by Sharon Rondeau
(May 28, 2023) — [Editor’s Note: Transcripts from Peter Navarro’s “Taking Back Trump’s America” podcasts at times contain errors generated by the transcribing software, Navarro has explained.]
In his May 24 podcast, former White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro discussed his view of the much-anticipated entrance into the 2024 presidential Republican primary of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, joining 45th President Donald J. Trump and four other declared candidates.
On the evening of May 24, DeSantis declared his candidacy in a “Twitter Space” hosted by David Sacks and Twitter owner Elon Musk which caused the platform to temporarily falter.
Unlike many other former Trump staff members, Navarro unequivocally supports Trump and continues to refer to him as “The Boss.”
Navarro publishes transcripts from his podcasts on his Substack, “Peter Navarro’s Taking Back Trump’s America,” taken from the title of a book he published in September. Wednesday’s transcript is titled, “Handicapping the Trump-DeSantis Faceoff.”
“The Great Never Trump Hope is finally throwing his boxing gloves into 2024 presidential ring,” Navarro began his broadcast. “Here’s how the Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will try to knock out the greatest counterpuncher in American politics.”
First elected Florida governor in 2018 and re-elected this past November, Trump claims, based on the then-current polling, his endorsement of DeSantis catapulted DeSantis to what appeared to be an unlikely primary victory over Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. Later, DeSantis went on to win a close race against Democrat Andrew Gillum.
As a result of DeSantis’s now-declared 2024 presidential aspirations, Trump, who predicted DeSantis’s run and accused him of running a “shadow campaign,” now considers DeSantis “disloyal.”
In late April, the Florida legislature altered a law mandating that any state office-holder must resign his post to seek a federal position, a measure DeSantis signed on Wednesday. The law had previously been changed to favor former Gov. Charlie Crist as he was considered a possible running-mate for Sen. John McCain in 2008.
In 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott restored portions of the “resign-to-run” law which nevertheless “permitted Scott to serve out the rest of his term as governor while running for U.S. Senate,” Fox News reported.
DeSantis has been touted by many, including some fleeing high-tax and highly-restrictive states in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a promoter of greater freedom. In addition to DeSantis’s rejection of the “biomedical security state,” Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo in February robustly questioned the CDC’s promotion of COVID-19 vaccines in the wake of thousands of reports of severe injury and death following their administration.
In December, DeSantis held a roundtable discussion focusing on “accountability” for the vaccine manufacturers for adverse reactions believed to be causally associated with the shots. At the conclusion of the roundtable, DeSantis called upon the state supreme court to convene a grand jury with the purpose of determining “any and all wrongdoing in Florida with respect to Covid-19 vaccines.”
“DeSantis will first try to claim Trump can’t win,” Navarro expounded in his broadcast as reflected in the transcript. “While Trump decisively beats both Biden and DeSantis in national polls, lookout for DeSantis-friendly pollsters showing DeSantis taking key battlegrounds like Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin; and these misleading polls will be gleefully disseminated by the Never-Trump media – from CNN, MSNBC and Fox to ABC, CBS, and NBC.”
On May 19, in fact, DeSantis reportedly told donors, “Trump can’t win.”
Navarro went on to make points as to DeSantis’s backers, who he described as “MAGA-hating, open borders, China-appeasing donors of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the multinational corporations whose bottom lines depend on the offshoring of America jobs and importing of illegal alien labor.”
On April 29, Navarro wrote of DeSantis’s expected presidential announcement:
· There’s a steep learning curve to govern as president
· DeSantis has not gone up the curve
· Trump is ready to deal with our economic, national security, and border issues
· No comes close to Trump as the savior of this land
· DeSantis should apprentice as Trump’s VP and get 12 years total in the Oval
In February, Navarro characterized a pre-presidential announcement gathering of DeSantis and supporters as “a cadre of Globalist donors and former Trump staffers” along with a number of “punks in pinstripes” who he said “have sucked literally billions of dollars out the pocketbooks and hides of the MAGA Deplorables by betting the stock market would fall.”
“…what we’re seeing here writ large is the clearest split between the Traditional Republicans of Wall Street and globalism who profit off the sweat of America’s blue-collar workers and love to offshore our jobs and open our borders versus the Trump MAGA Republicans who want to bring our jobs home from Asia and Mexico and around the world and who want to secure our borders,” Navarro wrote.
On May 10, DeSantis signed a bill strengthening Florida’s requirements for employers to use E-Verify, a system designed to flag illegal aliens not authorized to work in the United States.
“DeSantis will also try to pose as a MAGA populist – he is already being tutored by a disgruntled ex-Trump staffer,” Navarro continued. “Trump need not really counterpunch here as his MAGA base knows you can tell a politician by the company he keeps.”
Returning to the subject of high-profile supporters, Navarro said, “DeSantis has also received the full-throated backing of the second most hated man in MAGA behind only George Soros. The Australian globalist Rupert Murdoch has pledged the full force of his Fox News-New York Post empire. It’s not for nothing DeSantis has fallen in the polls as his globalist backing has been revealed.”
