It is your second book about donald trump. Correct. And his administration. Its the second memoir from i have a unique advantage. I am one of only three Senior Adviser in the white house who was with the president all the way from the campaign in 2016 to the end. So i literally was in all the rooms to coin a phrase of somebody else, where it happened and i was the campaign was really important because thats where the steel of maga was forged. Thats where we developed a lot of the messaging and policies that we would implement later during his term. So this is the second book of what its going to be eventually a trilogy on the Trump Administration and this this focus is primarily on this phenomenon under reagan, where personnel is policy, where who you put in the white house can either be good or bad, depending on whether theyre in sync with the president. So thats thats part of the focus of this. And, of course, prospectively and at the title, taking back trumps america, obviously is also oriented towards the future. And i want to get into a number of those areas that you cover in taking back trumps america. But i just wanted to touch briefly on your background. Were both originally californians, and i dont know if many people know that. And i find this supreme ironic, but that you were involved in politics once before, many years ago in san diego, you ran for mayor and you can correct me if im wrong here, but from doing my research, you were very active in san diego back in the nineties trying to tamp down on real estate development. There was a concern at the time among some people in san diego that as beautiful a part of the country as that is, that people wanted to take it like another los angeles and that you were active in trying to stop that from happening. You end up working for a Real Estate Developer and former President Donald Trump. I see the irony there. You talk about how that experience shaped you and and if if you brought any of that with you to the white house, when you first went to work for the former president. Sure. First of all, i wasnt against real estate development. What i was against was uncontrolled growth, where the Real Estate Developers would come in, throw down 4000 houses in a subdivision and not provide the roads and the schools and the sewer and thereby shift the tax burden to existing residents and despoil what today remains americas finest city. In terms of pure beauty. I mean, its a its a traffic nightmare. And theres still issues with some of the Environmental Issues out there. But i think the the parallel between what i did in 1992 and running for mayor and what donald trump did in 2016. There is there is a small parallel there. And that were both populist economic nationalists. I was i was doing that at the local level. You might be interested to know even my focus back then was trying to maintain a Manufacturing Base in san diego. We were losing our shipyards there, which were important part of the economy. We were losing our aircraft manufacturing, which was kind of the heart and soul of the west coast building in World War Two for the war effort. And im im a pragmatist and an economist. And so what i try to do is figure out what the problems are and what the solutions are, which donald trump was a Real Estate Developer in manhattan and around the world. But he was first and foremost a businessman and and early on, he understood that that unfair trade was the major problem facing this economy. As we were seeing our manufac marine base offshore and the way we got together and its related in to taking back trumps america book the converge agents of our paths started in 2006 when i published a book called the coming china wars, which basically described how chinas economic aggression, subsidies, currency manipulation and stealing our intellectual property, how those kinds of aggression were just debilitating, destroying and exporting our Manufacturing Base to china. Trump read the book in 2011. He placed it in its top ten. And when i saw that in the l. A. Times or a local paper back there, when you were there, i reached out to ron, a graph. His assistant. We began a correspondence and so when he ran for office, i told him, im im all in. Whatever you can do to help. And the rest is kind of the how i sit here today. Youre, as you mentioned, one of the few people to survive all four years in the west wing. There was a lot of turnover. There isnt a lot of white houses, a lot of turnover. Its a very tough job. Whatever position youre in, a lot of demanding hours. But but few people survive all four years. Only three of us. In taking back trumps america, one of the first things that struck me and it was in the beginning of the book, but throughout the book, you you talk about the fact that trump lost to joe biden in 2020. Now, i wanted to ask you about this toward the very end of the book, you talk about the idea that you write about the idea that the election was stolen or that in some of these swing states, you believe the election wasnt properly decided. But you were very in the beginning of the book and throughout the book very critical of how the 2020 Reelection Campaign was run versus how the 2016 campaign was run. So which is it . Did trump lose because as if you talk to president former President Donald Trump about this, he doesnt complain about how his campaign was run. He says that he won and it was stolen. You were very critical of how his Reelection Campaign was won and talk and write about it in terms of him losing. And youre one of the few people. What i would say is youre one of the few trump loyalists who talk about trump the way you do that acknowledge seem to acknowledge that he his Reelection Campaign was legitimately be a failure in that it did not win the the fine point here and i understand that this remains a disputed election, at least in the publics mind. If you look at the public polling on this. But half or well, more of half of the country believe that that election was somehow not right. Okay. Now, what i do say here, the point here is that the mistakes, the five strategic failures, it wasnt just the one of the worst campaigns in president ial history run. It was made close enough to steal. And thats thats a fine point there. But its an important one. If you look at the margins of victory for joe biden in in the five states where it mattered, you had extremely thin margins in georgia and arizona, a