Elon Musk Says Peter Navarro Is ‘Dumber Than a Sack of Bricks’
Imagine an alternate reality where President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser was a bulging Hefty trash bag stuffed with discarded bricks.
No, really. Picture it. When Trump gathers his cabinet together for an important meeting, inexplicably, there is a large bag sitting in the corner of the room. Its black polyethylene sides stretch at awkward angles as it tries to contain the sharp edges of what appear to be dozens of bricks piled within. Some red clay dust that has escaped from the drawstring top lingers on the floor. A White House intern struggles to move it from place to place. The bag doesn’t speak or communicate in any way. It has no thoughts. It does not opine on the meaning of trade deficits or invent false data to tell misleading stories about the state of America’s economy.
And then ask yourself: Would the country be better off if Trump was seeking counsel from that literal sack of bricks rather than from Peter Navarro?
Elon Musk seems to believe so. In a series of tweets over the past few days, Musk has taken aim at Navarro, the White House’s top trade policy adviser. In one diatribe, Musk accused Navarro of being a “moron” and pointed out that Navarro “ain’t built shit.”
On Tuesday morning, Musk put a finer point on it: “Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks.”
Having never spent time with either man, I’m probably not qualified to comment directly on either’s intelligence. However, when it comes to the more important version of this question—would the country be better off with Navarro or a literal sack of bricks guiding the president’s trade policy—the answer seems clear.
Sack Navarro. Hire the bricks.
“Navarro is both the dumbest economist in America, and the most influential,” Noah Smith wrote on X last month, in response to Navarro’s claim on Fox News that “tariffs are tax cuts.” (The opposite is true: These tariffs are a major tax hike.)
Since then, Navarro has only made his shortcomings more apparent. When he’s not spouting more nonsense during cable news interviews, he’s reportedly blocking attempts by foreign countries to strike deals with Trump that could lower tariffs. Yesterday, after the European Union and Vietnam indicated their willingness to negotiate lower tariffs if America wou
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