WH Adviser Belittles Media Coverage Of Staggering Unemployment As ‘Pity Party’

White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro speaks during the daily briefing on COVID-19 at the White House on March 22, 2020. (Photo by ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
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White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Monday disparaged the media’s coverage of the staggering 14.7 percent unemployment rate in April caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That was a pity party yesterday on the Sunday shows,” Navarro complained on “Fox and Friends,” singling out CBS News “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, ABC News “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos and “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.

“This is not the Great Depression,” the White House official continued. “Anybody who thinks this is the Great Depression doesn’t understand either history or economics.”

Navarro claimed that President Donald Trump had built “the strongest and most beautiful economy” before the virus took hold.

“Now it’s going to be a long process because of the structural adjustments that are going to take place as we adapt to the virus socially and culturally and economically,” he said. “But this Great Depression pity party stuff I saw yesterday, this ain’t that.”

But two of Navarro’s own colleagues, White House senior economic adviser Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, had participated in said “pity party” on the Sunday morning shows and agreed that the onslaught of job losses is in fact headed toward Great Depression territory.

“To get unemployment rates like the ones that we’re about to see, which I think will climb up towards 20 percent by next month, you have to really go back to the Great Depression to see that,” Hassett said during an interview on “Meet the Press.”

Mnuchin had a similarly grim estimate when he appeared on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Aren’t we talking close to 25 percent at this point, which is Great Depression neighborhood?” Wallace asked.

“Chris, we could be,” said the Trump administration official, who also predicted that the job “probably going to get worse before they get better.”

Watch Navarro below:

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