There’s one thing Elon Musk might be right about

Elon Musk is not always wrong. Musk’s prediction back in February that “some of the things that I say will be incorrect” was certainly right, if understated. And on Tuesday, the billionaire, like a broken clock, may have hit the target again when he attacked Peter Navarro—the Trump trade adviser and key architect of the president’s thus-far disastrous tariffs—as “truly a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.” 

To be sure, Navarro, who likes to be called “Dr. Navarro,” has a PhD in economics from Harvard. He has a powerful position advising the president, as he did in Trump’s first term. And he possesses an apparent surfeit of self-confidence. But Navarro has done a some really dumb shit, creating notable datapoints supporting Musk’s thesis.

Navarro spent four months in prison last year for contempt of Congress, an experience he has attempted capitalize on by claiming to be a victim of the same deep-state “lawfare” that supposedly beset Trump. “I went to prison so you won’t have to,” Navarro proclaimed at the Republican National Convention last year, shortly after leaving lockup.

In fact, Navarro went to prison because he not only refused comply with a subpoena from House January 6 committee, but also refused to show up or meaningfully respond to the committee.

Here’s what I wrote after Navarro’s super short trial:

Courts have long recognized that presidents can sometimes assert executive privilege to deny Congress information on confidential advice from executive branch advisers. But the power is limited. Presidents have to actually invoke privilege. Subjects of congressional subpoenas, even if they have a real privilege claim, have to engage with lawmakers and specify what they can and can’t share.

That’s where Navarro screwed up. In an emailed response to a committee lawyer who informed him of a subpoena seeking information related to his actions in the lead up to January 6, Navarro wrote “executive privilege” without explaining further. He later claimed Trump had privately told him to invoke privilege, but he never documented that instruction and didn’t show up for a scheduled deposition or bother to say if he had information the subpoena sought.

Prosecutors argued in court that Navarro’s decision to largely ignore the request broke the law. If he wanted to argue executive privilege, he needed to assert it in response to specific questions and explain if he had documents he was not providing due to privilege.

“You are not a victim,” US District Court Judge Amit Mehta told Navarro while sentencing him. “You are not the object of a political prosecution.”

“These are circumstances of your own making,” the judge added.

Navarro emerged in late 2020 as key enabler of Trump’s false claims that he was the rightful winner of that year’s election. Navarro produced an eponymous report claiming, not persuasively, that voter fraud cost Trump the race. Navarro also helped devise, according to a book he published, a plan called the “Green Bay Sweep” that sought to use objections to the congressional certification of electoral votes as a way to stop Joe Biden from taking office. (One problem with Navarro’s attempt to claim “executive privilege” to the January 6 committee was that, by then, he’d already hawked a book on the topic.)

Before he went to prison, Navarro held the title of “international ambassador” for the so-called New Federal State of China, an outfit founded in 2020 by Stave Bannon and Guo Wengui, a onetime Chinese billionaire real estate tycoon who became a MAGA-boosting media mogul after fleeing to the United States in 2015.

The New Federal State of China claimed to be a government-in-waiting prepared to take over China after what, Guo argued, was the inevitable fall of the Chinese Communist Party. But in a trial last year, federal prosecutors argued the group was part of massive con by Guo, a scheme in which Guo won support from Chinese emigres and persuaded them to invest in businesses he launched, including a crypto venture Guo claimed would become China’s official currency. The NFSC did not have employees and did little beyond hold occasional events. But Navarro, along with Bannon, helped give the organization legitimacy and the appearance of ties to Trump. Guo who was convicted of nine felonies, including racketeering conspiracy and securities fraud. Navarro was not accused of any crimes related to his work for Guo.

Navarro has refused to comment on his work for the group, which appears to have involved showing up at events held by Guo and doing interviews with a Chinese-language news outfit Guo launched. It’s not clear if Navarro was paid.

Navarro reportedly got a job in Trump’s first term after Jared Kushner searched Amazon for a person who has aggressively pushed for a confrontational trade policy with China. In five of Navarro’s books, the New York Times reported in 2019, Navarro quoted a source called Ron Vara—an anagram of Navarro’s name—who offered statements that supported Navarro’s arguments. Vara, the Times reported, is “apparently a figment of Mr. Navarro’s imagination”—a mini-scandal that Musk gleefully invoked Tuesday.

By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content.

Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2025

Navarro, as my colleague Stephanie Mencimer has written, “has blamed every problem in America, including abortion, on trade issues and the death of manufacturing, which he sees as China’s responsibility.” And he has pushed ultra protectionist arguments that contradict basic economic theory, but which now prevail in the White House.

Navarro has told Trump what he what he wants to hear on trade, enabling the incoherent tariffs that even many hardcore Trump backers won’t defend. Even Elon Musk knows that is really dumb.