Elon Musk vs. Peter Navarro is a slugfest in the swamp of the repugnant

Where to begin?

One is a brash, lying, conspiracy-peddling trade advisor-turned global economy wrecker; the other is a megalomaniacal billionaire-turned-twitter (X or whatever it is) addicted chaos agent, slicing innocent jobs from the federal government with a chainsaw.

It’s a spectacle where decency loses no matter who wins. Yet, Peter Navarro and Elon Musk are like two greased pigs wrestling for a rotten tomato on top of a landfill. These men have found each other, and it’s as grotesquely fascinating as it is emblematic of our times. Grating fools run our country, and these two top the list.

Let’s begin with Navarro, a man whose name evokes the same uneasy churn in the stomach as “expired meat” or “backed-up sewage.” And I say this with all due respect of course meat and sewage. When Navarro is on TV, in his unbuttoned collar and loosened tie, and spewing jerky nonsense, it’s all I can do not throw-up. It’s what I call “Navarro Nausea.”

And that loose tie and collar, and rolled up sleeves? Way back in the early days of my PR career, we used to tell executives, before they met with the media, to loosen their tie and collar, and roll up their sleeves to give the impression that they were “working hard.” It’s not fooling anyone, and it’s so 1990s. It’s akin to when men would put shoe polish on their hair to make it darker. Some still do, i.e. Rudy Giuliani.

The phony Navarro wants to come across as “hardworking,” but the only thing he’s working hard at is babbling incoherent gibberish, and wrecking the economy.

Navarro was rightfully sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress after refusing to testify about his role in Trump’s January 6th coup attempt. He wanted to be seen as a martyr for Trump’s “cause,” whatever Orwellian nonsense that now entails, but in truth, he was just a coward shielding his own delusions and complicity.

And no one is more deluded than Navarro, who frequently cited a supposed expert named "Ron Vara" in his books and op-eds to support his views on China and trade policies.

However, investigations revealed that Ron Vara is a fictional character, an anagram of "Navarro,” created by Navarro himself. How much more narcissistic can you be to be the person who names a fictional character after yourself?

Navarro was further exposed for being a dumb brick. In a New York Times op-ed, economist Brent Neiman, who says Navarro and team based their wild tariff scheme on Neiman’s methodology, got it all wrong. “The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released its methodology and cited an academic paper produced by four economists, including me, seemingly in support of their numbers. But they got it wrong. Very wrong,” he wrote.

Now, here’s where I do agree with Musk. Navarro’s, or Ron Vara’s economic philosophy, if you can call it that, was never more than junk science dressed in, well, an unbuttoned collar and loose tie. After ostensibly listening to his gobbledygook, Musk tweeted that Navarro is “dumber than a sack of bricks” and a “moron” . If I was a brick, I’d be furious at that comparison.

Navarro’s trade war gospel led to these disastrous tariffs that will inevitably hurt American farmers, raise prices for working families, and earn bipartisan scorn. Trump, ever loath to admit he’s wrong, paused Ron Vara’s tariffs for 90 days, except those against China.

And what to say about Musk? He, attired in black MAGA hat and “tech support” t-shirt, strutting into the ring wearing his own delusions like a cape, and carrying his infamous chainsaw. He’s always been thin-skinned, erratic, and increasingly conspiratorial, but his transformation since 2024 has been something else. Actually, his dangerous and loathsome behavior started before last year’s election..

Since taking over Twitter (sorry, “X”), Musk has turned the platform into a sewer for far-right bile, anti-LGBTQ+ hysteria, and pro-Russian disinformation. He platformed and amplified hate speech, invited Nazis back into the public square, and shrieked “woke mind virus” every time a teenager said their pronouns out loud.

But now, Musk has found a new obsession: Peter Navarro. Over the weekend, Musk went scorched-earth on his fellow egomaniac, calling Navarro a “useless idiot” and then going even lower, hurling a tasteless slur that even to me was too offensive to use against anyone, including Navarro. He should just stick to moron.

That said, let’s be clear, Navarro deserves all the mockery Musk is throwing his way. But Musk’s attacks aren’t born of civic virtue or economic clarity. They’re born of ego. Of petty, high-school-level insecurity. Why? Because Navarro insulted Musk’s sacred cow. Tesla, saying that Musk wasn’t an auto manufacturer but a “car assembler.”

In Musk’s world, that’s enough to declare nuclear war, and Musk did go nuclear on Navarro.

This isn’t just a personal beef between two self-important men who can’t stomach criticism, and two men we can’t stomach. This is a reflection of what’s rotting in America’s elite class. Both men claim to serve the people, but neither has shown an ounce of humility, empathy, or honesty.

They are different flavors of the same poison: Navarro with his authoritarianism in service to Trump, Musk with his techno-authoritarianism in service to himself. Each thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. Each leaves disaster in his wake. And each believes the rules are for lesser mortals.

But here we are, watching these two insufferables battle for the title of America’s Most Loathsome Man. While Navarro and Musk insult each other, the rest of us are left cleaning up the mess they’ve made of our economy, our democracy, our public square and our lives.