White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro sidestepped a question about whether or not he was present for President Trump’s decision to enact a 90-day pause on country-specific tariffs during a heated Thursday interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt.
“In a straightforward way, were you in the room with the president when he made this decision?” Hunt asked on CNN’s “The Arena”
“So — so that’s the wrong question to ask,” Navarro responded. “Was I part of the process?”
“Were — were you in the room?” Hunt responded, talking over Navarro.
“Hang on,” Navarro said.
“Were you in the room?” Hunt pressed again.
“It’s … you don’t understand how this works,” Navarro responded. “You don’t have to be in the room to …”
“Well, with President Trump you actually often do,” Hunt cut in.
Navarro responded that he does not ever “talk about — and I went to prison for this. I never talk about what happens in there,” adding, “What happens in the Oval stays …” before being drowned out by Hunt.
On Thursday, President Trump threatened to go back on the 90-day pause if countries didn’t come to a deal with his administration before then.
“If we can’t make the deal that we want to make or we have to make or that’s, you know, good for both parties — it’s got to be good for both parties — then we go back to where we were,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting.
Prior to the pause, markets across the globe faced intense instability and economic anxieties grew all across the world.
Several Democrats have since called for ethics investigations over Trump administration officials’ potential conflicts of interest regarding information on the 90-day tariff pause, raising concerns of insider trading.
When pressed by Hunt on the topic, Navarro called it “a stretch” and “silly.”
When asked directly by Hunt if he had traded any stock “in the last 48 hours,” or if there was a “possibility for insider or inappropriate trading” within the administration, Navarro refuted the idea.
“No, I don’t trade stocks once I get in here,” he responded, later adding, “We don’t do that.”
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
