A “senior White House aide” told Politico’s Jake Sherman Wednesday that Trump administration trade official Peter Navarro “went rogue” and bypassed clearly outlined policies when he published an op-ed in USA Today tearing into Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and trusted member of the president’s coronavirus response team.
Navarro “blistered” Fauci in the Wednesday op-ed, according to Fox News, with the Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy noting that the long-time government health advisor has a “good bedside manner,” but that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.”
In the op-ed, Navarro claims that Fauci “fought against” President Donald Trump’s decision to shut off all flights from China, where the novel coronavirus originated, that Fauci frequently misstated the risks of coronavirus transmission, and that the head of Trump’s coronavirus response team sowed confusion by “flip-flopping” on the use of masks.
“When I warned in late January in a memo of a possibly deadly pandemic, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was telling our news media not to worry,” Navarro wrote. “Fauci was telling the public the China virus was low risk.”
“So when you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice my answer is: only with skepticism and caution,” Navarro said.
The op-ed shocked readers, seemingly providing proof of an internal rift between Fauci and the President’s core team – a rift that many in the mainstream media have been seeking to verify for months, as the White House’s coronavirus response wore on.
The White House, though, seems to be denying that Navarro speaks for any member of senior staff but himself. In an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Sherman told the anchors that he’d received a text from a White House aide claiming that “Peter Navarro went rogue and he bypassed the Op-Ed approval process in writing in the nation’s largest paper, USA Today, that he doesn’t trust Anthony Fauci.”
“I’m not actually sure if that’s better or worse, frankly, and it kind of leaves me speechless that a senior aide to the president would publish an Op-Ed on his own, but that’s what their line is, is that they didn’t approve this Op-Ed, and they did it without permission,” Sherman added.
ABC News senior White House reporter Katherine Faulders said on social media that she’d been told the same thing, also by an unnamed senior White House aide.
“Navarro went rogue and put out his personal opinion without any approvals. The White House does not stand by these unauthorized opinions and Mr. Navarro owes Dr. Fauci an apology,” Faudlers wrote, quoting the source.
President Donald Trump, speaking at a Rose Garden press conference Wednesday morning, also said that Navarro was giving his own opinion.
“That’s Peter Navarro,” Trump said, per AP reporter Zeke Miller, “but I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci.”