Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro sparred with MSNBC host Ari Melber on Tuesday night as he refused to acknowledge that his half-baked plan concocted with Steve Bannon to overturn the election results was, in fact, a coup.
When Melber began the interview by asking Navarro about who was in on the so-called “Green Bay Sweep” plan to challenge the election results, Navarro sidestepped the question by bragging about a report that he put together boosting the Big Lie of a “stolen election.” The “plan” Melber was referencing made headlines in recent days after the former Trump official gave a string of interviews and reports surfaced on Navarro’s new book.
The scheme, in Navarro’s words, involved former President Trump and Bannon whipping congressional Republicans into blocking the certification of the 2020 election by objecting to results in six battleground states. If enough Republicans objected, they believed it would delay the process long enough to pressure then-VP Mike Pence into sending vote counts back to those states.
That plan had begun to play out in real time during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) signed off on Rep. Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) objection to counting Arizona’s electoral ballots. But the breaching of the Capitol by Trump supporters foiled the plan.
During the interview Tuesday, Melber pushed back at Navarro’s election fraud falsehoods before again pressing Navarro about the plan itself and who was in on it.
Navarro gave a long-winded answer reiterating that the plan involved challenging results in six battleground states. He believed there “would be enough concern amongst the legislatures that most or all of those states would decertify the election.” Melber then pointed out that the “Green Bay Sweep” plan sounded like a coup — Navarro and his allies attempted to use the GOP’s power to reverse the election outcome even after a handful of Trumpworld’s legal challenges proved fruitless.
“Do you realize you are describing a coup?” Melber asked Navarro.
Navarro denied that’s the case, saying that he “totally rejects many of your premises there” by pushing more bogus claims of election fraud and suggesting that some individual secretaries of state weren’t “innocent parties.”
The sparring continued throughout the rest of the interview, with Navarro insisting that challenges to the election results were exhausted before the deadly Capitol insurrection.
Navarro’s appearance on MSNBC follows a handful of recent media interviews in which Navarro has detailed his efforts to get Trump’s election fraud falsehoods off the ground in late 2020 and January 2021.
Navarro theorized that the “Green Bay Sweep” plan would force four hours of debate in both chambers, with the aim of creating a 24-hours GOP propaganda blitz that would’ve pressured Pence to delay the certification by sending the contested tallies back to the states.
In detailing the effort to the Daily Beast last month, Navarro said that 100 congressmen, including some senators such as Gosar and Cruz, were in on what he called a “perfect plan” that “predicated on peace and calm” on Capitol Hill.
Navarro’s remarks come as the Jan. 6 committee seeks information from Trumpworld figures like himself for their alleged roles in inciting the deadly Capitol insurrection. Much like Bannon, Navarro defied the committee’s requests and skipped his deposition last month, citing claims of executive privilege despite no longer working for Trump.
Watch Navarro’s testy exchange with Melber below:
