Navarro’s blame shows anti-intellectualism in US

Blame games frequently played by US conservative politicians like White House trade adviser Peter Navarro have showed that anti-intellectualism is still prevalent among some Americans, said Chinese analysts, noting that if the Trump administration only knows how to blame others but fails to solve their own problems, sooner or later, Americans will realize they are unable to lead.

Navarro told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that US President Donald Trump “built the most powerful and beautiful economy in the world in three years,” but, the Communist Party of China “took it down in 60 days.”

Navarro made the claim three days after House Republicans launched a “China Task Force” to coordinate a strategy against the geopolitical threat from Beijing — coming amid global scrutiny over China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

The nonsense blame games played by US conservative politicians just proved that the antiintellectualism they are selling is still popular among some people with very obstinate Sinophobic sentiments, Chinese observers said.

At the very beginning of the outbreak in China’s Wuhan, many US politicians and officials, including Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, even believed the outbreak was an opportunity for the US to bring jobs back from China. After that, Trump said the COVID-19 was not a big deal and could disappear “like a miracle.” Now, Navarro said it was China who destroyed the US economy in 60 days, so everyone with common sense can see how ridiculous US officials were in handling the pandemic and who is responsible for the decline in the US economy, experts said.

Diao Daming, a US studies expert at Renmin University in Beijing, told the Global Times that people with common sense can see that these blame games can’t save lives, and have nothing to do with epidemic prevention. These tricks and the officials who played them will lose popularity if the outbreak in the US goes out of control.

“If Navarro was not a White House adviser, no one would take him seriously, as his knowledge and logic is even worse than ordinary people,” said Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

Some US officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab as the possible source of the outbreak, but no hard evidence has been provided.

Lü said these US politicians are getting more and more “crazy,” and it is hard to predict what they would do and say in the future toward China to save their horrible reputation in handling the outbreak. “At present, USA could probably also stand for ‘unpredictable states of America.’”