Peter Navarro: 'Chinese Communist Party needs to come clean about coronavirus’

The Chinese Communist Party needs to be held accountable for its role in eroding democracy in both the U.S. and Hong Kong, White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro asserted Saturday.

In an interview on "Fox & Friends Weekend" with host Pete Hegseth, Navarro urged Americans to "unite around" the fact that the Chinese Communist Party lied about the spread of coronavirus leading to the deaths of Americans.

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"It's over 130,000 Americans so far, Pete. And, do you know what? There is nothing on that death certificate that has party affiliation. The cause of death is the ‘China virus,'" he accused.

According to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there are now almost 2.8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and just shy of 130,000 deaths.

Navarro said he believed that "anger" over the lockdowns, "anxiousness" about an uncertain economic future, and "fear of getting the virus" has led to disunity and national unrest.

"And then, you’ve got these radical elements that want to basically have another Chinese Cultural Revolution to destroy our culture, our habits, our customs, our ideas," he added. "What Mao called the [Four Olds]."

"And, what we have to do is unite around this central fact: China lied; people died. The CCP lied; Americans died," Navarro reiterated.

In order to do so, he told Hegseth that Americans need to unite on "literally making [the Chinese Communist Party] pay for that."

"They also have to come clean on exactly what they’ve been doing with that virus. Is it an engineered virus, for example? Or did it simply slip out of a lab? Where did it come from?" he asked, referencing other virus origin theories. "Until we know the answer to those questions, we won't know how to fight this virus."

Navarro then shifted his focus to Hong Kong. On Tuesday, Beijing tightened its grip on the former British colony by passing a contentious security law that critics say undermines the semi-autonomous territory’s judicial independence.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke out against China’s power grab in a statement shortly before reports of the bill's approval.

“If China wants to regain the trust of Hong Kongers and the international community, it should honor the promises it made to the Hong Kong people and to the United Kingdom in the U.N.-registered 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration,” his statement read.

The Trump administration has warned for weeks that, if the law was passed, it would take action to end special U.S. trade and commercial preferences Hong Kong had enjoyed since reverting to Chinese rule in 1997.

"The other thing I should say on this glorious fourth is today we are mourning the loss of the independence of Hong Kong even as we are celebrating our own independence," noted Navarro. "And, I think Americans might want to reflect on what is happening to the people in Hong Kong at the hand, the brutal hand of the Chinese Communist Party. And, don’t think that, ‘Oh, it’s just Hong Kong.’ China, the Chinese Communist Party’s doing that to us right now with this virus tearing us apart."

Navarro also pointed out that residents of Hong Kong are going to be absorbed into "what is effectively a great firewall concentration camp" in the "worst Orwellian kind of nightmare you can imagine."

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"So, we’ve got to get tough on China," he stated. "This president is the only president that has ever done that."

"And, I can't imagine a world in which 'Beijing Joe Biden' gets the keys to the Oval Office, because that will be the death of this republic. And, I think it's worth saying that on July 4th," Navarro concluded.

Fox News’ Edmund DeMarche, Stephen Sorace, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.