Trump Administration Didn’t Want National Coronavirus Plan Because Blue States Were Hardest Hit

The Trump administration didn’t think a national approach to fighting Coronavirus was needed because the worst affected states were Democratic strongholds, a new report claims.

In an extensive article about President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his handling of the pandemic, Vanity Fair cites an expert who worked with the pandemic team.

“Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically,” the article says.

“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,” Vanity Fair quotes the expert as saying.

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

The article goes on: “That logic may have swayed Kushner. ‘It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,’ the expert said.”

This chimes with other reporting that claims Trump didn’t start to really care about the virus until it was explained to him that the pandemic would affect his supporters.

“In the past couple of weeks, senior advisers began presenting Trump with maps and data showing spikes in coronavirus cases among ‘our people’ in Republican states, a senior administration official said,” the Washington Post reported this week.

“They also shared projections predicting that virus surges could soon hit politically important states in the Midwest — including Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, the official said.”

Follow Darragh Roche on Twitter

Darragh Roche

Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media