range of about 12,000 votes in each. You had relatively small margins in pennsylvania, wisconsin and michigan. And my point in the book was that given how this campaign could have gone forward, both on policy, china, by american make America Great again and on just the mechanics of running the campaign itself, in my judgment, it could ensure that been a landslide, but because of what i describe in taking back trumps america five strategic errors made up by the president himself, but by the people around him, that election was close, closer than it should have been. I wanted to ask you about, uh, how you discuss the former president versus the people around him. Sure. First of all, it seems like you have a lot of scores to settle and you were very critical in taking back trumps america of just about everybody that worked in the white house except for yourself. Now, nobody writes a book to be critical of themselves, and i understand that. But just, you know, for the for people to understand, you dont pull any punches. Youre very critical. And i had to make a list here. Reince priebus, former chief of staff. Gary cohn, former chief economic adviser. Rob porter, former staff secretary. Jared kushner, the former president s son in law. But sort of every man of every thing. Former chief of staff mark meadows, former National Security adviser h. R. Mcmaster, former Campaign Manager who was ultimately fired before the 2020 reelect completely Brad Parscale and there are others. Let me let me work through that. But but at the same time, let me say that ive worked with as many or more great people for those four years of the Trump Administration. And in taking back trumps america at the end, i have a chapter thats thats the dream cabinet, as well as the dream of officials in the west wing. And many of them or old blood in the sense of veterans. And just let me track that a little bit. So you understand that theres theres theres an interesting balance here between kind of the rhino republican in name only wing that we brought in. And ill explain that a little bit versus the true trump competent loyalists. You take robert obrien, for example, the fourth National Security advisor in the west wing. He did a phenomenal job and i recommend him as secretary day future administration, a couple of like three cabinet officials. I love dan boulay at the department of energy. Wilkie at veterans affairs, and one of my favorites was was David Bernhardt in interior. Remember calling david one day and said, hey, i just found out that you guys are flying these communist chinese drones over sensitive government lands. Thats thats a National Security risk, according to the intel. And he had that solved within a day. And then people in the west wing, kash patel, would be great. So theres a lot of i, i dont want to get the impression that i was critical of every its just the opposite and its not for me its not score settling thats thats totally the wrong meaning to take away and i hope people dont take that because you know, Jared Kushner, for example, im very critical of him. But i got along quite well with him. What im trying to do in taking back trumps america is is provide an accurate historical account of how white houses should in sometimes dont work. And the original sin in this and ministration happened the day after the november eight, 2016 election. There was a decision been made to bring in the repub the tradition or republican wing of the party. Reince priebus from the National Republican national committee. The Mitch Mcconnell wing and the the bush cheney wing. And the the concept here and it seemed logical at the time, was that this was a Big Government to staff and that if these folks came in, they would adhere to President Trumps vision and that didnt happen. I remember theres a great story in the take back trumps america about sitting in the roosevelt room a few months into the administration. The president is increased, seemingly restive times, angry about the slow pace of our trade and tariff policies. We ran on that. This was important in key states like ohio, ohio, ohio. So we said were sitting there in the roosevelt room. Hes hes on one side. And im just about right across from where we got most of the cabinet there who were relevant to the issue. We got everybody from the west wing, gary cohn, the the National Economic council director. Weve got mcmaster in there and we go around the room and the boss is asking you whats going on with this . And we get around there at the end, theres only two people in the room. He realizes that support this trade policy, and thats him and me. And i see his eyebrows kind of raising looks around. It was an epiphany for him then that there was there was trouble there. But my point here, sir, is that this never should have happened. And the principle that i that i have and thats the kind of one of the organizing principles is the reagan thing, personnel policy. This is bad personnel is not just bad policy, but bad politics. And our failure in 2020, as we came into the campaign in election day to run and do as hard as we could and should have on our our basic maga principles, particularly the buy american, particularly the tough on china, particularly some of the border issues. Was this whole notion of strategic failures that that that made that election too close. And i understand all of that. I, i think what i found very sort of interesting about, uh, taking back trumps america was there seemed to be a level of disappointment in and anger not just in the policy choices that were made at times, but you didnt think these were very good people. For instance, you referred to the former agriculture sec, the the the former ambassador to china excuse me, under President Trump, Terry Branstad. As and this is page 30 of the book, a former sleep bag governor from the farm state of iowa. Now, maybe theres something we dont know about Terry Branstad that makes him a sleazebag. Maybe he was the wrong choice for china. Maybe he wasnt simpatico, as you might say, with trumps approach to china. But sleazebag. Yeah. Let me defend that. His son should engage age in some of the worst type of foreign lobbying with communist china trading off his fathers position in beijing that you can even imagine. And his father said nothing about it. And branstad himself was constantly trying to undermine our negotiate actions with china. He did not obey the president. He