Jared Kushner Reportedly Advised Trump That Media Was Exaggerating Coronavirus Threat

Al Drago/Getty Images

Jared Kushner advised President Donald Trump at the start of the global coronavirus outbreak that the media was exaggerating its threat, according to a New York Times report detailing how the White House downplayed and mishandled the crisis until it became too dangerous and widespread to ignore.

The report — by Maggie Haberman and Noah Weiland — describes the chaotic machinations of a White House run by Trump, who was, at the outset of the crisis, more pre-occupied with media coverage of his administration than the realities of the pandemic.

“Crises are treated as day-to-day public relations problems by Mr. Trump, who thinks ahead in short increments of time and early on in his presidency told aides to consider each day as an episode in a television show,” the Times reports. “The type of long-term planning required for an unpredictable crisis like a pandemic has brought into stark relief the difficulties that Mr. Trump was bound to face in a real crisis.”

The piece explains that Trump feared “rattling financial markets” by emphasizing the coronavirus as a threat in January, when it was spreading through China. Instead, he “he signaled to advisers that he wanted to play it down.”

One top adviser was, according to the Times, on board with that strategy: Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, whose “early involvement with dealing with the virus was in advising the president that the media’s coverage exaggerated the threat.”

Once Vice President Mike Pence took over as head of the White House response to the pandemic, Kushner took on a larger role too, and brought in his own aides, including Hope Hicks, who rejoined the administration last month after a stint at Fox Corp.

Per the Times: “But Mr. Kushner also sought to take on a more expansive role for himself despite his lack of knowledge on the topic and without talking to most of the task force members or public health experts.”

The Times outlines some of the fruit of Kushner’s labor, which included pro-active efforts to combat the crisis — but also devastating errors:

Mr. Kushner’s influence was immediately felt. He urged his father-in-law to go ahead with a ban on some travel from Europe and to declare a national emergency, after Mr. Trump had dithered and second-guessed himself for agreeing to it. He got executives at several pharmaceutical corporations to agree to help with mobilized testing efforts, and has pushed for an increase in medical supplies to hospitals.

But after Mr. Trump delivered an error-ridden Oval Office address last week, the president followed it with an appearance Friday in the Rose Garden in which he said Google had developed a coronavirus testing website that did not exist. Mr. Kushner was deeply involved in both efforts, and had sold his father-in-law on the website as a smart concept.

Read the full report here.