Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly discouraged the president from listening to a plea by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for tens of thousands of ventilators to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic, saying the request was an exaggerated one.
In doing so, Vanity Fair reported, Kushner was effectively running a shadow coronavirus task force team in the White House that was more powerful than the official one headed by Vice President Mike Pence.
This was partly due to the vacuum left by the departure of the former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney whose replacement, Mark Meadows, has only just joined. But Kushner was said to be angered by the criticism of Trump, and when he got involved, reportedly told people, “I know how to make this government run now.”
Kushner is also said to have urged Trump to challenge Cuomo’s appeal for 78, ventilators for New York, which he believed was alarmist. Vanity Fair reported that he told a White House meeting, “I have all this data about ICU capacity . I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York does not need all the ventilators. “
On March , Trump told Fox News anchor Sean Hannity that he did not believe New York needed the number of ventilators Cuomo was calling for.
Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment. A White House statement to Vanity Fair rejected reports of a rift between Kushner and the task force, saying that “Kushner and Pence work so well together because they both view their roles through the lens of what’s best for the American people and how do we best serve the president.
“The task force has orchestrated a massive historic partnership between the public and private sector , coordinated the federal government urgent response, and has unleashed a whole-of-America approach that will save lives. ” deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in the statement.
The magazine noted that the shift in Trump’s coronavirus messaging from wanting the U.S. to reopen by Easter to extending social distancing guidelines (for another) days, was driven in part by the polling figures in predominantly Republican-supporting states, and fears that the pandemic could end his presidency,
But he was also affected by the condition of his friend, the – year-old real estate developer, Stan Chera who had contracted the coronavirus and fallen into a coma, with Trump donor Bill White telling Vanity Fair : “Boy, did that hit home. Stan is like one of his best friends. “
The president did not refer to Chera by name, but did tell reporters in the Rose Garden on Sunday that he had a friend who had been hit hard by the disease, saying,” the speed and the viciousness, especially if it gets the right person, it’s horrible, it’s really horrible. “
As of T hursday morning, there are more than , confirmed cases of COVID – 30 in the US with more than 5, 728 deaths, and over 8, (recoveries, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The Statista chart below shows the growth of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York as of April 1.
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