did not respect the United States trade representative, robert lighthizer, and there were a number of people who would do that. Branstad was one of them. Certainly Jared Kushner was another, the worst one of the law was treasury secretary steve manoogian. And the problem here, david, is that, in my judgment, and theres a lot of bipartisan agreement in this town, communist china is the single most existential threat this country has ever faced. And yet we had people like branstad and kushner and manoogian and cohn, and then later kudlow constantly working at back purposes to the president and to the guy who was supposed to be doing the trade negotiations. So i stand by that too. Ill tell you three, the the people who i was and this is the president s most word, most disappointed in this this kind of just blew my mind. You had the three generals, nine yan mcmaster, mattis and john kelly. Kelly was the chief of staff. Mattis was the secretary, the defense. Mcmaster was the National Security adviser. Now, you and i both know that the most important thing in the military for the military to work is chain of command. Youre supposed to always obey the chain of command and repeatedly these three generals would receive direct orders, direct orders from the commander in chief, and theyd walk out the door and they would countermand those orders if they were if somebody did that to them in their chain of command, theyd be in the brig and charged appropriately. But thats the kind of thing that i witnessed. There were just a lot of say, yes, do know types of personnel who thought they got elected. Theres a great story about lighthouses. Hes got hes got a really wry wit taking back trumps america. And he said, like the act after one of these knocked down drag outs, we would always have in the oval between the two two forces. Like theres two kinds of people in the white house. Its the ones that thought they had to save the world from trump and the ones who thought trump would save the world. And theyre in lies. The bad personnel is not just bad policy, but bad politics. Tail and taking back trumps america and i think its important lesson for any future president. I mean if you read the book, theres one of the early chapters. I take a tour, what i call the west wing dumpster because, you know, people have referred to the west wing as President Trump is a dumpster and its not the great greatest place to work because, you know, space this size, which is quite nice, youd have about six offices in in this place. And so you learn you learn how the white house works. And one of the most powerful positions, interestingly enough, in the white house is the staff secretary. I mean, who would have thought that . But this guy, rob porter, who came in kind of as a bush republican, wielded tremendous influence in the white house. And it would be Bad Influence because he was the the traditional republican who hated the tariffs, who hated the buy american, who hated the secure borders. And he would and i liken him to littlefinger in game of thrones kind of put his thumb on the scale every once in a while and change history. You also know on page 65, refer to former treasury secretary mnuchin as a never trump statement. Achievement, evolution. Yes. Thank you. Yes. So it struck me because Steve Mnuchin was one of the first, if not the first sort of wall street executive to support President Trump to raise money for President Trump. Yes. And i was with him at trump tower. So explain how he is a never trumper. There is theyre just like we had like the three generals who never made the chain of command. And as they describe and taking back trumps america, there were a set of what i call the wall street transaction was they they came in with a mindset that everything was a deal and that it wasnt necessarily anything strategic about what they did. They took a very tactical view and they had no empathy or understanding of our base, our deplorables, blue collar base. Manoogian was one of them. Wilbur ross was another gary cohn. Larry kudlow and from the get go, many got involved in that campaign to be treasury secretary. Theres a great story in taking back trumps america, where im in trump trump tower in manhattan, in the war room. Its about september. And i get called down to the office. Bye by dave bossie. Love dave. And he was the chief operating officer of the campaign. And i come in and steve bannon sitting there. Steve, of course, is the strategist who kind of road that a rescue in august and its like its like there was just yet another screw up with our with our tax bill and the press and it related to our mischaracterization of this thing called carried carried interest rate. Its like dave goes what the hell happened . Here i go. Hey, manoogian stuck his head, you know, his mouth and yeah, your god. And so, so one point i Say Something like, god help us if manoogian is treasury secretary and bossie says, yeah, god help us. And bannon says, yeah, thatll never happen. And the point of the story is that that was the transaction. Maybe she wanted to be treasury secretary. He came in and the liberal democrat in the Neville Chamberlain of our time and when he was in there, david, he built his rolodex. If they had those anymore, okay, he built all his contacts, all of the deals he made back channeling the chinese and the mexicans on nafta. They will pay him dividends. Okay. But he didnt give a about the people of america, much less the deplorables in my judgment. Okay. But i mean, in look at it, Steven Mnuchin does not need me to defend him and im him and im not here to defend him. But yeah, anybody that works in a white house for a particular period of time, in a high profile position, can quote unquote cash in is all of a sudden a prominent figure who can sell books and deliver speeches. I think thats perfectly fine, but i dont know how his taking advantage of his White House Service is any different than you taking advantage of your White House Service in a perfectly normal capital lipstick american way, i guess. I guess my point is that that steve came in without an ideology and theres a theres an old philosophy book. I read when i was a freshman. The man without qualities is qualities without a man. Right. And steve essentially has no other purpose in life but to be rich. He could care less about policy, the welfare of the American People. But but i dont want to like if he had id say in