SUMMARY
Jared Kushner Created His Own Team Of Allies In Government And Private Industry Representatives To Work Alongside The Administration’s Coronavirus Task Force Adding Another Layer Of Confusion. According to the Washington Post, “Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser, has created his own team of government allies and private industry representatives to work alongside the administration’s official coronavirus task force, adding another layer of confusion and conflicting signals within the White House’s disjointed response to the crisis.” [Washington Post, 3/18/20]
Kushner’s Task Force Was Manned By His Former Roommate And Some McKinsey Consultants. According to Politico, “What started two-and-a-half weeks ago as an effort to utilize the private sector to fix early testing failures has become an all-encompassing portfolio for Kushner, who, alongside a kitchen cabinet of outside experts including his former roommate and a suite of McKinsey consultants, has taken charge of the most important challenges facing the federal government: Expanding test access, ramping up industry production of needed medical supplies, and figuring out how to get those supplies to key locations […] Kushner has relied on select officials, including his one-time former roommate and current U.S. foreign investment czar Adam Boehler, and Brad Smith, the head of Medicare's innovation center, to organize and manage key projects -- bypassing the bureaucratic structures and internal rivalries that slowed progress in the response's early months.” [Politico, 4/1/20]
Senior Officials Stated That Some Government Officials Have Become Increasingly Confused By Kushner’s Coronavirus Team. According to the Washington Post, “Two senior officials said some government officials have become increasingly confused as they have received emails from private industry employees on Kushner’s team and have been on conference calls with them, unsure what their exact role is in the government response. Several people involved in the response said the involvement of outside advisers — who are emailing large groups of government employees from private email addresses — also raises legitimate security concerns about whether these advisers are following proper government protocols. ‘We don’t know who these people are,’ one senior official said. ‘Who is this? We’re all getting these emails.’” [Washington Post, 3/18/20]
Kushner’s Task Force’s Orders Required Responders To Put Aside Regular Response Efforts. According to the Washington Post,” But Kushner’s team is causing confusion among many officials involved in the response, who say they are unsure who is in charge given Kushner’s dual role as senior adviser and Trump family member. Some have privately dubbed his team a ‘shadow task force’ whose requests they interpret as orders they must balance with regular response efforts. Some members of Kushner’s team are working out of offices on the seventh floor of Health and Human Services headquarters — one floor above the office of HHS secretary Alex Azar — while others are working out of an office in the West Wing of the White House, officials said.” [Washington Post, 3/18/20]
Kushner’s Efforts Unnerved Even Some Recruited To His Team, With The Scope Of Trump’s Son-In-Law’s Authority Now Exceeding That Of Health Secretary Alex Azar. According to Politico, “But the effort’s makeshift nature has unnerved even some recruited to aid Kushner's team, who described it as a process unlike any other traditional disaster response. Kushner’s team has stepped in to coordinate decision-making at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the scope of his authority now exceeds that of Health Secretary Alex Azar, the one-time leader of Trump’s coronavirus response. ‘I don't know how our government operates anymore,’ said one Republican close to the administration, lamenting that the sudden authority granted to non-governmental actors had left them with their ‘eyebrow raised unbelievably high.’” [Politico, 4/1/20]
Kushner’s Team Duplicated Existing Federal Teams And Operations, Creating Concern About The Lack Of A Clear Chain Of Command. According to Politico, “But the behind-the-scenes working group has also duplicated existing federal teams and operations, and its focus on rapid, short-term decisions has created concern among some health-agency officials, according to interviews with 11 people involved in Kushner’s effort, including senior government officials, outside advisers and volunteers on the projects, as well as other health department and White House officials. Federal decision-making is complicated by the fact that Kushner has the full confidence of President Donald Trump, with whom he confers multiple times a day, while Trump has expressed frustration with some of the leaders of health agencies. ‘You can’t have enough good smart people working on a problem of this scale,’ said Andy Slavitt, who helped lead the Obama administration’s 2013-2014 HealthCare.gov repair effort and is now advising on Kushner's coronavirus response. ‘But they have to be organized with a clear chain of command.’” [Politico, 4/1/20]
