Future of the Republic Is at Stake in Midterms: Navarro

Peter Navarro, then-director of the White House National Trade Council, at the CPAC convention in National Harbor, Md., on March 1, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

In the final push ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm election, President Joe Biden told crowds, “we know in our bones that our democracy’s at risk.”

Saving American democracy has become a core pitch for Democrats in this midterm cycle, but that’s not voters’ priority, according to former White House aide Peter Navarro.

“You can see, like commentators one after the other, on TV, politicians one after the other, saying three words, ‘Democracy at stake,’” he said in a Nov. 7 interview on the “Capitol Report” program with NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

“That’s not at stake. What’s at stake here is the future of this Republic, at the ballot box. Democracy is not on the ballot box. Candidates are,” he said.

“What they mean is that unless you vote their way it’s bad for democracy,“ Navarro continued. ”As a general proposition, what we need are fair elections … only legal votes count[ed].”

If Republicans have a good night on Tuesday, Navarro said that’s because Democrats and left-wing media gave priority to abortion rights and the events surrounding the 2020 election, instead of focusing on sore spots for Americans, such as decades-high inflation and tight oil supplies.

He said Democrats’ messaging “has not been about the economy, or inflation, or about gender reassignment or about control [of] the schools by parents, or about economic lockdowns, or about any of the things that Americans in Trump country and Trump’s America care about.”

“Look, people certainly care about abortion rights, but they gotta eat first,” Navarro said. “This is an economy election.”

“They’re barking up the wrong tree,” he added.

Not Tough on Communist China

Another talking point this midterms cycle has been about taking a strong stance on the communist regime in China, which has become common ground among Republicans and Democrats. But Navarro, a China hawk, suggests there’s still a disconnect between politicians’ rhetoric on the subject and reality.

“If I had a dime for every politician, particularly Republicans, who tried to talk tough on China and never did anything, I have a lot of dimes,” he said.

“What I’m concerned about here is that the Chinese Communist Party has seen weakness in Joe Biden, has clearly been exploiting Joe Biden. Taiwan is now very much in play.”

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He added: “Communist China continues to commit what I call during the administration, ’the seven deadly sins.' They steal our intellectual property. They have these state-owned enterprises that run rampant around, and manipulate their currency to kill us with fentanyl.”

The “seven deadly sins,” which Navarro identified in Trump’s White House and outlined in his books, refer to cyber hacking to steal trade secrets, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, below-cost dumping of products into American markets, the use of heavily subsidized state-owned enterprises that employ predatory pricing, currency manipulation, and the flooding of American communities with fentanyl and other opioids.

“It’s time that we take a strong stand and decouple from the Chinese Communist Party regime, economically,” he said. “That’s what I‘d like to see when we begin to do what Trump was in the process of doing with his tariffs; then I’ll be convinced.”

Election Integrity

While Navarro expects a Republican landslide in Tuesday’s midterm elections, he still expressed concerns about the election integrity.

“What strikes me about these battleground races is that I still am very concerned about election integrity issues,” he said. “We’re not going to know the results for days after that election,” during which time there would be time for nefarious actors to work to manipulate the results, he alleged.

He urged voters to turn out on Election Day.

“My admonition to people … who were concerned rightly about stolen elections [is] you need to show up, and you need to vote. And by the way, if you got time, help do some poll watching as well, because these are going to be contested elections.”

He predicted the GOP is poised for a “blowout” in the midterm cycle.

“I would predict at this point a blowout,” he said. “My only caution is [that] people got to get out there and, and vote Republican and use sheer turnout to overwhelm any cheating by the Democrats.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Democratic National Committee for comment.