the book that there were there are two people if they had never darken the door of the white house, trump would probably still be there. Hes one of them. But the bigger problem was that set of wall street transactions, you have to kind of scratch your head. Why the head of Goldman Sachs, gary cohn, with Goldman Sachs being one of the most prom in it, weapons to offshore american jobs would ever be put in charge of Economic Policy in a west wing and what could go wrong there . Well, he was adam totally opposed to trumps tariffs, fought them tooth and nail and was until until we got him the hell out of there that the president. It was actually able to go forward in a reasonable basis, understand the the last person i want to talk about on your hit parade is Jared Kushner. And i do so because number one, he is very important to President Trump. If you talk to President Trump and because he was very influential and throughout the book, i dont know if anybody, if i were to count it up, came under more fire from you than him. Now, theres nothing wrong at all with criticizing Jared Kushner. I just wanted to talk to you about why you feel it is that somebody so trusted by the former president is such a problem. Heres an example of one thing you write about on page 158 in taking back trumps america, you were discussing that summit at mar a lago with the chinese premier, xi jinping. Yeah, President Trump was always very proud of bringing World Leaders to mar a lago and wining and dining them, so to speak. Heres what you write. The mar a lago summit would turn out to be pure trumpian pomp and circumstance, a truly grandiose summit where potosi and im using potosi because thats how you write it. It would wine and dine chinas president in the hopes of outfoxing and negotiating the most powerful dictator in the unfree world. In truth, the event was also a pure wall street transaction. Lost power play. A profiteers pageant conjured up by Jared Kushner working but really getting worked by his his beijing back street channels. Thats just one of the many things the young but not so precocious. Kushner never really understood so look, as a journalist, i love it when people who have worked in the white house are critical of their colleagues. But explain why you think so much of the former president s downfall after one term gets back to Jared Kushner. Sure. And the one that youre one of the things i would say about jared is that going in to the administration, he always thought that i was a rabid china hawk. And in way over the top in my criticism to beijing. But by the end, he agreed with everything i had believed. So the question i would ask is, why did i have to go through that learning curve with a 30 something person without any policy experience who had never been there except for his family connections . Lets focus just on the mechanics of the campaign as to as my criticism of jared, the the 2016 campaign was was a thing of absolute beauty. There was 20 people on Trump Force One flying around to rallies with a speechwriter and just running media all the time. I was back in the war room most of the time with 100 people. We were fighting the good fight every day positive messaging, research, and then fighting back against any pushback. And i actually thought from day one, we would win and we did. Trump won that race. We were outspent almost 2 to 1 by the Hillary Clinton campaign. But what hillary did was spend most of that money on a bloated staff and misspent the money on how she timed her advertising. And we made the same mistake back in 2020. Theres a theres a story about how monkeys with flamethrowers would burn cash almost as fast as jared and parscale did because we ran like a Super Bowl Ad. Peter thiel. Gave 250,000. At one point, he wrote one check for 250,000. That check was used for 2 seconds of a Super Bowl Ad ten months before the election. And when we got to four, six weeks out to election day, we were out of money. We had to cancel ads even though we raised more than joe biden. That alone, that alone is incompetence. And the other thing that that that kushner did was have this they were paying like 20 somethings, like six figures. We had a huge overhead. And so it just it just wasnt managed well. And the messaging itself was poor. Parscale al, theres a great story in taking back trumps memory about Brad Parscale because i blame parscale for bringing down the wrath of zuckerberg and facebook and jack dorsey and twitter on trump in 2020 and the way that story goes is parse scale gets on 60 minutes after the 2016 campaign and tries to take credit for the win and reveals to the world that the Trump Campaign actually had facebook and twitter employees working inside on the campaign as consultants. And that story that that did not play well in silicon valley. And i describe what happened next is kind of newtonian physics of equal and opposite political reactions. And zuckerberg alone, zuckerberg alone would spend more money in the battleground states than the Trump Campaign did. And then, of course, twitter, jack dorsey. I mean, taking the leader of the free world off twitter. I mean, were kind of hoods, but you have to have for that. Well, i mean, i dont know how i feel about that decision, but they didnt take him off of twitter until after the january six, 2021 riots and ransacking of the capitol in a very granted ham handed attempt to overturn an election. But its not as though they took them off in the middle of the campaign or just because. Well, we just dont want you on twitter anymore. There were incidents and drama and the former president had been on for months. Right. That the election was stolen, which you could imagine why people might show up at the capitol with pitchforks if the president had been telling them that a massive fraud had been perpetrated. But even you dont think there was a massive fraud perpetrated . I would i would say focus at least in taking back trumps america on that that monumental error by Brad Parscale, i mean, he was he was i mean, in 2016, david, he was the computer geek, you know, he was the guy he never came to trump tower. At least i didnt see him much. And hes out in san antonio, texas, doing his like stuff like on social media. Right. He did good work, but at a good price. Trump liked him because he didnt overcharge. Yeah, but why did they make trumps merry . I explain how putting him in charge of the campaign was like. Like