Trump economic adviser says US should ‘bet on President Trump’s intuition’ over science

Trump’s economic adviser, Peter Navarro, has been doing the media rounds to discuss the merits of science and medicine because there are very few scientists and medical experts willing to toe the Trump administration’s anti-science line when it comes to their novel coronavirus response. Navarro is the perfect mouthpiece for this administration in a time of crisis because he’s the kind of snake oil salesman that other snake oil salesmen try to avoid. As always, Fox News is a safe space for such bamboozlement.

On Monday, Navarro’s assignment is to promote the idea that the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is wrong about asserting that there is not enough data for the global scientific and medical communities to definitively call hydroxychloroquine a cure for COVID-19. Navarro and Trump have been promoting the idea that because doctors are administering this drug during crisis, that somehow this means that it works. This is not true. Hydroxychloroquine may be revealed to indeed help some people, and it may also be revealed to have no statistical bearing on patients’ recoveries. We do not know yet. Doctors and scientists are doing everything they can to save lives, and they are doing it in the face of a federal government response that has been negligent at best, and more likely criminal in nature.

Going on Fox News, Navarro gave his final pitch on why we should trust unscrupulous businessmen and their frontmen over scientists and medical professionals—when it comes to medicine.

PETER NAVARRO: If it saves lives, that’s a beautiful thing. But I think history will judge who is right on this debate but I bet on Trump’s intuition.

Earlier today Navarro explained how his PhD in the social sciences qualified him to give a second opinion on the scientific data available on hydroxychloroquine. I guess he also thinks it gives him a history degree as well?