An HHS Official Involved In The Response Warned That The Outside Teams Only Added To The Bureaucracy. According to Politico, “However, an HHS official involved in the coronavirus response warned that the outside teams have only added to the bureaucracy, duplicating some internal work. ‘It's not great to have people coming in and replacing people who are working on this,’ the official said, noting that Kushner’s team had rendered some health department data teams redundant. Another adviser aiding the response, meanwhile, voiced concerns that the effort had begun to attract companies seeking to entrench themselves in hopes of winning lucrative government contracts down the line. ‘Plenty of private companies have been trying to profiteer and fence their wares,’ that adviser said, adding that administration officials have worked to head off potential bad actors. In addition, the use of so many private sector work-arounds means much of the government’s response to coronavirus is being conducted on unsecured personal cell phones and emails. Officials involved with Kushner’s team bristled at questions about the appropriateness of using personal emails, saying the scrutiny could scare away high-powered executives, analysts and other fixers trying to help the response.” [Politico, 4/1/20]
The Co-Mingling Of Administration Aides And Private-Sector Executives Created Ethical Quandaries. According to Politico, “Yet the co-mingling of administration aides and private-sector executives has led to new quandaries, according to health officials and even some of the outside advisers working with Kushner. Projects are so decentralized that one team often has little idea what others are doing — outside of that they all report up to Kushner. People around Kushner are fielding all manner of outside pitches, making it difficult for the group to stay focused. And there is limited vetting of private companies' and executives' financial interests, raising questions about the motivations and potential conflicts inherent in an operation that relies on an ill-defined and ever-expanding group of outside contributors.
There Was Limited Vetting Of Private Companies’ And Executives’ Financial Interests, Raising Questions About Potential Conflicts Of Interest. According to Politico, “And there is limited vetting of private companies' and executives' financial interests, raising questions about the motivations and potential conflicts inherent in an operation that relies on an ill-defined and ever-expanding group of outside contributors. Officials working on the effort insist they are taking ethical precautions. ‘There have been two rules: People signed voluntary service agreements that were vetted by career legal professionals — and that there is no one doing procurement, outside of government officials,’ said one senior administration official directly involved in the effort. Nonetheless, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has already warned that Kushner's operation could violate federal recordkeeping laws, blasted the White House for its extensive reliance on the private sector and lack of transparency.” [Politico, 4/1/20]
CREW: Jared Kushner’s Shadow COVID-19 Task Force Appeared To Violate The Presidential Records Act (PRA) And The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). According to CREW, “Jared Kushner’s shadow coronavirus task force appears to be violating both the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by using private email accounts with no assurance their communications are being preserved and by meeting in secret, according to a letter sent today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The failure of the White House to comply with any of the PRA and FACA requirements leaves the public in the dark about the work the shadow task force has done and the influence of private industries on the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.” [Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 3/20/20]
Kushner’s Early Involvement In The White House Response To The Virus Was In Advising The President That The Media’s Coverage Exaggerated The Threat. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Kushner’s early involvement with dealing with the virus was in advising the president that the media’s coverage exaggerated the threat. But when Mr. Pence’s chief of staff asked him to help merge the Pence and Trump communications operations because the two-person shop in the vice president’s office found itself overwhelmed and trying to keep up, Mr. Kushner, long critical of the White House communications shop, tried to supplement the vice president’s team with other aides. One of them was Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director, who recently rejoined the administration as Mr. Kushner’s aide.” [New York Times, 3/16/20]
