Politics - News Analysis

WaPo: Chaos and Confusion, Kushner Keeps Inserting Himself and Getting In the Way

The Washington Post has a long retrospective, tracking the virus back to its origins in China, and first recognition here in the U.S. on December 31, 2019. The article makes clear that some of Trump’s complaints about China’s lack of cooperation early in the pandemic are valid. However, American inaction and missed opportunity after missed opportunity dominate the piece. Everyone should read the piece because it does clarify many misconceptions we have on the left. Many of the problems were systemic, and when they became apparent, Trump failed to act to cure them.

But one of the most infuriating aspects of the entire article is the coverage of Jared Kushner, and his tendency to continually insert himself into the problem. Because he is Trump’s son in law, no one can tell him to go to hell or get out of the way. The other thing that the article makes clear is that Kushner has yet to contribute a significant positive thing:

Foremost among them was his adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. A team reporting to Kushner commandeered space on the seventh floor of the HHS building to pursue a series of inchoate initiatives.

One plan involved having Google create a website to direct those with symptoms to testing facilities that were supposed to spring up in Walmart parking lots across the country, but which never materialized. Another centered on an idea advanced by Oracle chairman Larry Ellison to use software to monitor the unproven use of anti-malaria drugs against the coronavirus pathogen.

“Commandeered.” In other words, no one asked – he moved in. Kushner then went off on a bunch of half-baked ideas cooked up by “friends” out in the business community (many probably wanting to help, many probably wanting to make a buck), not one of which has led to progress or been helpful.

It gets worse:

 The Kushner initiatives have, however, often interrupted the work of those under immense pressure to manage the U.S. response …

Current and former officials said that Kadlec, Fauci, Redfield and others have repeatedly had to divert their attentions from core operations to contend with ill-conceived requests from the White House they don’t believe they can ignore. And Azar, who once ran the response, has since been sidelined, with his agency disempowered in decision-making and his performance pilloried by a range of White House officials, including Kushner.

And then the hammer that makes me want to scream at my laptop and demand that a real government move in, read every word of this:

“Right now Fauci is trying to roll out the most ambitious clinical trial ever implemented” to hasten the development of a vaccine, said a former senior administration official in frequent touch with former colleagues. And yet, the nation’s top health officials “are getting calls from the White House or Jared’s team asking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to do this with Oracle?’ ”

Whenever I hear about Jared sticking his nose into things in which he has no knowledge, no experience, no expertise, I think “he is trying to make money off this,” and maybe I am wrong. But it fits a pattern, and maybe I am right.

Don’t you wish we could just “partner” with the Canadian government right now and have them run the response for the North American continent? That is just a dream.

The reality is that Jared Kushner continues to “commandeer” a process for which there is no real role for him to play. Kushner’s most effective move right now is to get the fck out of Dr. Fauci’s way.

Yet it doesn’t seem like it will happen any time soon.

****

Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom

 

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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