Peter Navarro, Donald Trump's economic adviser, said Monday that he is qualified to weigh in on the effectiveness of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine on coronavirus because he is a social scientist.

'Doctors disagree about things all the time,' Navarro said when asked on CNN Monday morning why he is better qualified to talk about the drug's effectiveness on COVID-19 than Dr. Anthony Fauci.

'My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I'm a social scientist,' he continued. 'I have a PhD, and I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it's in medicine, the law, economics or whatever.' 

Navarro, 70, earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1972, a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1979 and went on to obtain a PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1986.

Navarro and Fauci, the government's top immunologist and expert on infectious diseases, got into a spat over the science behind hydroxychloroquine's use in coronavirus patients during a Situation Room meeting Saturday afternoon, according to a Sunday report.