Here’s why Trump administration officials spend most of their TV time on the friendly airwaves of Fox News.  Because when they dare venture over to CNN, where they’re asked actual tough questions, you end up with exchanges like this.  Today CNN anchor Brianna Keilar gave a master class in how to handle that type of situation. She interviewed White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, and she wanted the answer to a straightforward question; where are the ventilators? Navarro did whatever he could to avoid answering the question, even at one point trying to place blame on Joe Biden and China. But Keilar wouldn’t let him pivot or play the blame game. What’s interesting is as she pressed him more, she did get him to finally mention some actual numbers of ventilators that may materialize and it turns out it isn’t even close to what the U.S. needs.

Here’s part of the exchange. Note: We edited it to provide a summary of the conversation, but we encourage you to watch the full exchange above:

Keilar: In fairness, the government was clearly ill-prepared for this. This is not something that, you know, these viruses happen and how awful they are. Your government knew in the summer when they did a drill if this happens, this would be a problem and there was a lack of preparation which was why we have you onto talk about the sly supply chain. Looks like it is going to be about 200,000 ventilators and what experts are saying there could be a million needed. Are you going to be able to meet that demand? 

Navarro: Let me bring you up on the history here of what we inherited. In ’09 when the Biden/Obama administration had the H1N1 flu crisis, that should have been…

Keilar: Peter, why are you wasting your time on this and not solving the problem that we have… I am asking you are we able to get to a million ventilators?

Navarro: We are doing the best we can. Don’t tell me we were ill-prepared for this because he inherited the system of testing and inherited of stockpiles that was inadequate for this and there was plenty of people to the last two administrations who had wake up calls and they went back to sleep. That’s not what we are doing.

Keilar: You’re wasting everyone’s time with this. It’s 2020. The president was elected in 2016. Can you get to a million ventilators? 

Navarro: First of all, that number is way, way, way out…. This is the kind of thing. We need a million ventilators. We can’t possibly get it. that’s like, wildly over what we would need. We are ramping up production.  

Keilar: You’re not answering.

Navarro: Watch me answer the question. we got 43,000 ventilators at least that are coming from Phillips. We work with GM and Vent Tech and they may be able to produce as many as 80,000 by the end of the year…. We are working as hard as we possibly can with the full force of government and the full force of private enterprise and that’s the best we can do right now. we all, as a country, got dealt a bad hand by China. 

Keilar: Peter, that is just a waste of time to say that. I’m going to leave it there, Peter Navarro…