October 16, 2019 12:08 PM UTC

Trump Advisers Expound on Imaginary Friends and Illuminati

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• by: Colorado Pols

It is unclear that President Trump actually listens to any advice he receives from, well, from anyone. If Trump does indeed regularly dismiss counsel on policy issues foreign and domestic, there are at least two people we can only hope are among the voices he ignores.

At the top of that list, as Political Wire explains, sits Trump’s top trade adviser:

Peter Navarro, President Trump’s top trade adviser, has quoted staunch China hawk “Ron Vara” more than a dozen times in at least six of his books, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

However, it turns out that Ron Vara…doesn’t actually exist.

You can read the full Chronicle of Higher Education story by clicking on the embedded link above. The short version is that trade adviser Peter Navarro regularly quotes the words of one “Ron Vara,” who is not a real person. From the Chronicle story:

Navarro has quoted Vara a dozen or so times in six books, usually as an epigraph before a chapter. In Death by China, published in 2011, Vara offers this sweeping assessment of the country’s roughly 1.4 billion people: “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.”

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that “Ron Vara” is an anagram of “Navarro.” That’s not a coincidence; “Ron Vara” is an imaginary person created by Navarro — the same person who is apparently Trump’s top adviser on trade issues with China.

Yet as Justin Wingerter reports today for the Denver Post, Navarro isn’t the only odd duck to have caught Trump’s eye recently:

A Colorado Springs lawyer appointed by President Donald Trump to a federal education board is a prolific author of self-help Illuminati books whose education company has been accused of handing out certificates to undeserving applicants.

The White House announced last week that Trump had nominated George Mentz to the Commission on Presidential Scholars. His nomination does not require Senate confirmation…

…Mentz’s books include “The Illuminati Secret Laws of Money,” “The Illuminati Handbook,” “50 Laws of Power of the Illuminati,” and “100 Secrets and Habits of the Illuminati for Life Success.” Nearly all of his works are about money and often center on mindfulness secrets to achieving wealth.

There is a non-zero chance that President Trump will select a cartoon character for an administration job before next November.