Trump Was Reportedly Angry At Kushner After His Son-In-Law Advised Trump To Treat The Coronavirus As A Media Problem When Others Were Calling For Aggressive Action. According to Vanity Fair, “Sources told me Trump is regretting that Kushner swooped into the coronavirus response last week. Kushner, according to sources, encouraged Trump to treat the emergency as a P.R. problem when Fauci and others were calling for aggressive action. ‘This was Jared saying the world needs me to solve another problem,’ a former White House official said. One source briefed on the internal conversations told me that Kushner advised Trump not to call a national emergency during his Oval Office address on March 11 because ‘it would tank the markets.’ The markets cratered anyway, and Trump announced the national emergency on Friday. ‘They had to clean that up on Friday,’ another former West Wing official said.” [Vanity Fair, 3/16/20]
Facebook Crowd-Sourcing Exercise Showed How Trump’s Team Scrambled For Solutions To Confront Coronavirus Outbreak Amid Heavy Criticism For Response. According to Politico, “Just before midnight Wednesday, a doctor asked a group of fellow emergency room physicians on Facebook how they would combat the escalating coronavirus outbreak. ‘I have direct channel to person now in charge at White House,’ Kurt Kloss wrote in his post. The next morning, after hundreds of doctors responded, Kloss explained why he sought the suggestions: Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, had asked him for recommendations. Kloss, whose daughter is married to Kushner’s brother, sent Kushner 12 recommendations Thursday morning. The Facebook crowd-sourcing exercise showed how Trump‘s team is scrambling for solutions to confront the outbreak after weeks of criticism for the administration's sluggish response, a shortage of tests and the president’s own rhetoric downplaying the pandemic. It is now expected to consume the final year of Trump's first term and threaten his campaign for a second term.” [Politico, 3/13/20]
Kloss Claimed He Was In Direct Contact With Someone ‘Now In Charge At White House.’ According to Politico, “In a Facebook post, Kloss said Kushner is “now directly involved in the response to this,” referring to coronavirus. The Facebook group, EM Docs, has nearly 22,000 members around the globe who are required to provide their credentials to join. The posts about Kushner's request have been removed but a member shared pictures of them with POLITICO. The Spectator first reported on the posts late Wednesday.” [Politico, 3/13/20]
The White House Denied That Jared Kushner Was In Charge Of Coronavirus Research. According to Politico, “‘In his role as a senior adviser to the president, Jared Kushner is, of course involved in the coronavirus response, but he is not in charge of coronavirus research,’ a White House official said. Kloss solicited recommendations on Facebook just hours after Trump’s brief prime-time address in which the president misrepresented his administration's own actions involving a 30-day ban on foreign visitors from Europe. ‘If you were in charge of Federal response to the Pandemic what would your recommendation be. Please only serious responses,’ he wrote. ‘I have direct channel to person now in charge at White House.’” [Politico, 3/13/20]
March 13, 2020: Trump Claimed That Google Would Create A Website For The U.S. Government Coronavirus Testing Apparatus. According to Wired, “President Donald Trump announced Friday that the US government’s coronavirus testing apparatus, which has lagged badly behind other developed nations, would soon get an assist from Google. The search and advertising giant will create a website, Trump said, that would help Americans figure out if they need a test for the virus, and if so where they can find one.” [Wired, 3/13/20]
Trump’s Claim Was False And Google Had No Idea What He Was Talking About. According to Wired, “The only problem: There is no nationwide site like the one Trump described. And Google had no idea the president was going to mention one. A source at Google tells WIRED that company leadership was surprised that Trump announced anything about the initiative at the press conference. What he did say was also almost entirely wrong. There will be a coronavirus testing site, not from Google but from Alphabet sister company Verily. ‘We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing,’ Google tweeted in a statement. ‘Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.’ Even that, though, was not the original plan. The Verge reported Friday afternoon that Verily had intended the site for health care workers only. After Trump unexpectedly publicized the effort, Verily decided it will let anyone visit it, but can still only provide people with testing site information in the San Francisco area.” [Wired, 3/13/20]
Kushner Was Responsible For Telling Trump About Google’s Coronavirus Testing Website –That Did Not Exist. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Kushner’s influence was immediately felt. He urged his father-in-law to go ahead with a ban on some travel from Europe and to declare a national emergency, after Mr. Trump had dithered and second-guessed himself for agreeing to it. He got executives at several pharmaceutical corporations to agree to help with mobilized testing efforts, and has pushed for an increase in medical supplies to hospitals. But after Mr. Trump delivered an error-ridden Oval Office address last week, the president followed it with an appearance Friday in the Rose Garden in which he said Google had developed a coronavirus testing website that did not exist. Mr. Kushner was deeply involved in both efforts, and had sold his father-in-law on the website as a smart concept.” [New York Times, 3/16/20]
