https://www.revenuehits.com/lps/pubref/?ref=@RH@yFrunQv_mzw-z-eHW6TrQFgCNN7_AvfT

Jared Kushner and his shadow corona unit: what is Trump's son-in-law up to?

Jared Kushner has become a key gatekeeper for help tackling COVID-19 and that’s a big problem, critics say

The twist of fate that has cast Jared Kushner as a would-be savior in the greatest public health crisis to confront the United States in a century is a dramatic one.

The moment of national peril has been compared to September 11. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said coronavirus was her country’s greatest challenge since the second world war.

As the leader of the federal government effort to distribute emergency equipment to the states, Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, has mostly shied from the public stage, but he now is working in history’s spotlight.

His vast responsibilities include weighing requests from governors for aid and coordinating with private companies to obtain medical equipment, work he carries out from a special post created for him inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where his team is called “the Slim Suit crowd” for their distinctive tailoring, the New York Times has reported.

Kushner’s team was credited with coordinating a planeload of medical supplies that arrived in the US from China last week. 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.

https://www.revenuehits.com/lps/pubref/?ref=@RH@yFrunQv_mzw-z-eHW6TrQFgCNN7_AvfT

“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.”

Early this year, Kushner reportedly advised Donald Trump that the coronavirus was not that dangerous – more a threat to public confidence, and the markets, than to public health. Trump stuck with that message for six tragic weeks, between the confirmation of the first US case and a belated federal decision to speed the development of test kits.

And it was Kushner who helped write a disastrous Trump Oval Office speech on 12 March announcing a European travel ban that sent markets into a tailspin and travelers crowding into airports. It was Kushner who solicited help from the father of the fashion model Karlie Kloss, his sister-in-law, to ask a Facebook group of doctors what should be done about the virus.

Pepper expressed concern that when a governor calls the White House, she has to talk to Kushner, who then decides, apparently unilaterally, what the state really needs.