OPINION:
Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist whose face is frequently seen on CNN, had an interview with Anderson Cooper this week to discuss The Washington Post’s publication of President Donald Trump’s private conversations with Australia and Mexico heads of state.
And if you’re still struggling to understand how in the heck Trump pulled out a win in the White House, this segment couldn’t be clearer. Navarro may be Republican. But she’s clueless on conservatives.
Title the news clip: The Face of Republican Elitism.
On Trump’s call with Australia’s prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Navarro said this: “You had the prime minister of Australia having to explain policy to [Trump] like you teach a 4-year-old how to read. ’A’ is for apple, ’B’ is for boy, ’C’ is for cat.”
Condescending is for Navarro, and so forth and so on.
“The president of the United States was completely ignorant and clueless as to the policy that they were discussing,” she went on, Mediaite reported. “It was painful for any American to feel embarrassed by the lack of knowledge of this president.”
Then, there was that Enrique Pena Nieto conversation.
On that, Navarro jabbed Trump for speaking bluntly to Pena Nieto of the political realities of building the wall — or more to truth, of failing to build the wall.
Instead of seeing truth in Trump’s claim that he would lose political favor with the people who elected him if he didn’t realize his promise to build the wall, Navarro saw self-interest.
“His base should be feeling very duped today,” she said. “He wasn’t telling the president of Mexico ’you’ve got to pay for the all.’ He was saying to him, ’Shut up, don’t say you’re not going to pay for the wall because you’re making me look bad.’ It was all about the looks, not the substance.”
Her anti-Trumpism isn’t all that surprising.
Her background ties her tightly to some of the most entrenched RINOs of the party — she served for John McCain’s presidential campaign, she served on Gov. Jeb Bush’s transition team.
But truly, Navarro represents all that’s wrong with the Republican Party — the elitism, the entitlement mindset, the idea that only a few select know best what the vast majority need. And it’s a set of character traits that’s already been rejected by the voters. Fact is: Mocking Trump as a circus act isn’t smart politics. It didn’t work on the campaign trail — obviously — and trying the same tactic now only alienates the Republican Party even further from conservative voters still stinging from snotty labels like “deplorables,” and presses this portion of the public even tighter into the whole Trump fold.
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