Trump sycophant Peter Navarro blasted the Sunday show hosts by name because they looked at the current unemployment rate and compared it to the Great Depression. This did not play well with Trump, who spent 16 hours yesterday tweeting at a furious pace, tossing in some conspiracy-laden wingnut tweets with an occasional spontaneous emission of his own.
Hence, Navarro's appearance on Monday morning's Fox and Friends, where Steve Doocy served a nice easy lob over the net by simply repeating that unemployment is up to 20-25 percent.
"Let me say something about that," Navarro interrupted. "That was a pity party yesterday on the shows -- Margaret Brennan, George Stephanopoulos, Chris Wallace -- it was a pity party! This is not the Great Depression. Everyone who thinks it's the Great Depression doesn't understand history or economics."
Of course, none of those hosts said that. What they said was that the unemployment rate was ticking up to levels not seen since the Great Depression, which is true, regardless of the cause.
After some argle-bargle about fiscal and monetary policy in World War I, Navarro bowed before Trump and paid homage.
"Here is what we have here," he explained. "President Donald J. Trump build the most strongest and beautiful economy in 3 and a half years and the Communist Party dropped a virus on the world that within 60 days has temporarily shut us down."
I see what you did there, Peter Navarro. Never mind that no one knows the origin of this virus, never mind that 80,000 people are dead as of this writing, never mind any of that because this is all messaging for how Trump thinks he will wiggle out of his responsibility for the unnecessary destruction of the economy and disruption of everyone's life.
All of that and the fact that what Trump destroyed was PRESIDENT OBAMA'S economy which he skated on for 3 1/2 years while paying off the billionaires with $2 trillion in tax cuts.
In case people didn't hear him the first time, Navarro repeated his chorus like a choir in church.
"It's going to be a long process because of the structural adjustments that are going to take place as we adapt to the virus socially and culturally and economically, but this Great Depression pity party i saw yesterday, this ain't that," he declared. "And we have a great president here who built up this economy once and he can do it again and will do it again."
Except he didn't do it the first time and he won't do it again. We already know there are small mom-and-pop businesses which will not come back, factories are closing for good, and there are no guarantees we won't have to lock down for a second round because of the ineptness of this White House and their inattention to the very real crisis facing us today.
