As the worldwide death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surges past 48,500 (according to figures reported by John Hopkins University in Baltimore early Thursday morning, April 2) and the United States becomes #3 in deaths from COVID-19 (behind only Italy and Spain), President Donald Trump is trying to give the impression that he is being as proactive as possible. Gone are the days when Trump irresponsibly described the pandemic as a “hoax” and made the ludicrous claim that Democrats and Never Trump conservatives were exaggerating its dangers. And Trump’s efforts to appear proactive are asserting themselves not only with his coronavirus task force (which includes medical experts Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx), but also, with a separate coronavirus team led by White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner (the president’s son-in-law).
Kushner’s activities during the pandemic are the focus of an in-depth articlewritten by journalists Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamond and published in Politico this week. According to Cancryn and Diamond, “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…. 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.”
Here are some of the most important points from Politico and other media outlets about Kushner’s role in the Trump Administration’s response to coronavirus: Continue reading.