Navarro: Republican Primary Contenders Part of “Cartel” Engaging in “Chess Match” against Trump

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 7, 2023) — In his “Taking Back Trump’s America” podcast Wednesday, Trump White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, one of the former president’s staunchest supporters, assigned a role to many of the declared 2024 Republican primary presidential candidates, the media and other players in what he described as the “Never-Trump Cartel” working to defeat 45th president Donald J. Trump in his bid to return to the White House.

On November 15, 2022, Trump was the first to announce his candidacy in what has become a 12-candidate Republican primary field whose first debate will be held on August 23, just short of 15 months before the general election.

Not all candidates will automatically qualify per rules the RNC has set forth, although a second night of debate has been reserved if there is an abundance of qualifiers, Fox News reported.

“The 2024 Republican presidential primary is not a traditional contest among independent political entrepreneurs,” Navarro began his soliloquy as reflected in his Substack transcript. “It is a chess match pitting Donald Trump against a deep-pocketed Never-Trump Cartel with vast media reach.”

That “cartel,” he said, comprises “a Dark Money Koch Network, Big Pharma vax peddlers, and Democrat Wall Street billionaires who hedge their political bets by funding Republicans. This globalist troika is united in their love for open borders to import cheap labor and the offshoring of American factories and jobs to leverage the sweat shops and pollution havens of Asia.”

“Koch” refers to the “Koch political machine,” described in February by Time Magazine as the impetus behind “the most powerful donor network in conservative politics” which “is declaring itself as part of the NeverTrump effort for 2024, aiming to deny former President Donald Trump a third nomination for the White House.”

Other members of the “cartel,” Navarro said, are such media organizations as CNN, MSNBC, and the “Fox News Empire.” In Navarro’s view, social media platforms are not exempt, as he included in the group Meta CEO and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Referring to the Democrat multi-billionaire as “Mark Zuckerbucks,” Navarro reminded his listeners that Zuckerberg “spent vast sums to defeat Trump in 2020.”

Through a charitable foundation, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, spent more than $400 million purportedly “to help local election offices” navigate the challenges of the 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The money was largely distributed to election offices in 49 states through the Center for Tech and Civic Life, an previously-obscure non-profit “working to foster a more informed and engaged democracy, and helping to modernize U.S. elections,” according to its website.

“The coronavirus pandemic — and Congress’ neglect — necessitated an unprecedented bailout of election offices with private money funneled through the little-known nonprofit. And the money proved indispensable,” NPR reported a month after the 2020 election, the result of which Trump has always contested for which he has been roundly condemned by the media monolith and Democrats and Republicans alike.

As of May 25, Capital Research Center reported, half the states have outlawed or “restricted” “private funding” of elections as well as ten counties in Wisconsin and two in Michigan.

During the podcast Navarro included in the anti-Trump cabal Twitter owner Elon Musk, describing him as “the richest man in America who has offshored his largest Tesla factory to China.”

Navarro further posited that three-term New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who on Tuesday announced he would not seek the presidency in 2024, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is a candidate, “will use their home team advantages to try to blunt the ‘inevitability’ of a Trump victory” in their two respective states, which hold early primaries.

He theorized Scott is actually positioning himself to be a vice-presidential candidate to whoever, between Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, wins the Republican nomination.

Sununu, who is openly hostile to the specter of another Trump presidency, is a “shadow ‘non-candidate,'” Navarro wrote, and a “Dark Knight” whose singular purpose will be “to take away the New Hampshire Primary punch bowl from Trump.”

“The cartel’s corporate media,” Navarro continued, “will provide him with a huge megaphone for his ‘anybody but Trump rants’; and he knows he need not formally be on the ballot to deprive Trump a big Granite State victory.”

Although DeSantis was once a staunch Trump supporter as Trump noted on his TruthSocial account earlier this week, Navarro described him as “leader of the Never-Trump Cartel pack” in the wake of his predicted entry into the 2024 presidential race after receiving two endorsements from Trump.

Trump’s Ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s “rimary mission is to peel away Republican women from Trump,” Navarro said, and that “Ultimately, Haley hopes a strong showing in the primary may lead to VEEP redemption if Trump falters.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who filed his presidential papers on Tuesday, is “ABC’s designated Trump Hitter,” according to Navarro, albeit on a “kamikaze mission.” Further, Navarro said, Christie “is one of pack [sic] of former Trump Loyalists who switched sides after the November 2020 election, only to be rewarded with well-paid, Trump-bashing media gigs.”