promoting a place kicker in the nfl, the quarterback. And i think its dont do that i think a lot of republicans who wanted trump to win would agree with you. I think thats a good way for me to ask you this question, one that occurred to me as i was reading taking back trumps america. Yeah. Which is your account of the white house and also the 2020 Reelection Campaign with some good stories from 2016 . And i want to ask you this question by First Reading this passage that you wrote from on page 151 and i believe youre quoting yourself from a memorandum you sent to the president on october 25th, 2017. Yes, im getting this call right here. All right. As you are. All right. In numerous memo that could have changed the history but did not okay in numerous meetings, the president has ellipses, expressed his affection and admiration for chinese, for chinas president xi jinping. The clear danger here is that our president be charmed into submission, which you put into quotes. And this possibility likewise represents a signal failure of President Trumps intelligence briefings. So heres what i want to ask you. Yeah, you and many others who are admirers of the former president talk about his his policy skills, his political skills, how he can see things that others dont or saw that others didnt. And yet every time there is a shortcoming, its somebody elses fault. His radar on china was dead on, wasnt good. Its gary cohns fault or Jared Kushners fault, his political skills and his his ability intuitively to understand where the American People are on trade and immigration are second to none. By the way, im not necessarily arguing these points with you, but when that when the Reelection Campaign failed, its Brad Parscale fault. Of course, President Trump put Brad Parscale in charge of the campaign, or maybe Jared Kushner did. But President Trump didnt overrule Jared Kushner. So how do you reconcile your high praise for trump with so many of the shortcomings . And if he is as deserving of the praise as you think he is legitimately, how can how he constantly outfoxed by all of these other people that he himself hired . Do you ever read the last sentence of that . Again, were just refers to the signal failure, correct. And this possibility likewise represents a signal failure of President Trumps intelligence briefings. See this. This raises a really important issue for any president. The times that i was invited to sit in on the president s Daily Briefing with what they call the i see where theyd come in cia. They would come in dni to where theyd give them a briefing. I was i was appalled at the quality of that briefing, particularly with respect to communist china. And one of the one of the things that both steve bannon and i preached from from day two when we got in there, is that doesnt have to be classified. I let the American People see it. And the Intelligence Community has a way. Its kind of like a priesthood where they keep all this informed nation to themselves. Is that outlet out to journalists like you or the American Public . And they cant they kind of launder that information in a way where they never take definitive positions. Its like this that its like and the president , i think, was not served well at all by the see, i mean, when when you example with north korea and were trying to stop north korea from developing missiles and atomic weapons to destroy seattle and chicago. Were putting sanctions all over everybody. Okay. And meanwhile, now that the communist chinese are running scams with north korea through the to get oil to the north koreans, theyre theyre running stuff across the border and its like you could see that stuff. But the information was never presented like in a strong and definitive way about the treachery for example, the double dealing of xi jinping to the president or at least i never saw it. So theres a lot of i mean, i think i think the again, i get back to the issue of a president is only as good as the people advising him in many. And i you know, i do believe that that he should be regarded as the greatest president in modern history on the economy. I mean, theres no question that he understood. Good. The keynesian trap obama biden got us in and got us out of it. I think from a National Security point of view, if you think about it and you just reflect now, its like russia, china, north korea and iran, were all kept kind of under the lid during his term because they feared him that was all to the good. But at the end of the day, my point in taking back trumps america is that as good as he was, we left some things on the table. One of the things that that just this is this will haunt me till the day i die. There was a executive order. I wrote that would have held communist china accountable for the financial costs of the covid, would have held it responsible for the deaths to what now . Well over a Million People and would have traced back its origins to where we now believe, and rightly and i said this all along, was the Wuhan Institute of virology. And the reason why that executive order could have been so important was not only that, what the dressed a key pol ac issue, but it it would have allowed us to jujitsu the worst political problem the president was facing which was to say that america was blaming him for the pandemic, blaming him for mismanage, seeing the pandemic. That was the kind of drumbeat of cnn, msnbc, a new york times, washington post. It was just and at the end of the day, if we could have shifted the blame to where i believe it rightly belonged to communist china, i think politically. Lee that would have been been a good result as well. But but we didnt do that. Why i. Manoogian kudlow and other people inside the white house who talked him out of it. And i want to get to the pandemic in a minute. Peter navarro is the author of taking back trumps america. I just want to press you on this one point here, because i id like readers to have a better explanation of how former donald trump can be one of the greatest president s in modern history, which im not here to dispute at all, but similar can easily be undone by underlings. Now, as as you wrote in taking back trumps america, if President Trump had simply signed all of the actions on Inauguration Day that i prepared during the transition, we would have dramatically changed the course of history. My point here, peter, is that you werent hoodwinked. You listened to