{"id":17858,"date":"2019-10-18T19:23:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T00:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomseymour66.com\/?p=17858"},"modified":"2019-10-18T19:23:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T00:23:25","slug":"white-house-adviser-peter-navarro-calls-fictional-alter-ego-an-inside-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomseymour66.com\/white-house-adviser-peter-navarro-calls-fictional-alter-ego-an-inside-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Adviser Peter Navarro Calls Fictional Alter Ego An ‘Inside Joke’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Peter Navarro, White House director of trade and manufacturing policy, has admitted quoting a fictional character in several of his nonfiction books.<\/p>\n

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Peter Navarro, White House director of trade and manufacturing policy, has admitted quoting a fictional character in several of his nonfiction books.<\/p>\n

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Win McNamee\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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A publishing company plans to add an advisory note to future copies of a book written by White House adviser Peter Navarro, after it was revealed that Navarro fabricated one of the people he quoted.<\/p>\n

The character Ron Vara appears in Navarro’s 2011 book, Death By China,<\/em> offering dire warnings about Chinese imports.<\/p>\n

“Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel,” Vara is quoted as saying.<\/p>\n

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But while the book is not supposed to be fiction, Vara is a made-up character.<\/p>\n

“Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro,” said Tom Bartlett, a journalist who exposed the ruse in the Chronicle of Higher Education<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Vara appears in half a dozen of Navarro’s books, dating to 2001. <\/p>\n

Navarro, who directs the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, defended the fabrication as a “whimsical device.” <\/p>\n

“At no time was the character used improperly as a fact source,” he wrote in an email. “It’s just a fun device.”<\/p>\n

Bartlett grew curious about Vara after being alerted to the character by Tessa Morris-Suzuki<\/a>, a professor emeritus at the Australian National University.<\/p>\n

“She’s an Asia scholar and was working on an essay about the rather heated rhetoric of Peter Navarro towards China,” Bartlett said.<\/p>\n