Trump Was Reportedly Upset That Kushner Oversold Google’s New Testing Website. According to Vanity Fair, “Trump was also said to be angry that Kushner oversold Google’s coronavirus testing website when in fact the tech giant had a fledgling effort. Trump got slammed in the press for promoting the phantom Google product. ‘Jared told Trump that Google was doing an entire website that would be up in 72 hours and had 1,100 people working on it 24/7. That’s just a lie,’ the source briefed on the internal conversations told me.” [Vanity Fair, 3/16/20]
A Health Insurance Company With Ties To Jared Kushner Developed A Website To Direct People To Coronavirus Testing Sites At The Government’s Request. According to the Atlantic, “On March 13, President Donald Trump promised Americans they would soon be able to access a new website that would ask them about their symptoms and direct them to nearby coronavirus testing sites. He said Google was helping. That wasn’t true. But in the following days, Oscar Health—a health-insurance company closely connected to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—developed a government website with the features the president had described. A team of Oscar engineers, project managers, and executives spent about five days building a stand-alone website at the government’s request, an Oscar spokesperson told The Atlantic. The company even dispatched two employees from New York to meet in person with federal officials in Washington, D.C., the spokesperson said. Then the website was suddenly and mysteriously scrapped.” [Atlantic, 3/30/10]
The Partnership Between The Administration And Kushner Linked Firm Suggested That Jared May Have Mingled His Political Interests With Family Business Interests. According to the Atlantic, “The full extent of Oscar’s work on the project has not been previously reported. The partnership between the administration and the firm suggests that Kushner may have mingled his family’s business interests with his political interests and his role in the administration’s coronavirus response. Kushner’s younger brother Joshua is a co-founder and major investor in Oscar, and Jared Kushner partially owned or controlled Oscar before he joined the White House. The company’s work on the coronavirus website could violate federal ethics laws, several experts said.” [Atlantic, 3/30/10]
Oscar’s Relationship With Kushner And The Trump Administration May Have Breached Federal Law Because ‘Companies Are Generally Not Supposed To Work For The Federal Government For Free.’ According to the Atlantic, “Oscar’s relationship with the Trump administration could breach federal law in two ways, Tillipman and other experts told me. First, companies are generally not supposed to work for the federal government for free, though some exceptions can be made in a national emergency. ‘The concern, when you have some free services, is that it makes the government beholden to the company,’ Tillipman said.” [Atlantic, 3/30/10]
The Health Insurance Firm’s Relationship With The Trump Administration Could Have Breached The ‘Impartiality Rule,” Which Requires Federal Employees To Refrain From Making Decisions When They Even Appear To Involve A Conflict Of Interest And Prohibits Federal Employees From Making A Decision In Which Close Relatives May Have A Financial Stake. According to the Atlantic, “More important, she said, any Kushner involvement may have violated the ‘impartiality rule,’ which requires federal employees to refrain from making decisions when they even appear to involve a conflict of interest. The rule also prohibits federal employees from making a decision in which close relatives may have a financial stake. Such a situation would seem to apply to Kushner and Oscar. In 2013, Jared and Joshua were the ‘ultimate controlling persons in Oscar’s holding company,’ according to a New York State report that Mother Jones dug up earlier this month.” [Atlantic, 3/30/10]
Impartiality Rule Applied Even Though Oscar Did Work For The Federal Government For Free. According to the Atlantic, “Oscar donated its work freely and never expected to be paid for the project, Kahn said. The company is ‘not, nor has ever been,’ a contractor or subcontractor for the government, she said, which would make it harder for the government to pay Oscar for its work. The work was ‘all at the direction of HHS,’ she said. ‘The website never saw the light of day,’ she added in an interview today. That may not matter from an ethics perspective. The ad hoc nature of Kushner’s task force has already collided with federal laws. Oscar’s involvement deepens Kushner’s ethics and conflict-of-interest problems. ‘It’s not typical. It’s usually not allowed,’ Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at the George Washington University School of Law and an expert on anti-corruption law, told me.” [Atlantic, 3/30/10]
