Yesterday White House official Peter Navarro was on with CNN’s Brianna Keilar to discuss the administration’s coronavirus response regarding the supply chain of masks, ventilators, etc.
At one point, after Navarro points out that China refused to tell the rest of the world about this crisis for six weeks, Keilar accuses the administration of being “clearly ill-prepared for this” crisis and then asked if the administration could get to a million ventilators. As soon as Navarro tried to respond to her ‘ill-prepared’ comment, pointing out how the Obama administration was in part responsible for the ventilator shortage, Keilar cut him off saying “Peter, why are you wasting your time on this and not solving the problem that you have?”
Here’s a partial transcript via The Blaze:
“Let me, let me bring you up on the history here of what we inherited,” Navarro responded. “In ’08 when the Biden, Obama administration had the H1N1 flu crisis, that should have been a wake up call.”
“Peter, why are you wasting your time on this and not solving the problem that you have?” she interrupted. “Peter why are you even talking about this?”
“You made the claim that this administration was ill-prepared,” he answered.
“I did not!” she denied.
“Run the tape, I just heard that!” he said.
“I mean, that is a fact, Peter,” Keilar replied. “That is a fact!”
“Why do I respond to you and you keep interrupting me?” he protested.
After she finally let Navarro explain how the two previous administrations both had ‘wake up calls’ and didn’t replenish US stockpiles, she then interrupted him again saying:
“Look Peter, I’m just going to tell you you’re wasting everyone’s time, you’re wasting everyone’s time with this. It’s 2020. The president was elected in 2016. Can you get to a million ventilators?”
Give me a freaking break. Look, I don’t know much about Navarro other than the president loves his opinion on hard-nosed trade negotiations, but Keilar is just flat rude to him when she was the one who made the counterpoint that administration was ill-prepared for the crisis. And then as soon as he explains why they were ill-prepared, she rejects it out of hand and accuses him of wasting everyone’s time.
You can watch the rest of the interview where Navarro explains that one million ventilators is far too high and how they are working with manufacturers to make more available.