks for being here — you too.