Guardian’s Lloyd Green: Kushner Suffers From Not Only Intellectual Overreach But Also Self-Dealing. According to a Guardian op-ed by Lloyd Green, “Unfortunately, Kushner doesn’t only suffer from intellectual overreach. Self-dealing may have made a cameo too in the middle of crisis, and we have seen this movie before. Earlier, the Kushners had attempted to attract capital from China, by touting EB-5 visas in exchange for investments and looked to Anbang, a Chinese conglomerate, to bail them out of their real estate positions. When Kushner was boasting about data and Trump was going on about testing websites, they were probably referring to Oscar Health, an insurance company tied to the Kushner family. In turn, Oscar appears to have been involved in the government’s efforts to map the spread of the disease. According to reports and filings, Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother, still owns a piece of Oscar, and Jared belatedly divested his interest after entering government. If the Trump Organization can bill the Secret Service when they guard the president at his personal properties, why can’t the Kushner kids make a few dimes off the taxpayer? Sadly, none of this should come as a surprise. Kushner never deigned to come clean on his SF-86, his federal disclosure form, a prerequisite for obtaining a security clearance, until he was squeezed by external events, the drip of incessant leaks, headlines and hearings.” [Lloyd Green – The Guardian, 4/3/20]
Kushner's Push To Re-Open Economy Came As He Fielded Calls From Business Executives Requesting An End To Orders Against Opening. According to Politico, “Administration officials like senior adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have spent the past few days fielding calls from technology, finance and energy CEOs. These executives have made the case that companies need a clear, concrete date from the White House as to when stores, restaurants and schools can reopen to give the markets and employers a sense of certainty amid the unpredictable spread of the coronavirus […] The internal debate is uniting strange bedfellows from the economic world, with National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, trade adviser Peter Navarro, The Wall Street Journal editorial board and the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, all calling for a quick return to the workplace. Powerful Trump advisers have joined the chorus, including Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative government accountability group, and Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host.” [Politico, 3/23/20]
There Were Around 43,000 Confirmed Cases Of Coronavirus Across The United States And At Least 500 Dead When Kushner Pushed Trump To End Social Distancing. According to Politico, “Already, there are more than 43,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across all 50 states and at least 500 dead, according to a Johns Hopkins University database. Because of limited testing capacity, experts agree the actual number of positive cases is much higher.” [Politico, 3/23/20]
Horrified Public Health Officials Tried To Fight Off Ascendant Voice Around Donald Trump Pressing The President To Restart The Economy As Soon As Monday. According to Politico, “Rattled health officials are trying to fight off ascendant voices around Donald Trump pressing the president to restart the economy as soon as Monday to stem severe business and job losses. The prospect of resuming typical business so soon has horrified these public health leaders, who see the debate as premature amid a crisis that the administration is just beginning to wrangle, according to eight people with knowledge of the administration's discussions about its coronavirus guidelines.Health experts are contending the fallout will be worse if the White House declares victory now, only to have the virus resurface weeks or months from now. The government, they argue, has yet to definitively answer key questions that would dictate how to reactivate the economy: Do those who recover from coronavirus become immune? How do underlying health conditions affect the severity of the virus? And, most important, how widely has it spread?” [Politico, 3/23/20]
Former Top Obama Administration Public Health Official: ‘The Country Must Double Down, Not Lighten Up, On Social Distancing And Related Measures.’ According to Politico, “‘It is way too early to even consider rolling back any guidelines,’ said Howard Koh, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and former top Obama administration public health official. ‘With cases and deaths rising by the day, the country must double down, not lighten up, on social distancing and related measures.’ It’s a battle that will intensify in the coming days as the country approaches the end of a 15-day period of extreme social distancing, which the White House launched on March 15. At a White House briefing Monday night, Trump seemed adamant that the economy would come back to life ‘very soon,’ insisting that the government can fight the viral spread while also going to work — ‘we can do them both at the same time.’” [Politico, 3/23/20]