some of these intelligence briefings. You listened to gary cohn, and as treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin brought with him every day, you werent undone and hoodwinked or had your views completely overhauled. And yet, President Trump, listen to you and listen to others. And you guys had these robust debates in the oval. He likes to talk about that sort of people have participated in them. Some of them were rather he would encourage a rather robust to say the least, debate. Sometimes he would join them in himself. You came out still understanding what you think is the correct way to look at the world and china and everything else. But and, but. But. Trump didnt act as though you think he should have. But somehow none of it is his fault. In other words, he was undone. So either he has these unique abilities or he his his his management abilities were not as strong as is. Some people think if all it took was manoogian or cohn to argue with you and him, to side with them, it was never manoogian or kudlow inside with them. It was like all of them. It was manoogian. It was kudlow. It mattis at the pentagon. It was tillerson at state. It was kelly when he was chief staff. It was rob porter kind of. I mentioned the staff secretary earlier as like one of the most important things for a president is what he or she reads at night in their evening reading pack and kind of the summary of what the press is and stuff like that. And that the staff secretary has the ability to stuff that and skew it in any way he wants. I take your point, david, but all i can say that my observation going back to the original sin of that administration to bring in people who we thought needed for staffing of the administration that that that set in motion a whole chain of events where the president , particularly early on front loaded got got i think really bad advice from the wrong people in history. And its a cautionary tale for anyone in whos going to occupy the oval office. Thats why i think taking back trumps america is as valuable as a historical analytic as it is anything else but but i would say that that most of the people kushner and the mnuchin aside, most of them got fired and they got fired for either incompetence or disloyalty or both. When the boss figured it out. But the point is that it took some time, you know, instead of having steel tariffs on one, it took a year in. Instead of doing tariffs on communist china because their economic aggression, it took like year and a half or two years in which we got to it and it worked. But boy it was it was an interesting journey, i must say. One of the interesting things i found about taking back trumps america was that it didnt strike me that there was a lot of. Of examination from on the administrations management of the pandemic. Now, there are and and you focused a lot on where you thought the administration could have better message. And and made policy relating to communist china. Yeah and i think theres a strong argument in your favor there, even if its debatable. But the pandemic was it was this thing that completely occupied the minds of the American People. It disrupted jobs. It it killed and it seems that one of the reasons President Trump fell short in his reelection bid was that in the same way he was exactly where so many america ads were in 2016 on immigration and trade. And china. Yes. Which even if people disagree with his handling of china, he redirected the debate on china. He simply was not where the American People were in his handling of the pandemic. I talk about that. Sure. And remember that this is by taking back trumps america, his volume, too, and the memoirs, the first book in trump time is, a Detailed Analysis of the pandemic and the politics of that. In fact, in trump time starts in the east wing with the communist chinese coming to sign the socalled skinny deal in january of 2020. Im sitting in the audience in a cold sweat, fully aware that theyre possibly bad things going on in wuhan with a virus. And i was probably the only person in that room with that concern. But i had written you mentioned earlier, the 26 coming china wars book. In that book, i predicted that communist china would cause a Global Pandemic that would kill millions. So my antenna were up and from that january 20, 20, there was a famous meeting and its it is famous. Its his sister, oracle of of me in the situation room on january 28th, 2020, the president had sent me there to bring the task force over to supporting his ban on china travel ban, which in rhetoric spec we now know saved many, many lives. And i went into that den of thieves and had my First Encounter with somebody who i never met, didnt know, walked on water. But was anthony fauci. And fauci did set against it. And i within minutes i was in a strenuous argument with him. Mulvaney Mick Mulvaney was at the other end. He was on faucis side. And i left that meeting that night and went and wrote a memo to the task force, said that night said, look, if you guys dont act, were going to lose millions of americans and. Its going to cost us trillions of dollars. And that memo hit task force changed his mind the next day they couldnt cover their you know what on that Mulvaney Mulvaney kicked me off the task force and i would fight fauci forever. But yeah, i told the boss on two occasions to fire fauci because i sensed at the time that fauci really didnt understand. And the pandemic as well as he should have and that he was going to harm the president , little did i know, sir. Little did i know that money from nih to fauci had gone to the wuhan lab to support the gain of function research which gave the technology to the chinese to genetically engineered viruses. I dont know if that caused the virus, but i do know that that kind of transfer by fauci implicates nih in this. But isnt and i mention this just because of your your focus on what went wrong in 2020, wasnt in addition to the other problems that you mentioned and some of the problems you mentioned with the campaign. I think are are very important pieces of analysis way advertising was spent, the way Strategic Decisions were made, but wasnt a lot of the problem the way in which the president approached the pandemic for the first couple of weeks and you were there. So im really doing this for the audience. The the president was functioning as he would say, as a wartime president. Yes. Steve bannon is among