Donald Trump’s senior trade adviser has told a Sky News reporter to “stop that crap” while facing questions over the US president’s tariffs policy.
Peter Navarro insisted Mr Trump was “negotiating strategically” after Sky’s US correspondent Mark Stone said the president “seems to be changing his mind by the hour at the moment”.
Mr Trump had announced an increased tariff of 50% on Canadian steel and aluminium on Tuesday but then halted the plan just hours later.
There are, however, 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports to the US in effect from today, affecting UK products worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Image: Peter Navarro responded to questions about tariffs
Mr Navarro said: “The policy is ‘no exemptions, no exclusions’ and that will change if the president changes his policy.
“But there’s a very good reason why ‘no exemptions, no exclusions’ exists as a policy because when we were kind enough as a country to make those kind of gestures to our friends, they bit the hand that fed them and that’s not going to happen again.”
It’s worth saying upfront that the Trump administration has been significantly more accessible than the Biden administration.
It was rare for Biden officials to appear outside the White House for impromptu moments with reporters.
A large cast of Trump officials are frequently in front of the cameras. That’s encouraging.
That said accessibility isn’t the same as transparency. Just because the officials are out there doesn’t mean they welcome robust interrogation.
Peter Navarro’s pushback at my questions was surprising and revealing. I’ve questioned him a few times over the past few weeks. His engagement has been calm, but not this time.
He was irritated certainly, rattled maybe; wholly unwilling to accept that the markets had reacted negatively to what he called ‘Trump-omics’.
He said the president’s flip-flopping was simply a negotiation tactic – so not the revenue generator they have been presented as.
If they are simply a negotiating tactic, then are they temporary? If so, how does the administration raise its revenue?
In response, Stone said: “The president seems to be changing his mind by the hour at the moment. What are your views on the fact that…”
Mr Navarro replied: “Sir, you don’t understand what a negotiation looks like. The president is negotiating strategically. So stop with the rhetoric, okay? Just stop that crap.”
Stone said: “But he does seem to be changing his mind all the time…”
Mr Navarro responded: “Stop that crap. That’s a bunch of cr…”
When Stone said it was “causing havoc to the stock markets”, Mr Navarro responded: “It’s not causing havoc.”
Who is Peter Navarro?
In 2017, during the last Trump presidency, Politico suggested Navarro was “the most dangerous man in Trump world”.
Navarro is a long-time aide and confidante of Donald Trump and a true loyalist.
His economic views are well beyond mainstream economic thought. He is a long-time advocate of tariffs with upfront plans to upend the post-WW2 economic system of free trade and international institutions.
Establishment economists consider him to be fringe. That’s precisely why he appeals to President Trump.
He was jailed in 2024 for defying a congressional subpoena. He was told to appear before the House Select Committee investigating the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol. He refused to comply.
The committee alleged that he developed plans to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
The subpoena was motivated by a plan Navarro revealed in a book published in 2021.
“Green Bay Sweep” was a plot by he and other Trump loyalists to overturn the 2020 election.
He described it as “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”
A Mexican navy ship has hit the Brooklyn Bridge during a promotional tour in New York City.
The New York Fire Department said authorities were responding to injuries but had no details about how many people might have been hurt or whether they were on the vessel or on the bridge.
Sky’s US partner network NBC News reports that at least three people were seriously injured in the incident.
The Mexican navy said in a post on X that the Cuauhtemoc, an academy training vessel, was damaged in the accident, which has prevented it from continuing its voyage.
Eyewitness video of the collision posted online showed the mast of the ship, which was flying a large Mexican flag, scraping the underneath of the bridge.
Image: Pic: AP
The vessel then drifted toward the edge of the river as onlookers scrambled away from shore.
The Mexican navy said the status of personnel and material was under review by naval and local authorities, which were providing assistance.
More on New York City
Related Topics:
The Cuauhtemoc is about 297ft long and 40ft wide, according to the Mexican navy. It sailed for the first time in 1982.
Image: Pic: AP
Each year, it sets out at the end of classes at the naval military school to finish cadets’ training.