Following his own unsuccessful presidential bid in 2016, Christie, too, became a Trump supporter and appointed transition-team leader. Following Trump’s win, Christie was reported to have been one of three candidates for Trump’s running-mate but was passed over in favor of former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who launched his own presidential campaign Wednesday.

According to Christie in an interview Wednesday with his former employer, ABC News, Trump “broke promises” during his administration too significant to overlook. “There’s only one lane to the Republican nomination for president and Donald Trump is at the head of it and you have to go right through him and make the case against him. And that’s what I intend to do,” Christie told “This Week” host George Stephanopolous.

“That Christie is willing to give up his high-profile ABC gig to enter a race he can’t possibly win is the real tell in the cartel’s Never-Trump con game,” Navarro said. “This Pillsbury Doughboy of venom is the least popular of Republican candidates, with a rare 1net negative’ approval-disapproval rating.””That Christie is willing to give up his high-profile ABC gig to enter a race he can’t possibly win is the real tell in the cartel’s Never-Trump con game,” Navarro said. “This Pillsbury Doughboy of venom is the least popular of Republican candidates, with a rare 1net negative’ approval-disapproval rating.”

Though leaving the governor’s office with a 15% approval rating and 1% as a new 2024 presidential candidate Tuesday, CNN’s David Mark wrote:

As Chris Christie files his presidential paperwork, joining the 2024 Republican primary field, he does so as a candidate with nothing to lose. And for former President Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, that’s the most dangerous kind of rival.

The pugilistic Christie is casting himself as the one moderate GOP primary candidate willing to confront Trump head-on. Along with a relatively bipartisan record as New Jersey’s governor from 2010 to 2018, this approach makes Christie the most distinctive non-Trump GOP candidate — one with a narrow but plausible path to victory.

Navarro went on to opine that additional “sacrificial pawns” include Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, who said at his campaign launch in Iowa Wednesday that Trump “put himself over the Constitution” when he asked Pence to decline to certify the reported results of the 2020 election.

At the same time, Pence said, he has “prayed for” Trump since the January 6, 2021 incursion at the U.S. Capitol, after which the two became estranged, and “still prays” for him.

Although on Wednesday terming Trump’s January 6 request “reckless,” Pence nevertheless touted to supporters “the record of the Trump-Pence administration.”

Among other things, Navarro described Pence as “a perennial Koch Network supplicant.”

“Pence is the Et Tu Brute Shakespearian figure in the eyes of Trump’s MAGA base for his turncoat role on January 6,” Navarro expounded.  “His sole mission is to chip away at Trump’s Christian Right base by attempting to outflank Trump on the abortion issue — never mind the damage this may do to any Republican candidate in the General Election forced to navigate the rocky feminist shoals of an over-turned Roe v. Wade.”

Navarro posed the possibility of former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney entering the race, furthering her “blood feud” with Trump. While serving what would be her final year in Congress, Cheney voted in favor of Trump’s second impeachment and was one of two Republicans on the House committee purportedly established to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident at the Capitol, particularly as they involved Trump.

After numerous hearings and a 160-page report, the committee recommended to the Justice Department investigations on four alleged criminal violations. Four of their fellow members of Congress, all Republicans, were referred to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring subpoenas issued by the January 6 committee.

Former Justice Department attorney Jack Smith, who Trump claims is biased, is investigating whether Trump violated any federal statutes via documents stored in his Mar-a-Lago resort for which the FBI conducted an early-morning raid last August; the second prong of his probe is any role Trump might have played in the events of January 6.

While at the beginning of the week rumors circulated that Trump will be indicted by the Justice Department, Trump wrote on TruthSocial Wednesday that “No one has told me I’m being indicted.”

However, at 9:02 p.m. EDT, “Hannity” host Sean Hannity reported, sourced to John Solomon of JusttheNews.com, that Justice has notified Trump he is a “criminal target” in the matter of “classified documents” and that he will be imminently indicted.

“If the Never-Trump Cartel pollsters think Liz can drain votes from Trump, she’ll be in the race faster then a lie from Adam Schiff’s mouth,” Navarro said, referring to the California congressman whose repeated claims of “evidence in plain sight” of Trump’s alleged “collusion” with Russia during the 2016 campaign were repeatedly proved by successive full-blown government investigations to have been false.

“If Trump wins the nomination, Cheney may run as an Independent spoiler with full cartel backing,” Navarro continued. “Here, we must remember that the Never-Trump Cartel cares not who wins the General Election.  Once Trump is out, the Uniparty wins either way.”