As the war of words between senior Donald Trump aide Peter Navarro and the former so-called ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk continues, the US president counsellor’s “hypocrisy” was called out in a scathing fact-check post.

Navarro originally took to his X handle shortly after Saturday midnight (IST) to red-flag “Leftist American fake news,” saying that India was merely purchasing Russian oil to “profit” or “feed” the Russian “war machine.” His initial post came in response to a Washington Post report titled “Inside the Trump team’s conflicting efforts to mend ties with India.”

The article alludes to the contradictory moves made by the Trump administration’s officials. Citing people privy to the issue, the report claimed that State Secretary Marco Rubio and US Trade Rep Jamieson Greer recently presented Trump with a potential trade deal for India but the MAGA leader turned it down owing the country’s Russian oil purchases.

\While Rubio and Greer’s reported actions signal a move in the positive direction for the India-US relationship, Navarro continues to drag India and PM Narendra Modi. One of his recent statements, “Brahmins are profiteering,” in a Fox News interview kicked off a whole new controversy given the allusion to the Hindu caste.

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Community notes fact check Navarro

The supposed “facts” laid out by Navarro were eventually fact-checked by people on the Elon Musk-led social media platform. The Trump aide quickly took note of the development and resorted to taking a jab at the Tesla CEO, labelling ‘community notes’ on X as “propaganda.”

“That crap note below is just that,” he added. “India buys Russia oil solely to profiteer,” Navarro went on to reiterate the same statement he’s been bringing up about the South Asian country for a while. “It didn’t buy any before Russia invaded Ukraine. Indian govt spin machine moving high tilt.”

He concluded the post by accusing India for playing accomplice in “killing Ukrainians,” and stealing American jobs.

Peter Navarro’s India claims get fact-checked on Elon Musk’s platform

Calling Navarro’s statement in the previous post “hypocritical,” the X note, stated, “
India’s Russian oil purchases are for energy security, not just profit, & don’t violate sanctions.” The fact check was based on credible news sources – Forbes India and India Today.

Forbes’ August article highlighted even though the US had hit India with secondary sanctions for buying from Russia, America itself imported three times more goods from Russia than it did from Ukraine in 2024. Much like Navarro, American President Donald Trump has also accused the South Asian nation of profiting from its Russian ties amid the Ukraine crisis.

According to Forbes India’s analysis of trade data, despite Trump’s threats challenging India’s stand, it is actually the South Asian country that has imported more from Ukraine that the US. While New Delhi imported goods worth more than $1 billion from Kiev last year, American imported goods worth less than $500 million in the same year.

The report further underlined that while the yesteryear figures marked a 71% increase in India importing Ukrainian goods compared to the previous year’s numbers, the New Delhi was importing four times more from the war-stricken country than America even before the crisis officially took a deadly shape.

Navarro’s latest post also red-flagged on X

The post he ended up making a day later to address the initial fact-checked statements also followed by another verification by the platform.

“Navarro’s claims are hypocritical. India’s legal,sovereign purchases of Russian oil for energy security do not violate international law,” the community note read, citing Al Jazeera, NDTV and CNN. “The US, while pressuring India, continues to import billions in Russian goods, like uranium, exposing a clear double standard.”

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Peter Navarro vs Elon Musk continues

The beef between Trump’s senior trade advisor and the tech billionaire has only escalated in the past few months. In April, Musk called the government official a “moron” amid the tariffs debate raging between them.

His social media call-out was a response to Navarro’s interview with CNBC, wherein he called Tesla a “car assembler” instead of a car manufacturer while discussing how Trump tariffs could be a major setback for the company.

During the interview, Navarro said that “good part of the engines” (or batteries in the EV case) Musk gets have Japanese or Chinese origins, while “the electronics come from Taiwan.”

The Trump advisor added, “The difference is, in our thinking and Elon’s on this, is that we want the tires made in Akron. We want the transmissions made in Indianapolis. We want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw. And we want the cars manufactured here.”

Consequently, Musk slammed Navarro for being “dumber than a sack of bricks,” adding “Tesla has the most American-made cars.” Naming the government official “Peter Retarrdo” in one of his serially-shared posts, Elon said, “What he says here is demonstrably false.”