Navarro: Chinese Citizens Recruited By CCP To Operate As Pro-Biden Online ‘Troll Army’ To Influence 2020 Election

White House trade advisor Peter Navarro told CNBC Squawk Box hosts that China is recruiting and paying over a million citizens to monitor and influence the U.S. 2020 presidential election process Monday. He described the Wu Mao army, as an online “troll army” aimed at getting presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden elected in November.

He also discussed President Donald Trump’s push against the Chinese owned and popular app TikTok, citing the extensive ability of communist China to collect communications data on American citizens.

Navarro’s warnings are buttressed off of recent U.S. intelligence reports suggesting not only is Russia targeting the elections but so is China, along with other nefarious state actors, such as Iran. One former U.S. military intelligence official told me “China is a very serious concern because they have a vested interest now to work against Trump – his trade deal and actions regarding Hong Kong are several reasons.”

Navarro said the Chinese government is “clearly buying their time waiting for the election hoping Joe Biden will get elected. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Wu Mao army?”

“But one of the things that’s going on is the Chinese communist party is waging informational army the Wu Mao army is millions of Chinese that get paid to troll our Internet and push anti-Trump messages, pro-Biden messages.”

“I looked at what’s going on here with our democracy it’s the scariest as I’ve ever seen it’s become a tool like the Chinese communist party to influence what’s going on here as the president loves to say, let’s see what happens in November but in the meantime, we have to be on guard,” he said.

Navarro also said that the Trump administration’s “rationale for the policy of banning TikTok, WeChat, perhaps others is simply that these are tools where they collect information that goes back to the Chinese mainland…That information can be used by the Chinese Communist Party or the people’s liberation army. There is a reason, Scott, why the Defense Department banned TikTok.”

He added the numerous dangers of using “social media apps to surveil, track and monitor people,.”

He warned that the Chinese can access information such as usernames and passwords, many times which are used by persons throughout their various accounts.