After Downplaying the Coronavirus, Fox News Hosts Lobbied Jared Kushner’s Volunteer Task Force for PPE
The hosts of Donald Trump's favorite Fox News shows enjoy unprecedented access to both him and the White House. Sean Hannity has regularly had late-night phone calls with Trump, giving the president advice and feedback. Laura Ingraham got a face-to-face White House meeting to shill for a supposed COVID-19 miracle drug. And, it turns out, Fox News hosts have direct access to the White House's coronavirus task force too.
White House adviser Jared Kushner has been a major player in the Trump administration's coronavirus response—though not a particularly effective one. The president's son-in-law has been in charge of a supply-chain unit on the COVID-19 task force, meaning that he's responsible for the federal government's efforts to produce and distribute personal protective equipment (PPE), such as respirator masks and gowns for hospitals. In April, news came out that one of Kushner's top priorities for the task force was protecting the profits of private companies, and he was ignoring local agencies and businesses that typically work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and instead trying to invent his own networks from the ground up. "It cost weeks," one government official told NBC News.
But Kushner's coronavirus work was even more ad hoc than originally reported. According to the New York Times, Kushner assembled an unofficial group of volunteers, mostly 20-somethings like conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a former contestant on The Apprentice. Despite their lack of experience in public health, supply chains, or medical equipment, the volunteers were in charge of sifting through thousands of tips and leads for procuring PPE and passing the most promising ones along to FEMA. The volunteers were also instructed to prioritize tips from Trump's associates and political allies—in fact, they were supposed to catalog those on a spreadsheet titled "V.I.P. Update."
Some of those who seem to have gotten special preference are Fox News personalities. Even as hosts were publicly trying to downplay the severity of the outbreak, internally the network was taking it very seriously, sanitizing offices and, apparently, keeping in touch with the White House. Brian Kilmeade, one of the three talking heads from Fox & Friends, reportedly contacted people in the administration to suggest sources to buy PPE, according to the Washington Post. On air, however, Kilmeade was praising Wisconsin for holding an election in the middle of a pandemic, and claiming that a death toll of 60,000 people was evidence that the U.S. was handling the outbreak well. (By contrast, South Korea, which also had its first known case on the same day, has had less than 300 deaths.) Then there's Jeanine Pirro, who in early March declared "all the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly [than the flu] doesn't reflect reality." According to the New York Times, Pirro repeatedly contacted the task force and FEMA officials until 100,000 masks were finally sent to a hospital she favored.
In one of the more spectacular screw-ups, Kushner's volunteers received a tip from Yaron Oren-Pines, a Silicon Valley engineer offering 1,000 ventilators. In March, the volunteers passed it to federal officials, who didn't bother to vet it but did forward it to New York state officials—who then paid $69 million and have yet to receive a single piece of equipment. Speaking to the Times, Valerie Johnson, an Oregon emergency-room doctor and a founder of Get Us PPE, said, "There are health providers quitting their jobs because they are worried about getting sick," adding, "To bring in inexperienced volunteers is laughable." At least one volunteer agrees with that, anonymously saying, "The nature and scale of the response seemed grossly inadequate."
Meanwhile, as the COVID-19 death toll continues to rise and new hot spots appear around the country, the White House isn't even clear on whether or not the entire task force will continue to exist. As of Tuesday, the Trump administration was reportedly working on plans to scrap it, looking for ways to quickly wind it down and push the responsibility to states and individual agencies. But on Wednesday, Trump abruptly walked that back. He now says the task force will exist "indefinitely."
Donald Trump’s son-in-law pressed him not to declare a national emergency because he thought it would tank the stock market.
Originally Appeared on GQ