Kushner Argued That The Federal Stockpile Is ‘Supposed To Be Our Stockpile’ And Not ‘To Be States’ Stockpiles That They Then Use.’ According to USA Today, “When asked about data showing states' need for equipment, Kushner said, ‘The notion of the federal stockpile is that it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use.’ He then referred to criticism from governors who say the government has not provided needed medical supplies. ‘When you have governors saying that the federal government hasn't given them what they need, I would encourage you to ask them, have you looked within your state to make sure you haven't been able to find the resources?’ he continued.” [USA Today, 4/3/20]
The Strategic Stockpile Description Was Altered Online After Jared Kushner’s Remarks. According to Politico, “The official government webpage for the Strategic National Stockpile was altered Friday to seemingly reflect a controversial description of the emergency repository that White House adviser Jared Kushner offered at a news conference Thursday evening. According to a brief online summary on the Department of Health and Human Services website, the stockpile’s role ‘is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well.’ But just hours earlier, the text characterized the stockpile as the ‘nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out.’ The previous language stated that when ‘state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency.’ Also stripped from the new summary is a sentence that affirmed the stockpile ‘contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously.’ The revisions come after Kushner argued at the White House coronavirus task force press briefing Thursday that the stockpile’s reserves are the property of the federal government, not the states.” [Washington Post, 4/5/20]
A Spokeswoman For The Department Of Health And Human Services Claimed That The Edits To The Stockpile’s Webpage Had Been In The Works Prior To Kushner’s Remarks. According to Politico, “Katherine McKeogh, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services,said in a statement Friday that the edits to the stockpile’s webpage had been in the works prior to Kushner’s remarks. ‘This is language we have been using in our messaging for weeks now,’ McKeogh said. She added that the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response ‘first began working to update the text a week ago to more clearly explain to state and local agencies and members of the public the role of the [Strategic National Stockpile].’ Another HHS spokesperson also told POLITICO Tuesday that the role of the stockpile ‘is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies, limited displacements, localized disasters and terrorist attacks.’” [Washington Post, 4/5/20]
Democratic Senators Demanded That The HHS Inspector General Launch An Independent Investigation Into The Change. According to Politico, “Four Democratic senators demanded Friday night that HHS’s Office of Inspector General launch an independent investigation into the change to the description of the stockpile, describing the action as ‘potential improper interference ... to advance a political agenda. The timing of the deletion appears related to Jared Kushner’s inaccurate statement yesterday that, ‘And the notion of the Federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile; it’s not supposed to be State stockpiles that they then use,’’ wrote Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).” [Washington Post, 4/5/20]
Critics Who Are Familiar With Kushner’s Record At The White House And Prior Professional Life Questioned Why The Government’s Response To COVID-19 Is Being Run By The President’s 39-Year-Old Son-In-Law. According to the Guardian, “But some of those familiar with Kushner’s record at the White House and in his prior professional life question why the government’s response to the coronavirus threat is being run by the president’s 39-year-old son-in-law. ‘It scares the hell out of me,’ said David Pepper, the chair of the Ohio Democratic party, who offered bipartisan words of praise for the crisis response of his state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine. ‘Kushner has terrible judgment, and I don’t remember a decision he’s been involved with that hasn’t just been bad – they’ve been horrible. And the idea that everything has to go through the very flawed judgment of Jared Kushner is downright scary, and I believe at this point is costing American lives.’” [Guardian, 4/5/20]
Former Editor Of The New York Observer: Kushner Is Not Inclined To Defer To Experts And Surrounds Himself With Yes Men. According to the Guardian, “Elizabeth Spiers, one of a carousel of editors Kushner appointed during his ill-fated tenure as publisher of the New York Observer newspaper, recently described her horror at the prospect of her former boss as coronavirus czar. “The short version is that Jared Kushner is incurious, not inclined to defer to experts, and surrounds himself with yes men, so he is unaccustomed to being told that his decision-making is bad,” Spiers wrote. “He believes his capabilities far exceed what they are, and his assessment is reinforced by the people around him who are paid to tell him that. In this sense, he is not unlike his father-in-law.” [Guardian, 4/5/20]
