It’s Jail Time for Peter Navarro, San Diego's Asshole in Trumpworld

Economists never agree on anything, except that Peter Navarro is always wrong.

The Supreme Court on Monday denied an appeal by former Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro, seeking to avoid going to jail after a jury found him guilty of failing to respond to congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony in the House’s investigation of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.

Navarro, 74, is the first former White House official ever jailed for contempt of Congress. Tomorrow, he’ll wake up to the sound of lions roaring in a dormitory for “elderly” male inmates at  FCI Miami, a low security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp next to a zoo,

He will also be the first high-ranking Trump official to serve prison time over actions related to the Capitol riot.  AND Navarro will  be the first person to be incarcerated on contempt of Congress charges since members of the “Hollywood Ten” were jailed in 1950 for refusing to ID alleged Communists to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The House Jan. 6 committee accused Navarro of working to develop a plan to delay Congress' certification of the 2020 presidential election. His decision to wave a middle finger at congress was based on a belief that the “Green Bay Sweep” strategy discussions were protected by executive privilege.

Even if those discussions were protected, his failure to show up and invoke that privilege was what led to the decision to prosecute.

In a statement regarding the reasoning for the subpoena, the Jan 6 committee said:

• “In an interview, Mr. Navarro reportedly added that former President Trump was ‘on board with the strategy,’ as were ‘more than 100’ members of Congress. 

Peter Navarro was well-known in southern California politics prior to joining the Trump administration. A Politico profile of the man in 2020 quoted San Diego campaign consultant Larry Remer describing him as, “the biggest asshole I’ve ever known.’’

• “Peter Navarro’s profile in California politics was as a radical liberal,’’ says veteran California GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, a former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “One of the reasons he never caught on and got traction was that he was almost like a Ron Paul-type character on the left.”

• “But in the island of misfits that make up the Trump White House,’' said Stutzman, who says Navarro’s past campaigns remain branded on the minds of many state Republicans, “frankly, he’s a survivor.’’

During the Trump administration, Navarro was the go-to guy for far-out commentary defending the president’s actions. 

From a 2020 article in USA Today

• White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Sunday defended President Donald Trump's decision to use executive orders to provide relief to people impacted economically by the coronavirus pandemic, arguing his hand had been forced by congressional inaction. 

• "The Lord and the Founding Fathers created executive orders because of partisan bickering and divided government. That's what we have here," Navarro said on NBC News' "Meet the Press."

Navarro’s behavior behind the scenes at the White House was such that then-chief of staff John Kelly led an investigation into staff complaints.

From the Washington Post:

• The trade adviser routinely exploded at his assistants while scheming to undermine other senior White House officials.

• Young women appeared to suffer the most verbal abuse. Some female White House employees complained that Navarro, 71, was habitually disrespectful, assigning professional women to act as note takers during policy meetings rather than allowing them to participate.

At Daily Kos:

• Kelly reportedly told Navarro “If it’s worse than what I’m hearing, you’re gone. If it’s as bad as what I’m hearing, I don’t know. You may be gone.” Navarro was not shy to offer his opinion of Kelly saying, “From a media perspective, this was like recruiting a trucker to drive a Formula One car. Or maybe like using a chainsaw for open heart surgery.” He added Kelly was “brutally and simply incapable of messaging anything to the press.”

• Navarro is capable of messaging. And the message is clear. The man is a steaming pile of ego, anger, bile, and stupidity.

Aside from his ego-mania and ridiculous quotes, Navarro’s job performance at the White House left much to be desired.

Named to head up the White House effort to increase pandemic supplies. His performance was so dismal that the Securities Exchange Commission felt obliged to look into his award of a $765 million federal loan to fund the launch of a new pharmaceutical division at Kodak - a company with no pharmaceutical experience.

At the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee, Democrats concluded that Navarro was responsible for wasting more than $500 million by overpaying for ventilators manufactured by Philips. Navarro agreed to pay almost five times more per unit than the Obama administration had, accepting the manufacturer’s opening bid without bargaining.

