Peter Navarro, White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy and newly appointed Defense Production Act coordinator, is urging CBS News to, “in the interest of full transparency,” release his entire, unabridged interview with Bill Whitaker.
CBS News aired a brief portion of the 2-hour long conversation during Sunday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, but Navarro claims the final cut turned out to be “a purely politicized interview rather than one focused soberly on the single greatest existential threat America has faced since World War II.”
The headlines coming out of the segment largely ignored the focus of Whitaker’s piece, the shortage of personal protective equipment for front line medical professionals. (RELATED: Rear Adm. John Polowczyk — Coronavirus Supply Chain Lead — Explains How FEMA Is Distributing Equipment To The Front Lines)
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 27: White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro speaks during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic in the press briefing room of the White House on March 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“In the interest of full transparency, I would welcome the release of the entire video footage to the general public.” — Peter Navarro
Navarro told Daily Caller that he had been approached by a 60 Minutes producer for an interview to talk about “how America had off-shored its medical supply chain and why some of our healthcare workers on the front lines haven’t had enough personal protective equipment.”
“That’s an important story,” he explained over the phone Tuesday, “but not the one 60 Minutes aired.”
“I had numerous conversations with the producer about how the virus originated in Wuhan and how, while China hid the lethality of the virus from the world, the Chinese Communist Party vacuumed up nearly all of the world’s PPE, leaving health care workers defenseless from New York and Milan to Barcelona and London,” the former economics professor continued. “That should have been the real story, Beijing’s role in the deaths of Americans and victims around the world.”
White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy adviser Peter Navarro (R) speaks alongside US President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence (L) and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (2nd R) during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on March 27, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Navarro additionally singled out the digital-only “Overtime” segment as a “particular abuse of 60 Minutes’ power.”
“Mr. Whitaker broadly claimed intelligence reports anticipated the pandemic but when I pressed Whittaker repeatedly in the unaired full interview, he could not name the exact news stories or any of the individuals quoted by name in the stories,” Navarro told Daily Caller. “It strains credulity that America’s intelligence community would allow Chinese diplomats to come into the White House on January 15 if there were deep concerns within the IC prior to that date.”
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CBS News and 60 Minutes did not return Daily Caller’s inquiries on whether they plan to release Navarro’s full interview.