the people that encouraged him to embrace the pandemic as a type of war. Youre very complimentary of mr. Bannon in your book. He did it. He did a show, war room pandemic. Right. And january 22. Correct. And at first, the president would give daily updates and then let the experts speak. And within about a month or so, the president seemed like he was done with the whole thing. Masks were a waste of time. And why cant we just do things like normal . My point here is, even if in retrospect we were to say that was good policy, the American People, at least where they lived in the battleground states and and the areas that mattered, thats not where they were. You know, republicans would would ridicule President Biden for being in a basement. Right. But he kind of represented how they felt. And that made them feel like he understood them better. I mean, isnt this a part of what went wrong again, taking back trumps america only takes on so much in trump time is where i dress exactly what youre saying. Theres a chapter in there called the virus deniers. Right. And my problem, you know, im working in my office on. On february 9th, writing a series of memos that would help jump start looking at the vaccine. More importantly, help jump start therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies and remdesivir, things that would eventually save the president s lives. Im working on that in the first week of february and everybody in the white house besides the president and Matt Pottinger is saying that this is nothing. Kudlow no, manu manoogian, kushner everybody. And im thinking to myself. Oh, here we go. I mean, this this is kudlow goes he comes to a staff meeting. Larry kudlow i like larry gay nice guy but hes hes a wall street transaction. He comes to a meeting and he goes, we got the virus under control. Theres only four cases. And im thinking to myself, okay, logarithmic progression. Okay, theres two yesterday. That means for today, eight tomorrow, six. And within 90 days were going to be overwhelmed. Larry, what what what dont you get about that, sir . These were how these converse asians would go and mulvaney would get at me for for talking about this stuff. And yet mulvaney for me, was one of the worst because he is i describe like in taking back trumps america the worst press in president president ial history when he gets in and as press acting chief of staff gives gives a press briefing and almost gets the president impeached again and its like this. This goes back to, you know, mans character determines his fate makes problem is that hes he thinks he knows everything and therefore nobody knows nothing. And its like he was very dogmatic about it, as was marc short, whos been in the news recently, who was the chief of staff for Vice President pence. I mean, these guys were adamant. Its like this. Theres no problem. And kushner in july, theres a great story. And take it back to trumps america about how kushner in july gets on fox news and says, we turn the corner on the virus and wed be rocking and rolling this summer right. And that triggered this wonderful story about how steve bannon almost was brought back by by the president through the help of bernie marcus. And again, kushner was able to beat that back in taking back trumps america. Shifting gears a little bit, you talk, as weve been discussing extensively about china, you write extensively about china, chinas impact on the american economy, on the global economy, and also, you know, some of how you you learned about what what you believe are the very negative effects of how china operates on the american economy. I wanted to focus a little bit on that because whether people agree with you or disagree with you, i think if you are steeped in the issue of trade vis a vis china is, as you are, you have this passage early in the book where, hugh mentioned teaching mba students and first becoming intune chinas impact on the american economy, as some of them are either not getting jobs or getting jobs, but making a lot less or not getting as much of their mba education paid for by their corporate employers. I talk about. Your i dont know if the right word is evolution of thinking, but the spark in your thinking, which became a teaching in writing on how china operates globally. Well, just from a life point of view, the predicate for that got when i served in the peace corps from 1973 to 1976, in thailand and at during that time, i was able to travel throughout the region, korea, japan, cambodia, laos, where bob burma was fascinating in of itself because it was so close and theres a large chinese diaspora there. So i became very familiar with that part of the world. So i had kind of a worldview coming in. Fast forward to im in uc irvine, irvine, california university, Orange County line. Yeah, and im teaching fully employed mba students who by definition work during the week, then come at night or on the weekends. And this is. Circa 2003, right . And i begin to notice that, that, that more and more of my fully employed students are losing their jobs. And im thinking, this is weird Orange County is one of the most vibrant labor markets in the country. And, you know, how can this be happening . And so i decide that i do this thing called the china price project because i had this inkling that all these jobs were going to china. And i spent a year with with over 100 students kind of drilling down on how communist china could charge 50 less than american manufacturers for goods and the prevailing view was that it was just cheap labor and the research was stunning to me because. Sure, cheap labor played a role and. Yeah, a lot of that was slave labor. So thats still unfair. But there were all these other things going on, like the currency manipulation, intellectual property theft. I mean, if you dont have to do r d as a chinese company, thats a ton of money. You say there was the state owned enterprise model and so that led to the coming china wars book. And my my awareness of just the taxes. This city of chinas economic aggression. I think probably or the best tv interviews i ever did was of those mornings on sunday when i was like, you know, you get up. I was doing Chris Wallace little blocks in your little blurb. Youre on the west coast at this point. Right to you. Its a lot earlier. No, no. I was in the white house at the time, was right on set in this building up a few floors. And chris hits me with, you