Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro delivers remarks after being appointed as the National Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator during a coronavirus update briefing Friday, March 27, 2020. (Official White House by Joyce N. Boghosian)

White House Coronavirus Task Force member Peter Navarro was interviewed by CNN “New Day” host John Berman on Monday in a segment that I found extremely demonstrative of how the national media is deliberately downplaying President Trump’s touting of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the virus solely on the basis of the fact that they can’t stand him.

The interview didn’t get a lot of attention at the time, and unfortunately most of the attention it did get was done from the perspective of how Berman supposedly “schooled” Navarro, which wasn’t the case at all – as you’ll see from watching the video below.

What I found most most illustrative about the interview was how openly hostile Berman was to Navarro in mannerisms and facial expressions, barely letting him get a word in. In fact, Berman almost sounded like a public relations director for Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Navarro reportedly had tense words with over the weekend on the issue of recommending hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment.

Berman proclaimed during heated exchange with Navarro that this “wasn’t about the politics” but yet that’s exactly what he made it about, as you’ll see from the clip below. Berman did not come off as a journalist here; he came off as a mouthpiece for his fellow hydroxychloroquine deniers in the MSM, presenting false one-size-fits all arguments on the issue of whether or not talking up hydroxychloroquine was the right thing to do, when there is a lot more to it than just definitively stating we should or should not use it.

Another important thing to note here is that Navarro and Fauci only seem to differ on the degree of enthusiasm that should be expressed when task force members speak about this drug to the press. Fauci is more cautious in his wording, while Trump and Navarro have more of a sense of urgency about recommending it as a possibility.

Why? Likely because they’ve seen some of the limited studies that have been done on it in other countries, and have heard the stories from doctors in our own country talking about how it’s helping their patients, and have seen the news reports of the Michigan Democratic state representative who credits it with saving her life.

I’m sure Fauci is aware of these studies and reports, too. But his approach is clearly to be more cautious and to not go overboard in presenting the drug as a miracle cure. But Trump and Navarro haven’t done that. What they’ve said is that we need to make it available to the doctors who want to try it on their patients at their discretion, which Navarro revealed was being done in New York to virtually every patient that presented with symptoms, according to his conversations with local health officials.

Trump and Navarro aren’t ordering doctors to give it to patients. But they do know that opinions in the medical community vary, so they’re simply presenting it as an option, and it’s an offer that even NY Gov. Cuomo has taken them up on.

Watch the clip below and read the transcript and see if you get the same impression I did about Berman.