Navarro slams Democrats for ignoring Trump used Defense Production Act 78x to fight COVID

Rival presidential candidate Joe Biden has often criticized President Trump for failing to use the Defense Production Act (DPA), but the White House is pushing back with a report documenting 78 times the Trump administration used the law since March to fight COVID-19.

The report outlines the Trump administration's efforts to work with private companies to “modernize, expand, and replenish” the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) that had been severely depleted prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

"Something that I think is disturbing, it's the fact that we're seeing Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party, politicizing this pandemic,"  Peter Navarro, White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy advisor, told Just the News in an interview.

"Their whole strategy is based on blaming wrongly, President Trump for a pandemic that came from China and was perpetrated on this country by the Chinese Communist Party. And one of the weapons they use to blame the president is this false narrative about how the president hasn't been using the Defense Production Act effectively to fight the China virus. And so this report is important not only to inform the American people about how we've actually done an incredible job, using the defense production act, but also to push back hard on this playing politics, this 'blame Trump' game that Biden and Pelosi are doing that is just wrong." 

The Biden campaign and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office did not respond to request for comment from Just the News.

The White House report details how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) worked to to crack down on price gouging and hoarding by expanding the U.S. supply of N95 respirator masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE).

"They seem oblivious to the fact that we've been using this Defense Production Act," Navarro continued. "They don't want to admit that we've been using it, and I think Pelosi and Schumer have a much better understanding of actually what we're doing than Joe Biden. I mean, Joe just comes out of the basement and says stuff, and most of the time, it needs a pretty good fact check. And on this particular thing, the fact check is in 177 footnotes in the report, and in the report itself." 

Navarro also slammed the news media, claiming it failed to properly inform Americans about the source of the coronavirus' spread. 

"Well, when I talk about Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party, basically trying to blame Donald Trump for the virus, I have to also include the left wing media, who should be informing the public about how China lied," Navarro said. "The CCP [Chinese Communist Party]  lied, and Americans died." 

Navarro noted the report states that in November 2019, the virus originated in Wuhan, China, probably from one of two biological labs--one of them a weapons lab. During December and January, the report states that the CCP hid the virus behind the shield of The World Health Organization to hide the possibility of a global pandemic from human-to-human transmission of the virus.

"Incredibly, during that time, China vacuumed up much of the PPE around the world, which is remarkable because usually they're a net exporter," Navarro said. "After they did that, they were still locking down travel. Think about this now. They're locking down domestic travel in China. And letting Chinese nationals--by the tens of thousands--get on aircraft, infected, flying around the world seeding and spreading that virus. Americans should be mad at that. Joe Biden should be mad at that. Nancy Pelosi should be mad at that. But they don't want to talk about that. Okay, because that that doesn't allow them to blame Donald Trump, right? They want that other narrative. But the facts are the facts here. The CCP lied, Americans died."