know, what whats like the similar question you did and i come up with the seven deadly sins just kind of pop and just just i just ran through them. You know, its the intellectual property. They have counterfeiting. They dont subsidies the currency manipulation and killing us with sand and all. Da da da da da. And its just through the trilogy of books i wrote on china. Ive become became more and more alarmed. The last one, crouching tiger, was about how you and i, as consumers and our trade deficit with china effectively funds their military machine and its 7 minutes. A missile for the mainland of china hit the palace in taiwan and theyre building asymmetric weapons, meaning they love to sink a Aircraft Carrier that costs a ton to make literally, you know, with 1,000,000 missile. So thats thats kind of the evolution and and the taking back trumps america book. Theres a whole section on on the problems we had being tough on china. I talk about how we failed on why way how we failed on tick tock, how we failed on zte, how we werent as aggressive crack down on the horrors, difficult human rights abuses in xinjiang province, where you have the wiggers essentially in constant Training Camps used as slave labor and the healthiest ones are used as organ donors. I mean, thats on our watch. And id sit there. Yes. You know, minutia. I get back to that s. O. B. And thats what i felt like every time id have these debates, id be sitting in the situation room. He didnt care. He did not care. Its like it was all about the deal. So let me ask you then and i think this is fascinating, you make a very good case for the need to constrain in china. Yes. At the very least, maybe the word is containment. Maybe the word is maybe the word is decouple economic clique, because thats i think, where we need to go. Again, comically. Fair enough. But china is also a global player. Right. And they are attempting to make and this not just about we i think theres a good argument for decoupling a lot of our supply chain plant just supply chains from china. We need rare earth elements for our military equipment. We dont want to rely on china. We want pharmaceuticals coming out of this pandemic. We dont want to rely on china. But china fashions itself the next superpower, right . They want to supplant the United States as they are right now, the superpower so doesnt it run counter to the american goal of preventing that from happening to publicly as President Trump did . And you talk about this in taking back trumps america, when you write about trade in a lot of these deals, doesnt it run counter to that goal when President Trump would publicly discuss the possibility of a us pull out from south korea and didnt it run counter to that goal when the president to sign on purposely asking you this question . Its a great i love this question. I love this when the president who was joined by democrats, by the way, because it was politically toxic. But when the president s said no to the Transpacific Partnership, where we could have found 11 or about a dozen asian nations, separate issue, mind you, then south korea, correct. These are two things. And we can deal with each one themselves. Were getting a little bit toward the end of the program here. So i want to slip these in together, answer as you see fit. Ill do it quickly. Weve got a dozen nations we can bind us economically given the aggressive tactics of china economically in the pacific. Yeah. Then weve got a bulwark of American Military power in the pacific because of korea and japan. Yeah. And the president , the former president , like to talk all the time about, you know, maybe we should get out. Like, what are we getting for all of this . Yeah. And says no to the transports of a partnership which then has these going well, who should we be with if not the United States. Werent those wrong decisions tactically . Absolutely not. And you could you could just as easily when we do the movie, ill take you back. Trumps memory. You could play either mattis or tillerson, right . Rex has stayed or mattis at the pentagon because they would say they would say, boss bob me and one day and he was just ripping on these guys because they wouldnt support his trade policy. South korea all we wanted to do was get out of a bad trade deal with Hillary Clinton was the architect of and we got out of that and we were able to save the pickup truck industry in this country if we hadnt got of that, the pickup industry, the pickup drug energy would be gone. Okay. Within a few years. And so what . But people didnt understand when we when we did that is that its all about its all about the deal with President Trump and threatening to get out of there. He knew they needed us more than we needed them. He threatening them would we would get our way . And we did and now the alliance is stronger. And the principle here, david and this is really important one, this is saying you always understood is that when you trade off economic security, like in a bad trade deal for National Security, you have neither. Okay . If you lose your automobile industry, bad trade deal to south korea, you dont have the factory capacity you need to maintain National Security. So that that to me is like thats thats why you want trump president with respect to the Transpacific Partnership the rhetoric of that and in the press and on capitol hill was exactly has you described it that somehow it was a it was a united front against the chinese from an economic point of view, it was just another nafta where our our auto in particular, our auto parts industry, were going to be exported to japan and vietnam. Are economic base. Manufacturing base would be further weakened and it would not help us fight the communist chinese. So i will say that one of the the biggest victory we had on the First Business day was to get out of the tpp. And i was standing right beside the president , an iconic photo. And if you just take it in the clear light of day, that was the right economic decision. Peter navarro, you get the last word. Peter navarro is the author of taking back trumps america. Hes also the author of in trumps time. Thanks so much for joining us here on book tv. Its been a great pleasure speaking with you, david. Take care. I hi everyone. Thank so much for joining us tonight. Were so excited for you all to be here for our changeover in just going to address the cameras, the room, im sure weve all seen