Jared Kushner says it’s ‘disgusting’ to politicize the coronavirus crisis

Jared Kushner said it was ‘disgusting’ that the coronavirus crisis has become politicized, though championed his boss and father-in-law’s response. 

‘I just think it’s absolutely disgusting that a lot of politicians are going out there criticizing, trying to politicize a pandemic,’ Kushner said Sunday night on Fox News Channel’s ‘The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton.’ ‘We just had the anniversary of 9/11, people did not politicize that crisis.’ 

The top White House aide and presidential son-in-law said after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, ‘we came together as a country.’ 

‘President Trump has continued to lead, continued to do the right thing,’ Kushner continued. ‘But it’s very sad for me to see how a lot of these politicians have tried to politicize this. But that’s just what they do.’ 

Kushner used the opportunity to attack President Donald Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden, who he pointed out has been in politics for ‘almost half a century.’  

‘In Washington, D.C. – I’m not from Washington – but there’s more than enough hypocrisy to go around,’ Kushner said.   

‘They’re very quick to criticize, but very slow to provide actual solutions,’ he added. 

Biden has come under scrutiny for not having pushed out a concrete plan to deal with the virus in the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis. 

His campaign has pushed back and pointed out that he wasn’t getting briefed like Trump. 

The president revealed to journalist Bob Woodward in early February that he knew how deadly and contagious COVID-19 was. In mid-March, he said he purposely was downplaying it, in order to prevent a ‘panic.’ 

The tapes of his interviews with Woodward have become politically problematic for Trump since being released Thursday.  

Kushner said Trump’s response to the virus was to jump to action. 

And he gave his father-in-law credit for preventing the country from being in a ‘much worse position.’ 

‘They said we would have shortages on the frontline workers’ PPE, they said we were going to have people dying because they weren’t in ventilators,’ Kushner told Hilton. ‘That didn’t happen.’  

Kushner also said that vaccine development was happening under Trump ‘faster than anyone thought possible.’ 

The reality of Trump’s coronavirus response is more complicated because at times Trump, himself, has been an unwilling participant. 

On Sunday night, as his son-in-law was praising his performance, the president was holding an indoor campaign rally in Nevada against local officials’ wishes, where his supporters were not social distancing nor broadly wearing masks.   

For months the president has been resistant to mask-wearing and he’s also pushed states to open quickly, resulting in new spikes in coronavirus cases.