Trump trade advisor makes wild claim China sent ‘thousands of people around the world’ to spread Covid

Navarro made the baseless claims during an appearance on Eric Bolling’s show, America This Week.

White House economic adviser Peter Navarro made the comments in a TV interview (AFP via Getty Images)

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro went full-scale conspiracy theorist during a TV interview on Thursday, accusing “communist” China of, among other things, deliberately sending their citizens around the world on “gleaming aircraft” to deliberately “seed” Covid-19.

Navarro made the baseless claims during an appearance on Eric Bolling’s show, America This Week.

The interview kicked off with host Bolling asking Mr Navarro how he thought a potential Biden administration would deal with China – being careful not to speak definitively about who will be occupying the White House come January.

Mr Navarro insisted that Donald Trump will “get a second term” – echoing a refrain of diehard Trump supporters who still refuse to acknowledge his loss in the 2020 presidential election. He then questioned why Americans aren’t “more angry at communist China for infecting us” with Covid-19.

“They are killing people here, and yet we see the mainstream media just won’t go there, we see the Democrat Party won’t go there,” Mr Navarro said. “Let’s go ahead and blame the entity that’s really responsible for this pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party. People are dying because of them.”

Asked by Mr Bolling to clarify his remarks, Mr Navarro appeared to double down, surmising that Covid-19 was “spawned in November in China … most likely in one of their bioweapons lab.”

He further insisted that whether or not the virus escaped intentionally, China “hid it for 60 days.”

“During that time, they locked down their entire country because they knew it was dangerous, didn’t want people infected, and they sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals around the world on gleaming aircraft to go and see that virus,” Mr Navarro said.

The host pushed back, noting that there is a big distinction between China deliberately sending people to “seed the virus” versus “allowing people to travel.”

But Mr Navarro refused to back down, insisting that his claims were “fact.”

“They sent hundreds of thousands of people around the world, free to travel, even as they were locking down their own country,” Mr Navarro said, adding: “The Chinese Communist Party knew that was a deadly virus that could kill people, and they didn’t want their own people killed, but they didn’t give a hell about killing the rest of the world.”