It left the Mexican port of Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, on 6 April with 277 people onboard, the navy said at the time.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
One person has died in a bomb explosion near a reproductive health clinic in California, authorities have said.
The incident took place in Palm Springs, a city two hours east of Los Angeles, and is being investigated as a possible car explosion.
The city’s mayor Ron DeHarte said one person died in the blast, adding that the bomb was “either in or near” a vehicle. The deceased’s identity is not known, Palm Springs police said.
Dr Maher Abdallah, who runs the American Reproductive Centers clinic, told the Associated Press his facility was damaged but all staff were safe and accounted for.
The explosion damaged the office space where the practice conducts patient consultations, but the IVF lab and stored embryos were unharmed, he added.
“I really have no clue what happened,” he said. “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”
Image: Debris covers the ground after the explosion. Pic: ABC7 Los Angeles/AP
In a statement posted on Facebook the clinic said it was “heartbroken” to learn someone died in the explosion and added: “Our deepest condolences go out to the individuals and families affected.”
It continued: “Our mission has always been to help build families, and in times like these, we are reminded of just how fragile and precious life is.
“In the face of this tragedy, we remain committed to creating hope – because we believe that healing begins with community, compassion, and care.
The clinic will be fully operational on Monday, it added.
“This moment has shaken us – but it has not stopped us. We will continue to serve with strength, love, and the hope that brings new life into the world,” the statement concluded.
Image: Pic: ABC7 Los Angeles/AP
The Palm Springs city government said in a post on Facebook that the explosion happened on North Indian Canyon Drive, near East Tachevah Drive, before 11am local time (6pm GMT).
A burned-out car can be seen in a parking lot behind the building in aerial footage.
The blast caved in the clinic’s roof and blew debris across four lanes of the road.
Another person said he was inside a cannabis dispensary nearby when he felt a massive explosion.
Nima Tabrizi said: “The building just shook, and we go outside and there’s massive cloud smoke.”
Investigators from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are travelling to the scene to help assess what happened.
California governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the explosion, his press office said.
A former FBI director has been interviewed by the US Secret Service over a social media post that Republicans say was a call for violence against President Donald Trump.
James Comey, who led the FBI from 2013 until he was fired in 2017 by Mr Trump during his first term in office, shared a photo of seashells appearing to form the numbers “86 47”.
Image: James Comey later removed the Instagram post. File pic: AP
He captioned the Instagram post: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Some have interpreted the post as a threat, alleging that 86 47 means to violently remove Mr Trump from office, including by assassination.
What does ’86 47′ mean?
The number 86 can be used as a verb in the US. It commonly means “to throw somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly”.
One recent meaning of the term is “to kill”, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which said it had not adopted this meaning of 86 “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use”.
The number has previously been used in a political context by Matt Gaetz, who was President Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general but withdrew from consideration following a series of sexual misconduct allegations.
Mr Gaetz wrote: “We’ve now 86’d…” and listed political opponents he had sparred with who ended up stepping down.
Meanwhile, 47 is supposedly representing Mr Trump, who is the 47th US president.
Mr Comey later removed the post, saying he thought the numbers “were a political message” and that he was not aware that the numeric arrangement could be associated with violence.
“I didn’t realise some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down,” Mr Comey said.
Mr Trump rejected the former FBI director’s explanation, telling Fox News: “He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant… that meant assassination.”
Donald Trump Jr accused Mr Comey of “casually calling for my dad to be murdered”.
X
This content is provided by X, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable X cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to X cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow X cookies for this session only.
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed in a post on X that Mr Comey had been interviewed as part of “an ongoing investigation” but gave no indication of whether he might face further action.
The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich said Mr Comey had put out “what can clearly be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States”.
“This is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously,” Mr Budowich wrote on X.
Another White House official James Blair said the post was a “Clarion Call (…) to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East”.
Mr Trump fired Mr Comey in May 2017 for botching an investigation into 2016 democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the White House said at the time.
While Mr Comey was the director of the FBI, the agency opened an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia to help get Mr Trump elected.