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Reporter says Kushner told Trump that New York didn’t need so many ventilators: “I’ve gotten smarter about this”

Reporter says Kushner told Trump that New York didn’t need so many ventilators: “I’ve gotten smarter about this”

A constant subplot to any of the Trump administration’s constant (and usually self-inflicted) crises are the vicious personal feuds with other prominent members of the American political landscape that the President insists on waging, no matter how inappropriate or one-sided they might be.

The catastrophic damage done to the island of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria, for instance, saw the president launch a weeks-long smear Twitter smear campaign against the Mayor of San Juan for daring to hold him accountable for his administration’s appallingly inadequate efforts to provide relief to our island colony and its U.S. citizens.

As the coronavirus ravages the nation and infected cases skyrocket to above 200,000, it appears that New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo is the latest target of the president’s wrath — and he’s being quietly egged on by his slender, stupid Rasputin with a monstrous disregard for the lives that will be lost because of it.

Vanity Fair reporter Gabriel Sherman’s astonishing and unparalleled access into the Trump’s closest circles has revealed that it was none other than the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who told Trump to “push back” against Governor Cuomo and said he was being “alarmist” after the governor’s statement that the state needed 30,000 more ventilators.

“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 doesn’t need all the ventilators,” bragged the notoriously uninformed and incompetent Kushner, whose past White House failures include an immediately rejected Israel-Palestinian peace plan.

President Trump then dutifully appeared on FOX News host Hannity’s program and said that he didn’t believe that New York needed 30,000 or 40,000 ventilators. As of Wednesday, the virus has infected 83,712 New Yorkers.

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Since then, Governor Cuomo has been very vocal about the difficulties that his state is facing in acquiring the medical equipment that they desperately need, while the President has continued to dismiss Cuomo’s requests as “complaining” and accusing him of being ungrateful for what he’s been given so far.

Thousands of people’s lives are on the line while the president and his son-in-law continue to wage a selfish blame game with the governor of their home state over whose fault it is. Sherman’s previous reporting has accused Kushner of whispering coronavirus conspiracy theories into the ear of a gullible president desperate for anything that will absolve him of responsibility for enabling a pandemic and wash his hands of the blood that already stains them.

If this is the kind of person the President is relying on for advice in a time of crisis, it’s no wonder the crisis has grown so drastic so quickly.

Original reporting by Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair.

 

Colin Taylor
Opinion columnist and former editor-in-chief of Occupy Democrats. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice and equality in America.

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