Top official on Trump asking China to go after opponents: 'I don't want to go into this'

Trump’s decision to openly solicit foreign help to attack his political opponents is already putting his most senior advisers in a tough position.

On Thursday, Trump told reporters that “China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.”

The admission verified the complaint made by a whistleblower that has triggered an impeachment inquiry in the House.

In an appearance on Friday morning on CNN, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was confronted with Trump’s words and actions.

“Will you comment, at all, on your president calling on authoritarian China to investigate an American citizen?” asked CNN anchor Jim Sciutto.

“No,” replied Navarro. “This is a witch hunt.”

“I don’t want to go into this,” he added. “This is the problem here: We’ve got a great economy, this president is doing a great job, and all you guys want to do is drag him down into some mud.”

Navarro has been a prominent defender of Trump and has frequently appeared on Fox News and Fox Business, for interviews that haven’t challenged him as CNN did.

In a recent Fox Business appearance, Navarro claimed that the impeachment inquiry was “nothing less than an attempted coup d’état and end-run around the ballot box” and said the Democratic Party was as dangerous as America’s international rivals Iran and North Korea.

Despite his earlier bravado, Trump’s words put Navarro on the defensive. Instead of immediately defending Trump’s solicitation or rebuking it, he made it clear he’d rather not go into it at all.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.