“Trade adviser” Peter Navarro gave one of the best performances ever by a senior Trump official during an ambush interview today.

Appearing on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Navarro was textbook perfect in his ability to avoid being tripped up by the loaded questions thrown out by Stephanopoulos.

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From the first question, asked about Barack Obama’s latest attack on Trump, Navarro was ready for anything.

“I’m glad Mr. Obama has a new job as Joe Biden’s press secretary,” he started, getting in his zinger but then following it up with a cutting critique of Obama’s fake commencement address. “I note for the record in his speech that I read there was no mention of manufacturing, no mention of China. As far as I’m concerned, his administration was a kumbaya of incompetence in which we saw millions of manufacturing jobs go off to China. His new normal was a flatline in terms of wage growth, and I’m happy to report that this president, Donald J. Trump, in 3 1/2 years built the most beautiful economy in modern history, and the Chinese did take that down in about 30 days, but we are in the process right now of rebuilding that, and this president, Donald J. Trump, is the one who has the skills to do so. Because you know what George? What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go back to the future here. Buy American, deregulate and innovate. What do I mean by that? Bring jobs home. Make it here.”

Did you get all that? And that was just in the first minute. Navarro didn’t even break a sweat and you could sense Stephanopoulos wishing he had stayed in bed and let Martha Raddatz handle this interview!

If there was any doubt who was in charge of this interview, it evaporated when Stephanopoulos asked his gotcha follow up question:

“You say the Chinese took down the American economy. So you’re saying they deliberately unleashed the COVID virus on the United States? You have any evidence of that?”

This is the typical Fake News trick of “interpreting” a response (i.e., lying about it) to try to get the guest to go down a rabbit hole. But Navarro was having none of it.

“I did not say they deliberately did it, but their China virus, let’s go over the facts here — correct me if I’m wrong: The virus was spawned in Wuhan province. Patient zero was in November. The Chinese, behind the shield of the World Health Organization, for two months hid the virus from the world, and then sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese on aircraft to Milan, New York, and around the world to seed that.

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“They could have kept it in Wuhan. Instead, it became a pandemic. So, that’s why I say the Chinese did that to Americans and they are responsible.

“Now, George, one other thing that I think is unconscionable about the Chinese behavior, as we speak, they signed a trade deal on January 15, and they promised not to steal our intellectual property, big part of that deal.

“Guess what? The FBI has now issued warnings that the Chinese government is hacking the intellectual property, so that they can steal vaccines for the world. And what would they do with it? It wouldn’t be a benign experience. They would use that vaccine to profiteer and hold the world hostage.

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“So, yes, I do blame the Chinese. And it will be really interesting, George, as to how this election unfolds, because you have got Joe Biden, who has been a long friend of China, vs. President Trump… who is the only president who has ever stood up to China.”

Question after question, Stephanopoulos looked for a chance to hit Navarro with a haymaker, but Navarro sidestepped him on all his far-left propaganda and hit back hard with the facts.

When Stephanopoulos quoted Joe Biden’s words against Trump for not standing up to China, Navarro turned it right back around against Biden:

“Joe Biden’s has got 40 years of sucking up to the Chinese, including the eight years as vice president. And we know about the billion dollars that his son took from the Chinese.”

That of course raised a red flag for Democrat Stephanopoulos, who immediately tried to cover up the truth about the Biden family corruption. “That’s just not factual, sir. That is not a fact. He did not take a billion dollars from the Chinese.”

Oops, Navarro admitted. Yep, the billion dollars “Went into that hedge fund” run in part by Hunter Biden!

Hit ’em where it hurts!

On every question, Navarro was prepared and knowledgeable. My favorite answer was his dismissal of fake whistleblower Rick Bright who said President Trump wasn’t doing enough to fight coronavirus.

“Here’s what happened with Rick Bright, and it’s an American tragedy, George. This guy is quite talented, but he was asked to be the field commander over at NIH to storm the testing hill with a billion dollars behind him. Instead of accepting that mission, he deserted. He went into a fox hole, wrote up the complaint. And now he’s part of a Capitol Hill partisan circus where he’s just become another pawn in the game. And the tragedy, George, is this man has talent. He’s a smart man. We could have used him on the battlefield. He’s not there now. And it was because of the decisions that he made.”

Stephanopoulos tried to defend Bright, saying, “His expertise is vaccines. He wants to work in vaccine development. They’re putting him in diagnostic testing. Why shouldn’t a vaccine expert be working on vaccines?”

Navarro hit this one out of the park!

“Here’s the thing, George, I was — I’ve been with the president since the campaign, right? I came here to do trade policy, right? What am I now? A conscript in the war on the China virus. I’m like a quartermaster and a shipping clerk half the time.

“Do I complain? No. That’s my mission for this president, for this country. We do what we have to do when we have to do it for this country.

“And Rick Bright, he made a choice. He could have been making a tremendous contribution over at NIH to testing and you and others have been complaining about testing. He could have been the field general. And now, he’s off the battlefield and it was by his own choice, sir.”

Bravo.

Everyone in the Trump administration should be provided with a copy of this interview and told to study it carefully. This was a master class in taking on the Fake News Media and turning their own questions against them.

P.S.: Read my latest take on Fake News with my column Monday at Real Clear Politics titled “The Other ‘Unmasking’: Media Exposes Its Fake Outrage.”

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