Mnuchin and Navarro Had an Oval Office Screaming Match Over a TikTok Ban
‘KNOCKDOWN, DRAG-OUT’
As President Donald Trump discussed how to attack the short-form video app TikTok last week, two of his senior advisors got into a shouting match with one another in the Oval Office, The Washington Post reports. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin believed he had the support of the administration as well as Microsoft’s senior leadership to broker a sale to the Seattle tech giant. Trade advisor Peter Navarro, however, wanted an outright ban, which Trump had said he would enact last week. Navarro reportedly accused Mnuchin of taking a soft stance on China, and the two began screaming at each other in front of the president. One source told the Post it was a “knockdown, drag-out” fight. Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would shut down TikTok’s U.S. operations in September if its Beijing-based parent company did not divest it.