New Delhi: Peter Navarro, senior trade adviser to US President Donald Trump, is having a meltdown on popular social media platform ‘X’ after his posts were slapped with community posts and a poll initiated by him backfired.
He has accused Indians of using “social media to advance their agenda.” Navarro has been relentless in his tirade against India’s energy trade with Russia.
It all started on 6 September when Navarro posted on ‘X’ saying that India had significantly ramped up Russian oil imports only after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and was now reaping economic benefits at the expense of both American workers and Ukrainian lives.
“India highest tariffs costs U.S. jobs. India buys Russian oil purely to profit/Revenues feed Russia war machine. Ukrainians/Russians die. U.S. taxpayers shell out more. India can’t handle truth/spins@washpo Leftist American fake news,” he wrote on ‘X’.
His post was immediately latched on by ‘X’ users, who appended fact-checking community notes to his claims pointing out that Indian trade had actually increased under Trump.
Upset with the community note, Navarro launched a tirade against ‘X’ and its owner Elon Musk himself. Calling the community note “crap”, he accused the Tesla CEO, a former friend and aide of Trump, of “letting propaganda into people’s posts”.
“Wow. @elonmusk is letting propaganda into people’s posts. That crap note below is just that. Crap. India buys Russia oil solely to profiteer. It didn’t buy any before Russia invaded Ukraine. Indian govt spin machine moving high tilt. Stop killing Ukranians. Stop taking American jobs,” Navarro wrote Sunday.
Within hours of his posting this, the ‘X’ community users called him out for “playing the classic game of crying wolf where none exists”.
An incensed Navarro then started a poll Monday asking whether ‘X’ should present this crap as comments from “diverse viewpoints.” He also asked: “Should X put up posts like one below where foreign interests masquerade as objective observers and interfere with domestic U.S. economics and politics?”
With five days left for the poll to end and with 66,182 votes in, 74.1 percent of users answered ‘yes’. The post has received 1.6 million views.
Later, Musk put out a post saying that the people decide the narrative on ‘X’. “You hear all sides of an argument. Community Notes corrects everyone, no exceptions. Notes data & code is public source. Grok provides further fact-checking,” he posted.
On this platform, the people decide the narrative.
You hear all sides of an argument.
Community Notes corrects everyone, no exceptions. Notes data & code is public source.
Grok provides further fact-checking.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2025
Users, meanwhile, fact-checked Navarro again. They pointed out that Community Notes are not written by “foreign interests” and that “they’re a crowdsourced, global fact-checking system designed to reduce bias.”
“Navarro himself has often commented on other nations’ policies (in bad faith), so international perspectives on US policy are fair commentary,” they pointed out.
As the battle continued, Navarro began a fight against ‘X’ users. He claimed the fact-check was “bullshit” and that “India didn’t buy Russian oil in large quantities before Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s blood money and people are dying. Stick that up your keister Mother Jones and shame on you.”
His latest tweet is a full-blown rant against Indians and a repeat of the “foreign interference” claim which has already been fact-checked.
Following the poll debacle, Navarro then said all India can manage is manage a few hundred thousand ‘X’ propagandists “to jerk around a poll”.
“India has largest population in the world & all it can do is manage few hundred thousand X propagandists to jerk around a poll? Too funny. America: look at how foreign interests use our social media to advance their agenda (sic),” Navarro wrote.
His criticism comes amid growing trade friction between New Delhi and Washington, exacerbated by the Trump administration’s decision to double tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent.
A portion of the tariff hike was explicitly tied to India’s continued imports of Russian crude, which the U.S. claims undermines sanctions aimed at pressuring Moscow. Interestingly, only last year America had claimed credit for making India buy Russian oil to keep the oil market calm.
In a recent interview on the conservative media outlet Real America’s Voice, he described India as the “Maharajah of tariffs” for the fifth time now and accused the Indian government of being hypersensitive to criticism. “They have the highest tariffs in any major country in the world against the United States,” Navarro claimed. “We got to deal with that.”
One of his earlier remark claiming that “Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people” was flagged by ‘X’ for being divisive and lacking evidence.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: ‘Brahmins’ remark & ‘Modi’s war’ to ‘freeloading’: What rattled Trump advisers have said about India