According to a Sunday Berkeley Institute of Government Studies poll sponsored by The Los Angeles Times, “Trump has the support of 44% of California’s likely Republican primary voters, while DeSantis was backed by 26%…a notable reversal of their standings three months ago, when DeSantis led Trump by 8 percentage points among the state’s GOP voters.”
Also this morning, a Florida state poll showed a statistical tie between Trump and DeSantis.
According to an unconfirmed May 19 report by Knewz and reproduced by MSN, at a 2020 dinner meeting at his “California ranch” in BelAir, Murdoch promised DeSantis “that Fox would support his potential presidential run in 2024.” Without providing a link, the article cited Vanity Fair as its sole source, an article this writer is unable to locate. Reproduction of the story abounds, but no confirmation of it appears to exist.
“Knews” is largely a news aggregator featuring articles published by major news sources around the world. While there appear to be at least two writers of original material, at least one such article, published by a former RadarOnline writer, is presented in a different light by the mainstream KRON.
A second article by the same Knewz writer appearing the same day and reproduced at MSN is titled, “Rupert Murdoch Accused of Ramping Up ‘Dirty Tricks’ Against Donald Trump” and again cites Vanity Fair without a source link. “Unlike Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal have not overtly endorsed DeSantis, instead, they are pushing biased stories that do not gel with some of the Post’s own readers,” the article states.
According to The Hollywood Reporter and The (UK) Telegraph, Murdoch sold the ranch he owned in Carmel Valley, CA in 2011. In late 2021, Forbes reported, citing The Wall Street Journal (owned by Murdoch) with an active link, that Murdoch purchased a far pricier retreat in Montana from the Koch family’s holdings.
Regarding Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Navarro said:
DeSantis’ third line of attack may be the strongest card he will play to try to split Trump’s broader Republican and Independent base. DeSantis will position himself as the intrepid Fauci-fighter who rejected “Trump’s lockdowns” and the forced vaccination of what DeSantis will scornfully portray as the “Trump vaccine.”
In early 2022, DeSantis signed a bill protecting healthcare workers from liability associated with the administration of COVID-19 vaccines, though the same year his administration recommended against children under five years of age and, for that matter, “healthy children,” receiving them.
Early reports from the chaotic time during which Trump attempted to navigate the pandemic by following the advice of his White House coronavirus team yet reopen the country promptly show that Trump made conflicting statements about then-NAIAD Director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who also contradicted himself on the need and effectiveness of face masks and appeared unhappy at times with the administration’s response to his advice.
During the same time frame, Trump did, however, retweet a then-congressional candidate’s call to have Fauci dismissed.
As Navarro predicted, on Thursday DeSantis accused Trump of “having turned the country over to Fauci in March of 2020″ in a move “that destroyed millions of people’s lives.”
Later than most governors who ordered lockdowns, DeSantis closed Florida on April 1, 2020 and partially reopened the state on April 29, 2020. At the time described as “a close ally” of Trump’s, DeSantis attended a “White House Summit” just prior to the rollout of the Pfizer COVID-19 injections, the only brand then available under the FDA-issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
Even then, DeSantis observed that the COVID-19 vaccines had become “politicized.”
“President Trump has already counterpunched with strong opposition to forced vaccinations and anything remotely looking like vaccine passports,” Navarro responded to DeSantis’s anticipated criticism. “Yet, the best counterpunch Trump may ultimately throw is this:
Even as Trump was moving mountains to successfully deliver what he thought was a true vaccine in record time, the president was being lied to – I know, I was there!
From Tony Fauci at NIH and Deborah Birx in the White House to Bob Redfield at the CDC and Steve Hahn at the FDA, none told President Trump that the so-called “vaccine” they were pedaling wasn’t a true vaccine at all but a potentially dangerous immune system-altering jab. To sell the hated lockdown to Trump, many of these same advisors vastly over-sold the risks of the pandemic even as Big Pharma hid data that showed the Covid jabs were anything but safe!
Most perniciously, Fauci knew as early as January of 2020 the virus almost certainly came from a Wuhan lab – he himself had funded the gain-of-function research likely used to genetically engineer what is for all practical purposes a Communist Chinese bioweapon. By withholding that information, Fauci foreclosed on the opportunity to design a true and safe vaccine. Of course, to put a little extra zip on this counterpunch, Trump will promise to hold Fauci, Pfizer, and the rest of those who deceived not just him, but also the American people, fully accountable.
Will never happen!
Great article … that needs to go far and wide. Trump was bamboozled by some of the inherited members of his administration… and now needs to acknowledge that the entire COVID-19 ‘virus’, ‘lock-downs’, and so-called ‘vaccines’ were all hoaxes, making our mostly honorable (but also bamboozled) medical personnel ‘Hitmen’ for the Pharma/Industrial/Globalist cartels. (Anthem Medical’s Vaccine Provider Incentive program paid up to a $250 bonus per newly vaccinated member!. Contract Killers … on Steroids!)
Now we need to persuade them that DeSantis should apprentice as Trump’s VP and thus get himself 12 years total in the Oval Office!