Trump’s Ex Chief-of-Staff Shreds ‘Notorious’ Peter Navarro on CNBC: ‘I Would Have Fired Him’

Mick Mulvaney, who served in numerous capacities — including as chief-of-staff — during President Donald Trump’s first term, shredded senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro on CNBC Tuesday afternoon.

After setting the stage by describing the escalating feud over tariffs between Navarro and Elon Musk, anchor Brian Sullivan stated that Mulvaney worked with Navarro in the White House and that “there are people I know that text me that you know, that think that Navarro may have to go,” before giving Mulvaney the floor.

“Look, I think you hit the nail on the head earlier. This is more than just about an inter, sort of squabble inside the White House, this is important, right?” answered Mulvaney. “Why is that? Yeah, Peter is really tough to work with. There’s no question about that. One of the things that makes him so difficult to work is that he pretends to speak for the president when he does not, alright? Peter was notorious back in Trump 1.0 to walk out of a meeting when everybody would sort of assume we’ve got sort of a consensus about something, and he would go on TV and say the exact opposite. That has a tremendous demoralizing effect on the White House, and it does tend to mislead markets.

“For example, when people think that Peter Navarro is, when he says, ‘We all know in the White House…’ that’s not the White House speaking, that’s Peter Navarro,” he continued. “And what I think is important for people to realize is that-”

“Does Peter Navarro — who went to prison for the president — does he need to be fired?” interjected Sullivan.

“I would have fired him a long time-, I would’ve fired him when he got caught making up his academic sources for his papers with his Ron Vara imaginary friend, but I mean that was Donald Trump’s call then, it’s Donald Trump’s call now,” answered Mulvaney. “I think folks watching this show are caring more about what is the policy of the White House, what is the policy on tariffs, what does the future hold on this, and Peter Navarro is not a reliable source for information about that.”

Watch above via CNBC.