Kushner’s Involvement With The Administration’s COVID-19 Response Is ‘A Case Study For The Problem With Nepotism.’ According to the Guardian, “The problem with Kushner is ultimately a problem with Trump, Pepper said. It’s a case study for the problem with nepotism,’ he said. ‘When [Ohio governor] DeWine is standing up there, even though his own kids are involved in politics – they’re not the ones standing next to him. Who’s leading the Ohio response? Amy Acton, the state health director, who has studied and taught this her whole life. The biggest difference between DeWine and Trump is, one is relying on experts who have prepared for this for years. And the other is relying on Jared Kushner.” [Guardian, 4/5/20]
Goldberg: It Is Stunning That Someone With As Little Expertise As Kushner Could Be So Arrogant. According to a New York Times op-ed by Michelle Goldberg, “Even now, it’s hard to believe that someone with as little expertise as Kushner could be so arrogant, but he said something similar on Thursday, when he made his debut at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing: ‘People who have requests for different products and supplies, a lot of them are doing it based on projections which are not the realistic projections.’ Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. ‘Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,’ said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.” [Michelle Goldberg – New York Times, 4/2/20]
Within Kushner’s Background Is An Extensive And Growing List Of Failures Including His Father’s Real Estate Business, His Purchase Of The New York Observer, And An Attempt At Peace In The Middle East. According to a New York Times op-ed by Michelle Goldberg, “It’s hard to overstate the extent to which this confidence is unearned. Kushner was a reportedly mediocre student whose billionaire father appears to have bought him a place at Harvard. Taking over the family real estate company after his father was sent to prison, Kushner paid $1.8 billion — a record, at the time — for a Manhattan skyscraper at the very top of the real estate market in 2007. The debt from that project became a crushing burden for the family business. (Kushner was able to restructure the debt in 2011, and in 2018 the project was bailed out by a Canadian asset management company with links to the government of Qatar.) He gutted the once-great New York Observer, then made a failed attempt to create a national network of local politics websites.His forays into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — for which he boasted of reading a whole 25 books — have left the dream of a two-state solution on life support. Michael Koplow of the centrist Israel Policy Forum described Kushner’s plan for the Palestinian economy as “the Monty Python version of Israeli-Palestinian peace.” [Michelle Goldberg – New York Times, 4/2/20]
Goldberg: Kushner And His Team Just Add To The Chaos. According to a New York Times op-ed by Michelle Goldberg, “Disaster response requires discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command, not the move-fast-and-break-things approach of start-up culture. Even if Kushner ‘were the most competent person in the world, which he clearly isn’t, introducing these kind of competing power centers into a crisis response structure is a guaranteed problem,’ Jeremy Konyndyk, a former U.S.A.I.D. official who helped manage the response to the Ebola crisis during Barack Obama’s administration, told me. ‘So you could have Trump and Kushner and Pence and the governors all be the smartest people in the room, but if there are multiple competing power centers trying to drive this response, it’s still going to be chaos.’ Competing power centers are a motif of this administration, and its approach to the pandemic is no exception. As The Washington Post reported, Kushner’s team added ‘another layer of confusion and conflicting signals within the White House’s disjointed response to the crisis.’ Nor does his operation appear to be internally coherent. ‘Projects are so decentralized that one team often has little idea what others are doing — outside of that they all report up to Kushner,’ reported Politico.” [Michelle Goldberg – New York Times, 4/2/20]
Rubin: Jared Kushner Taking Over The Daily Coronavirus Briefing Symbolizes The Larger Outbreak Of Incompetence In The Trump Administration. According to a Washington Post op-ed by Jennifer rubin, “White House adviser Jared Kushner broke the irony meter as he — not someone qualified, such as Anthony S. Fauci — took over the daily coronavirus briefing t on Thursday to inform us: ‘What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody ... think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis.’ Yes, President Trump’s voters, along with those who elected the similarly ignorant and slothful Republican governors in Florida and Georgia who failed to act promptly to stem the coronavirus, should remember that next time. Better to elect someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) or Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) rather than someone continually pandering to Trump, resisting readily available scientific advice and attacking the media. One has the sinking feeling that things are going from bad to worse. Trump and the feds declined to act swiftly, in particular failing to get widespread testing up and running. Now they are failing to remedy the dire medical crisis that their negligence brought on. Kushner said the federal stockpile of medical equipment is for the feds to use, not the states. His father-in-law seems allergic to implementing fully the Defense Production Act, so the bidding war among the states for critical equipment continues.” [Jennifer Rubin – Washington Post, 4/3/20]
