Gabe Sherman at Vanity Fair gets an inside look at Jared Kushner’s influence on the response to the crisis. It’s not reassuring:
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, shared Trump’s view that the media and Democrats were hyping the crisis for political purposes. And for both of them, the biggest worry was how the response to the coronavirus might impact the health of the economy. According to sources, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, a fierce China hawk, and deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, a former China-based Wall Street Journal reporter who’d covered the 2003 SARS pandemic, argued to officials in mid-January that the White House needed to shut down incoming flights from China.
Kushner pushed back. “Jared kept saying the stock market would go down, and Trump wouldn’t get reelected,” a Republican briefed on the internal debates said (a person close to Kushner denies this). Kushner’s position was supported by Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council chief Larry Kudlow. Trump sided with them. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump minimized the threat in his first public comments. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” he told CNBC. (The White House and Treasury Department deny Mnuchin and Kudlow were against closing flights.)
When the coronavirus exploded out of China, Kushner was the second most powerful person in the West Wing, exerting influence over virtually every significant decision, from negotiating trade deals to 2020 campaign strategy to overseeing Trump’s impeachment defense. “Jared is running everything. He’s the de facto president of the United States,” a former White House official told me. The previous chief of staff John Kelly, who’d marginalized Kushner, was long gone, and Mick Mulvaney, a virtual lame duck by that point, let Kushner run free. “Jared treats Mick like the help,” a prominent Republican said.
“Jared kept saying the stock market would go down and Trump wouldn’t get reelected.”
Kushner’s princely arrogance had been a fixture in the West Wing since Trump’s inauguration. “The family has a degree of trust and protection that no one else enjoys,” the former West Wing official said. Kushner can appear mild-mannered, but, like his father-in-law, he seemed to relish the power he derived from crushing adversaries. After Trump’s acquittal, Kushner helped orchestrate a purge of national security officials that testified against the president. According to a source, Kushner provided the White House’s 29-year-old personnel director, John McEntee, with a list of names to be fired. (“In no way shape or form did Jared provide a list to Johnny McEntee on people to be fired,” a source familiar with the matter said).
During his time in the West Wing, Kushner had become hardened to a degree that was sometimes shocking. The days of selling the notion that he and Ivanka were moderating forces were long gone—combat was everything. A New York business executive recalled a meeting with Kushner at the White House last fall. “I told Jared that if Trump won a second term, he wouldn’t have to worry about running again and you can really help people. Jared just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t care about any of that.’” The executive came away shaken. “I wanted to tell Jared you don’t say that part out loud, even in private,” he later said. (A source close to Kushner says he has no recollection of making the comment.)
Kushner had an enemies list as long as Trump’s, and at times it played into his response to the crisis. He scoffed when his old nemesis, Steve Bannon, launched a podcast called War Room: Pandemic in January. “Steve’s a dead man. Last he was seen, he was standing on the side of the FDR Drive with the squeegee guys,” Kushner told a Republican around this time.
Kushner also had a famously unshakable belief in his own judgment. According to sources, Trump’s former Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert told Kushner in early March that the White House needed to step up its coronavirus response. “Tom tried sounding the alarm with Jared,” said a person who spoke to Bossert at the time. (Bossert denies this.) Kushner, according to the person, dismissed Bossert’s concerns. Bossert later published his advice in a Washington Post op-ed. “Tom was hammering him: ‘You have to get on this.’ No one listened, so he wrote the op-ed,” a former West Wing official said. Bossert later told people that Kushner icily told him the op-ed was a mistake. (Bossert denies this.)
[…]
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global pandemic, and Trump agreed to broadcast an Oval Office address to the nation. But even then, Kushner advised Trump to tread lightly. One source briefed on the internal conversations said Kushner told Trump not to declare a national emergency during the address because “it would tank the markets.” The markets cratered anyway, and Trump announced the national emergency later in the week. “They had to clean that up on Friday,” the source said. (A person close to Kushner denies this version of events.)
Even as the crisis was tearing through New York, with emerging problems in Louisiana, Michigan, and Illinois, Trump obsessed over the future, fixating on the fall and his reelection. He took time to call NFL owners and urge them not to preemptively cancel football season. “Trump begged them not to cancel,” said a source briefed on the call.
“This is going to be 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined. People are going to be covering their asses for years.”
Increasingly, Kushner was in control of Trump’s response. Looking to keep him close, Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short recruited Kushner to officially join the coronavirus task force on March 12. “Pence people look at Jared apprehensively. Pence treats Jared as a peer,” said Sam Nunberg, the former Trump aide. Kushner quickly assembled a shadow network of coronavirus advisers that became more powerful than Pence’s official team. He even worked on Shabbat, a source who spoke with him on a Saturday said. (A person close to Kushner says working on Shabbat is accepted for Orthodox Jews if it’s “to save someone’s life.”) “On balance, Pence wanted Jared involved because it guarantees Trump is focused,” an executive who Kushner consulted recalled.
Azar was still the necessary scapegoat. Kushner blamed him for the criticism Trump received about the delays in testing, according to a person in frequent touch with the West Wing. “This was a total mess,” Kushner told people when he got involved. Kushner had no medical experience, but that didn’t seem to matter. “To be honest, when I got involved, I was a little intimidated. But I know how to make this government run now,” Kushner said, according to a source. “The arrogance was on full display.”
Kushner advocated for the iconoclastic public-private approach he had used for his Mideast peace plan. He reached out to business leaders like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, according to a source. With bravado only partly grounded in reality, he promised Trump that Google was rolling out a testing website. He also made a point of bypassing normal channels, phoning Wall Street executives and asking for advice on how to help New York, people briefed on the conversation said. A former West Wing official said Kushner’s involvement wrought chaos: business leaders wanting to contribute masks or ventilators didn’t know who in government to call. According to two sources, Kushner told Trump about experimental treatments he’d learned of from executives in Silicon Valley. “Jared is bringing conspiracy theories to Trump about potential treatments,” a Republican briefed on the conversations told me. (A person close to Kushner said he brought COVID testing ideas to Trump.) Trump could be a receptive audience.
Another former West Wing official told me: “Trump is like an 11-year-old boy waiting for the fairy godmother to bring him a magic pill.”
There’s a lot more at the link.
He’s just as bad as Trump.