Jake Tapper Abruptly Ends Peter Navarro Interview After Clash on Trump Covid Response: ‘You’re Not Answering the Question’

CNN’s Jake Tapper abruptly ended his interview with White House adviser Peter Navarro after repeatedly confronting him and clashing with him on President Donald Trump’s admission to Bob Woodward about downplaying the coronavirus.

Tapper played the audio of Trump acknowledging to Woodward on February 7th that it’s more deadly than the flu — something at odds with public comments he was making in the following weeks.

“Less than two weeks later, he was saying the exact opposite,” Tapper said. “He was misleading the American people, why?”

Navarro reviewed actions that Trump took early on — the China Travel ban in particular — and said in the first week of February, “We here at the White House started a strategy. It basically was hope for the best, prepare for the worst, stay calm, and begin to attack this virus from China on four different factors.”

Tapper jumped in at one point to ask again about the president’s comments.

“Jake, not fair here. Let me finish here,” Navarro said.

“You’re not answering my question,” Tapper answered.

Navarro pointed to a memo he wrote in the days after that Woodward interview “that basically outlines President Trump’s strategy for dealing with the virus, and in this memo, it brings to the fact that we need N95 masks…”

Tapper jumped in again to call out Navarro for not answering his question, saying, “You’re talking about what you were doing privately.”

“This is not fair, Jake. You’re constantly interrupting me and you’re not letting me talk,” Navarro said.

“You’re not answering my question,” Tapper said.

“I am qnswering it. You just don’t like the answer,” Navarro responded.

They continued to clash as Tapper asked Navarro why the president wasn’t more straightforward with the public earlier on.

“He was straightforward!” Navarro said.

“No he wasn’t,” Tapper responded.

Navarro accused Tapper of “cherry-picking” and told him, “You just don’t want to listen.”

“You just don’t want to answer the question,” Tapper said.

Navarro again said that the Trump administration was “prepared for the worst” and that they were “moving mountains” in February.

“He knew it was deadlier than the flu and he was lying to the American public two weeks later!” Tapper said.

“Jake, you’re cherry-picking,” Navarro said.

“I’m not cherry picking,” Tapper shot back. “He was not honest with the American people. You’re not answering the question.”

Navvaro responded, “You’re not honest with the American people. CNN is not honest with the American people… You want to go there?”

“I said you’re not answering the question,” Tapper said, before bringing the interview to an abrupt finish and ending the segment with this:

“I would just like to remind the American people watching that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, and the united States has more than 20 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths. That is a fact. It does not matter how many times he insults CNN.”

You can watch above, via CNN.