Rubin: ‘The Contempt For Expertise, For Competent Government, And For Truth Itself On The Right, Now Haunt Us All.’ According to a Washington Post Op-Ed By The chaos, confusion and incompetence at the federal level magnify our daily anxiety and uncertainty. We have lost control of our lives, and those supposed to lead us through this ordeal are deepening our national trauma. Years of contempt for expertise, for competent government and for truth itself on the right now haunt us all. God help us.” [Jennifer Rubin – Washington Post, 4/3/20]
Green: Kushner’s Coronavirus Overreach Puts More American Lives On The Line. According to a Guardian op-ed by Lloyd Green, “Jared Kushner is not a guy to turn to for sound political advice. Most recently, he reportedly told the president that Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, was being ‘alarmist’ after he announced that his state required 30,000 ventilators to help get through the pandemic. To add insult to injury, Kushner also bragged of his own wisdom and told those assembled that Cuomo was wrong. According to Vanity Fair, Kushner declared: ‘I have all this data about ICU capacity. I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.’ The princeling has helped place American lives and bodies on the line. New York’s hospitals have become combat zones, its morgues and funeral homes look like abattoirs. Meanwhile, the US is locked down and the administration is projecting up to a quarter-million dead even if everything goes right.” [Lloyd Green – The Guardian, 4/3/20]
Green: If Kushner Were Not Married To The Boss’s Daughter He Would Not Be Anywhere Near The Oval Office. According to a Guardian Op-ed by Lloyd Green, “If Kushner weren’t married to the boss’s daughter he would not be anywhere near the Oval Office. But Trump treats the presidency like a family business, and we know how that has ended before: a passel of bankruptcies and a pile of debt. These days, the sun is setting later but darkness will be casting its broad shadow earlier.” [Lloyd Green – The Guardian, 4/3/20]
WaPo’s Paul Waldman: Trump’s Ignorant Son-In-Law Is Running The Coronavirus And That’s Unacceptable. According to a Washington Post op-ed by Paul Waldman, ““What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody to be a mayor or a governor or a president, you’re trying to think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis. This is a time of crisis, and you’re seeing certain people are better managers than others.” That was Jared Kushner speaking at the daily briefing of the White House coronavirus task force on Thursday. And why was Kushner there? Why is Kushner, as utterly ignorant and unqualified for this task as he is for all the other ones he has been assigned, even remotely involved with the government’s effort to deal with one of the most profound challenges the United States has ever faced? […] So many awful things have happened over the past three years that we’ve become almost numb to them. But this a moment when our voices should be rising in anger. As if it weren’t bad enough that the president is messing this up so badly himself, he has outsourced management of one of the most deadly challenges the United States has ever faced to his ignorant son-in-law.” [Paul Waldman – Washington Post, 4/3/20]
Waldman: Kushner Is A Walking Case Study For When People Of Low Ability Drastically Overestimate Their Own Abilities. According to a Washington Post op-ed by Paul Waldman, “In fact, just like his father-in-law, Kushner is a walking case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people of low ability drastically overestimate their own abilities, in large part because they are incapable of understanding what they don’t know. Join that with a lifetime of unearned wealth and privilege (Kushner, a mediocre high school student, was accepted to Harvard after his father pledged to the university a well-timed $2.5 million donation), and you wind up with someone who is supremely and unjustifiably confident, moving through a world in which nobody ever tells them how badly they’ve messed up or how incompetent they are. The only difference between Kushner and his father-in-law is that President Trump goes out in public and says that he knows more than all the experts about the area of their expertise, while Kushner only says it in private. The very fact that Kushner has any job at all in the government is deeply inappropriate; the fact that he has seized such sweeping authority over so many policy areas is abominable. This is only the latest example, but it’s the most appalling.” [Paul Waldman – Washington Post, 4/3/20]