Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro Clashes Dr. Anthony Fauci On Drugs & Qualifications: ‘I’m A Social Scientist!’

Two administration officials, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, are feuding over a potential treatment for the coronavirus. 

The two White House officials have been clashing over hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for the coronavirus. Despite clinical evidence supporting its effectiveness, President Donald Trump and his supporters have promoted the use of the drug. Fauci has been much more skeptical of the drug. 

“There was that discussion on Saturday, and if we didn’t have disagreement and debate in the Trump administration, this administration would not be as strong as it is,” Navarro said in an interview with CNN. 

“The data are really just, at best, suggestive,” Fauci said in an interview with CBS on Sunday. “There have been cases that show there may be an effect, and there are others to show there’s no effect. So I think, in terms of science, I don’t think we could definitively say it works.”

In response, Navarro said he would let Fauci “speak for himself,” but added, “I would have two words for you: second opinion.”

Navarro defended his opinion of the drug, saying, “My qualifications, in terms of looking at the science, is that I’m a social scientist. I have a Ph.D.,” he said. “And I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it’s in medicine, the law, economics or whatever.”

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“It’s like, if CNN wants to set up Dr. Fauci as the only authority on medicine and only rely on him, that’s one set of facts,” he said. “What I’m saying is, doctors disagree all the time.”

In an interview on Fox & Friends, Navarro continued. “I think history will judge who’s right on this debate, but I’d bet on President Trump’s intuition on this one because of all the doctors I’ve talked to and all the scientific papers that I’ve read.”