[King:] White House trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has some explaining to do. Navarro, the author of a scathing op-ed essay published in "USA Today" attacking administration colleague, Dr. Anthony Fauci. The White House says Navarro did not go through its normal clearance process when he submitted that article for publication. We should note, though, for the record, the White House this week did distribute material attacking Dr. Fauci's credibility. We should also note Navarro was scheduled to appear on CNN this afternoon, but the White House has cancelled that interview. Joining me Julie Pace, the Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, and Josh Dawsey, White House reporter for the "Washington Post." Josh, I want to start with you, because you were first to report over the weekend that the administration had a calculated effort to distribute material discrediting, questioning the credibility of one of its own team members Dr. Anthony Fauci. So Peter Navarro, maybe they say he didn't go through the communications shop, he didn't say anything in that op-ed that the White House had not already gone on the record raising itself, right?
[Josh Dawsey, Cnn Political Analyst:] Yes. We spoke to Peter Navarro on Friday, as well, John, and he made the same points to me that he made in the op ed in "USA Today." And we quoted him in the story being critical of Dr. Fauci. The administration, when they responded to our request for comment on the Fauci story this weekend, distributed a number of times that Dr. Fauci had been wrong, in their estimation, on public health comments. And now they're backing away from this a little bit and saying that Peter Navarro, simply speak to Peter Navarro. It's important to know that it's part of the broader pattern of the administration, questioning Dr. Fauci. The president has questioned him on a number of occasions, the White House press shop, Peter Navarro. It's hard to say that this is a rogue effort from Peter Navarro. And Peter Navarro often talks to the president as well. It's difficult to imagine that he would not have done this without thinking or knowing that the president was onboard with it.
[King:] And, Julie, we focus on Dr. Fauci and Peter Navarro. But the president is the CEO of the operation. The Coronavirus Task Force meets today. It's in private. The president, we don't believe, will attend that meeting. We know the president hasn't talked to Dr. Redfield or Dr. Fauci in quite some time. It could have been two months in the case of Dr. Fauci. We're in the middle of a pandemic, setting a record for a state count, 14 states setting hospitalization records. The president came into the Rose Garden yesterday and he was supposed to talk about China. I just want to show the headline of a great analysis piece by our friend, Peter Baker, of the "New York Times." "White House called a news conference. Trump turned it into a meandering monologue. The president spoke in the Rose Garden for 63 minutes and spent only six minutes answering questions from reporters." So when we talk about sort of the White House mixed messaging and backstabbing and in fighting, this is the president's operation, and yet, he seems to not want to confront the reality of the moment.
[Julie Pace, Cnn Political Analyst:] It often seems like the president is having one conversation and the rest of the country is having a very different conversation. I would add to the list of examples that you just pointed on. He's traveling to Atlanta today, home of the CDC, and is not planning to make a stop there, as well. This underscores the disconnect between where the president's head is and where public health officials are. As Josh noted, what we saw from Peter Navarro is not actually unique. We've seen everyone up to the president himself questioning Dr. Fauci. The reality that the president does have to come to grips here is that the rest of the country is having that other conversation. He can try to criticize Fauci. He can try to talk about all manner of other issues, China, infrastructure, environmental regulations like what he is today, but much of the country is still dealing with this pandemic in a very real way and wants to. And it should expect to be able to hear from their president on this.
[King:] They should expect to be able to hear from their president. It would be nice if they could trust what they heard from the president on this. This, Josh, is Senator Mitch McConnell. This is an interesting dynamic to me. Republicans counting the days until the election are starting we know they're nervous privately but, publicly, you start to hear them saying things. I'm going to read you this, it might sound like it's nothing new. This is Mitch McConnell. "I think the straight talk here is that everyone needs to understand is this is not going away. That's the Senate majority leader about the coronavirus. You might look at that and say, OK, that's pretty obvious, but that's not what we hear from the president of the United States. So when leaders of his own party, they're trying if you just read that in a vacuum, that's not Mitch McConnell trying to say, hey, I'm not him, but that's exactly what that is.
[Dawsey:] McConnell and a lot of the other Senate Republicans know that the coronavirus is going to be a preeminent issue in the election and how the administration responds to it, how Republican Senators respond to it, what's happening in states, whether the economy can come back, whether things can open, whether there's football in the fall, whether there's schools. All of these things will factor into the election, whether the president wants to say that or not. The president's strategy has been to talk about coronavirus less, to talk about have fewer news conferences about it, have a few events about it, have a few tweets about it, do less messaging on it. And a lot of other Republicans know that, regardless what the president does or doesn't do, voters will have this near the top of their mind when they cast a ballot in November.
[King:] Julie, we know the president sometimes gets mad about this and gets obsessive about those things. One of the things front and center that has to aggravate that's a kind word, I think the president, is this new book by his niece, Mary Trump, who is a clinical psychologist who documents behavior back to his childhood that she explains as reprehensible. She explains his relationship with his father. But listen to her in this interview with ABC. She's just beginning to do a media tour about this book.
[Mary Trump, Niece Of President Trump, Psychologist & Author:] He's utterly incapable of leading this country. And it's dangerous to allow him to do so.
[George Stephanopoulos, Abc News Anchor:] Based on what you see now or what you saw then?
[M. Trump:] Based on what I've seen my entire adult life.
[King:] There have been other books about this, but this is a woman named Trump, a family member, his niece. We're 100 days or so from the election. This has to get under his skin.
[Pace:] Certainly. This one cuts pretty personally because it's not just from somebody who can be dismissed as a disgruntled former adviser, somebody from the West Wing. It's from a family member. And we do know that the president is pretty sensitive about a conversation about his family, his relationship with his father, things that happened in his life before he became president of the United States. And we know, of course, was there an effort to try to stop this book from being published. And certainly the fact that Mary Trump will be out there very publicly at this moment where the president is already feeling defensive, where he's already feeling like the political wins have been moving against him less than four months from Election Day. I would say aggravation is, as you said, a pretty gentle way to describe how he's going to be feeling about this.
[King:] We will watch as it plays out in a number of fronts. Julie Pace and Josh Dawsey, appreciate your reporting and insights today. Great to see you both. Thank you.
[Dawsey:] Thank you.
[King:] Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remains hospitalized in Baltimore today with a possible infection. The 87-year-old Supreme Court justice underwent a procedure yesterday at Johns Hopkins Hospital to clean out a bile duct stent she received last August following treatment for her pancreatic cancer. The justice is reportedly resting comfortably. We're told she'll stay in the hospital for two days to receive I.V.s and antibiotics. Yesterday, President Trump said he hopes Ginsberg is feeling better. Even praised the justice for, quote, "actually giving me some good rulings." Up next for us, the coronavirus cases rising in Georgia just as the governor's social distancing orders set to expire tonight.