If you’re convinced Donald Trump completely botched his response to the novel coronavirus, wait until you hear about the disaster involving the Jared Kushner COVID19 plan.
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Kushner is officially a senior advisor and Trump’s son-in-law from his marriage to Ivanka Trump. However, based on all the duties ‘The Donald’ dumps into his son-in-law’s lap, Kushner is probably the guy who really runs the country (while Trump tweets and golfs, of course). Still, it was a surprise to many when the Jared Kushner COVID19 plan and its dastardly details were leaked, warts and all.
According to a recent exposé in Vanity Fair, Kushner took charge of the coronavirus testing plan in March and, despite his lack of scientific or governmental experience, stacked a team of advisors with bankers, billionaires, and even his college roommate. Then, instead of using his position of power to protect the country as a whole through this “once-in-a-generation” pandemic, Kushner opted to play politics and do what was in the best interest of a Trump re-election victory.
The Jared Kushner COVID19 plan originally involved a robust testing program that not only would have identified those with the virus much sooner but likely would have saved many lives. However, because initial data showed the virus affecting New York, California, and other mostly Democratic mainstays, Kushner opted to cancel his plan. His thinking: If the virus was only killing Democrats and not Republicans, so be it!
“The plan, though imperfect, was a starting point,” Vanity Fair wrote, and “would have put us in a fundamentally different place.” However, it faced resistance from the top where Donald Trump worried that high test numbers would hurt the economy and his re-election prospects. Then, out of nowhere, Kushner disturbingly decided there was no point in rolling out the plan because the virus appeared to be hitting only blue states. Or, in other words, since the virus seemed relegated to only harm Democrats, Kushner believed that his father-in-law could successfully blame governors for the lack of testing and turn the issue into an effective political strategy.
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FROM VANITY FAIR:
Six months into the pandemic, the United States continues to suffer the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in the developed world. Considerable blame belongs to a federal response that offloaded responsibility for the crucial task of testing to the states. The irony is that, after assembling the team that came up with an aggressive and ambitious national testing plan, Kushner then appears to have decided, for reasons that remain murky, to scrap its proposal. Today, as governors and mayors scramble to stamp out epidemics plaguing their populations, philanthropists at the Rockefeller Foundation are working to fill the void and organize enough testing to bring the nationwide epidemic under control.
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Now it makes sense why Kushner became heated during his lone Coronavirus Task Force appearance in April when he was asked why the federal government was seizing (read: stealing) masks, gloves, and other forms of PPE that states had ordered before hoarding them in a federal stockpile.
.“The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be OUR stockpile, it’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” he said.
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Dear Jared Kushner of the @realDonaldTrump Administration: We are the UNITED STATES of America. The federal stockpile is reserved for all Americans living in our states, not just federal employees. Get it? https://t.co/VB4Z2YGp4J
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 3, 2020
Yes, the Jared Kushner COVID19 plan was a partisan one. So what if the Democrats get sick or die from the virus. Save the federal stockpile of life-saving equipment as “OURS” then prioritize the Republican states to get help first. By saving Republicans, Kushner believed he was saving Donald Trump’s re-election hopes.
Too bad (for Trump) his plan failed. Too bad (for Kushner) everybody now knows the truth!
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“I think what you’ll see in May as the states are reopening now is May will be a transition month, you’ll see a lot of states starting to phase in the different reopening based on the safety guidelines that President Trump outlined on April 19. I think you’ll see by June that a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again.” – Jared Kushner
DJ, thanks for doing this story. It is definitely a story worth discussing and I do hope other readers will chime in and share their thoughts on the matter. Though I must admit that I am nearly exhausted of words to describe the Trumps (Donald Sr., his 3 oldest kids) and Jared Kushner (who seems to be a perfect fit for that really really Effed-up family of Losers/Failures). Jared is obviously just as dumb as Trump, if not dumber. And he displays a similar kind of delusional thinking and depraved indifference regarding his willingness to sacrifice the lives of *Others* in support Trump’s alternate reality or (in this case) retribution for NOT going along with Trump’s alternate reality (just let people in Blue states die because no repubs live in Blue states/sarc). It’s madness. Pure ignorance and madness. It’s also a sin and an absolute disgrace. And these are the… Read more »