The COVID-19 task force led by White House Senior Adviser and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly scrapped its plan for nationwide testing for COVID-19 at least partially due to an unwillingness to assist states that did not support Trump.
Vanity Fair reported on Thursday that Kushner’s team ultimately decided to thrust the responsibility of handling the testing shortage crisis upon individual states for political reasons in April, as blue states like New York bore the brunt of the pandemic at the time.
“The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” a public health expert who was in contact with the White House COVID-19 task force told Vanity Fair.
Kushner, who was “ultimately the decision maker,” according to the expert, decided to nix the plan altogether in the end and Trump went on to publicly blame the testing shortage on governors while denying any responsibility for the disaster.
