The president's son-in-law and senior advisor was the focus of a hard-hitting Washington Post deep-dive titled, "Infighting, missteps and a son-in-law hungry for action: Inside the Trump administration's troubled coronavirus response."
"The economy was grinding to a halt. Stocks were in free fall. Schools were closing. Public events were being canceled. New cases of the novel coronavirus were popping up across the country," the newspaper reported. "And then, on Wednesday, the day the World Health Organization designated the coronavirus a pandemic, Jared Kushner joined the tumult."
"President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser — who has zero expertise in infectious diseases and little experience marshaling the full bureaucracy behind a cause — saw the administration floundering and inserted himself at the helm, believing he could break the logjam of internal dysfunction," The Post reported.
While Vice President Mike Pence is officially leading the administration's response, Kushner has been playing an outsized role in recent days.
"Kushner rushed to help write Trump's widely panned Oval Office address to the nation," the newspaper reported. "And Kushner pressed tech executives to help build a testing website and retail executives to help create mobile testing sites — but the projects were only half-baked when Trump revealed them Friday in the White House Rose Garden."
"Kushner entered into a crisis management process that, despite the triumphant and self- congratulatory tone of public briefings, was as haphazard and helter-skelter as the chaotic early days of Trump's presidency — turning into something of a family-and-friends pandemic response operation," The Post added.
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