Despite his self-proclaimed expertise in trade policy, the White House quietly kept him away from any negotiations with the Chinese. He was too much of a loose cannon for an Oval Office run by a “stable genius.” 

At a press conference held after a jury found him guilty, Navarro lost it when a woman carrying a sign saying ““Peter 4 Prison” appeared behind him. Previously, Navarro had tried unsuccessfully to seize a sign carried by the woman saying “Trump Lost (And you know it!)”  She responded to his actions by saying, “Bro, you are already facing charges” and stole the scene.

• “Here we are with one of the most important separation of powers issues, and people will not let me speak,” 

Joe Matthews penned an article for Zocalo Square titled How San Diego’s Worst Politician Ended Up in the White House in which he makes the case that Navarro’s real talent was in making accusations.

• By March, Navarro had been given the most important task in the country: working with companies and other countries to secure medical supplies and machines for the pandemic response. But in this role, he was tragically miscast. For all his skill in accusation, Navarro had no experience in ramping up a large cooperative effort, and the administration’s failure to deliver the needed supplies has left states to fend for themselves.

• The San Diegan still finds the time for accusation. Weeks ago, reports surfaced that Navarro launched a bitter personal attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci in the White House situation room. Navarro also publicly advanced the dubious claim that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine would work as a treatment for COVID-19.

• Perhaps you cling to the romantic notion that karma will catch up with a man such as Navarro. Or perhaps you believe that other officials or the media will hold him accountable. Maybe in another country, or at another time. But not now, and not here, in the United States of Accusation.

Karma -granted, a weak version of it- has caught up with Peter Navarro. He will probably serve three quarters of his four month sentence, and I doubt he’ll emerge as a changed man.

Given that convicted (and pardoned) felon (Paul Manafort) and known conduit for Russian disinformation is being hired by the Trump campaign, I suspect the “biggest asshole” would find a place to land should the 2024 general election go the wrong way.

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Tuesday’s News to Think About

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Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’ via The Guardian

• His remarks at Harvard gave a hint of the kind of Middle East policy that could be pursued in the event that Trump returns to the White House, including a search for a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

• “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner told his interviewer, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair, Prof Tarek Masoud. Kushner also lamented “all the money” that had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.

• “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

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The Half Billion Dollar Man - Who Will Cover Trump's A** This Time Around? Via Nina Burleigh at American Freakshow

• The truth about his epic business failures is mostly forgotten, buried in the avalanche of “flooding the zone with shit” (Bannon’s strategy) that was his presidency. Today it is rarely discussed in the growing panic over his ability to lead millions of cult followers to the edge of the abyss of dictatorship.

• It’s worthwhile to occasionally return to the work of the early biographers, especially the late great Wayne Barrett, the earliest and perhaps the finest Trump observer, who chronicled the failures in real time for the Village Voice and then in books. Barrett - in one of the coincidences that paranoiac Q-Anon theorists never bother to add to their Deep State Clue game - died the day before Trump was inaugurated in 2017.

• Barrett famously observed that both Trump and his father Fred were “state capitalists,” that is, men who made their millions raiding the public till, milking government programs like the Federal Housing Authority and VA housing loan programs, and demanding state tax abatements, all while scorning social nets for the poor and preening about being self-made. The father and the son leveraged New York political connections to siphon government (taxpayer) money into their businesses, for decades.

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Why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken - as Biden administration launches crack-down in major win for consumers via the Daily Mail Online

• The problem of the broken down machines is so widespread the FTC began an investigation following complaints from consumers and McDonald's franchisees over the frequent breakdowns.

• McDonald's then faced a $900 million lawsuit from an ice cream repair company in 2022 after banning franchise owners from utilizing a product enabling easy fixes for the machines. 

• The device, using Wi-Fi, allowed for troubleshooting of digital issues without having to rely on repairs by Taylor, the exclusive manufacturer of McDonald's ice cream machines.