Report: Kushner Spiked National Testing Because Blue States Hit Hardest, Dem Govs Could Be Blamed

Vanity Fair has obtained a copy of a detailed plan spearheaded by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that would have provided for a national testing approach for the COVID-19 pandemic. While the goal of the team putting the plan together was “apolitical,” the approach never saw the light of day because, according to Vanity Fair, the virus had mainly affected blue states. With that in mind, the decision was made to let states handle the health threat because “they could blame those governors” as a political strategy if things went awry. From Vanity Fair:

Countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks have empowered scientists to lead the response. But when Jared Kushner set out in March to solve the diagnostic-testing crisis, his efforts began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires. They saw themselves as the “A-team of people who get shit done,” as one participant proclaimed in a March Politico article.

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The effort of the White House team was “apolitical,” said the participant, and undertaken “with the nation’s best interests in mind.”

But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures.

Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.

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Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

Vanity Fair

also reports Kushner’s team allegedly purchased 3.5 million Covid-19 tests from an Abu Dhabi–based artificial intelligence company without using normal procurement procedures. Despite the $52 million price tag, the tests were never utilized after being found “contaminated and unusable.”