“The Campaign Panicked”: Inside Trump’s Decision to Back Off of His Easter Coronavirus Miracle - Vanity Fair

The White House downplayed tensions between Kushner and the task force. “The vice president and Jared work so well together because they both view their roles through the lens of what’s best for the American people and how do we best serve the president,” deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said. “The task force has orchestrated a massive historic partnership between the public and private sector, coordinated the federal government’s urgent response, and has unleashed a whole-of-America approach that will save lives.”

In recent days Kushner has advocated for his usual, iconoclastic public-private approach, drawing on business contacts. Last week he called Wall Street executives and asked for advice on how to help New York, people briefed on the conversation said. Kushner encouraged Trump to push back against New York governor Andrew Cuomo after Cuomo gave an emotional press conference during which he said New York was short 30,000 ventilators. In a White House meeting around this time, Kushner told people that Cuomo was being an alarmist. “I have all this data about ICU capacity. I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators,” Kushner said, according to a person present. During an interview on Hannity on March 26, Trump said: “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.”

Kushner declined to comment. But the White House press shop sent a statement from Fauci: “The interactions between Jared Kushner and Vice President Pence have added real value to the discussions at the coronavirus task force. They complement each other very well by providing information and opinions derived from shared and sometimes different perspectives. The bottom line and goal of both of them is to always get the facts straight and to act on and make decisions based on the best available evidence.”

Meanwhile, Trump is also consulting his longtime confidante Hope Hicks, whom Trump hired back in February (Hicks had been serving as chief communications officer for Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News). Officially, Hicks reports to Kushner, but according to sources, Hicks is constantly with Trump. “Hope is in charge of Trump’s calendar, which means Jared is in charge of Trump’s schedule,” a Republican who deals with the White House said. Sources said Hicks prepares Trump for his daily task force briefings and advises him to act presidential. “She’s been trying to play to his better angles,” a former West Wing official said. (Given Trump’s recent blowups at reporters Yamiche Alcindor and Jim Acosta, Hicks’s influence has its limits.)

Hicks declined to comment. But Gidley, who is often in meetings with her and Trump, said: “No one has to give President Trump advice about being presidential—he is just a natural-born leader—and in this time of crisis, the country clearly sees the president is focused on the safety and security of the American people and always has their backs.”

In many ways Hicks fills the role she unofficially occupied during her first West Wing tour: Trump whisperer. She is shaping the White House’s messaging, which puts the current communications director, Stephanie Grisham, out of the loop. For weeks, according to sources, Kushner has been looking to sideline Grisham but has been unable to displace her because Grisham remains close to Melania Trump, whom Grisham did communications for when she worked in the East Wing. “Jared doesn’t tell Grisham what he’s working on. At this point Stephanie has just given up,” a person close to Grisham said. (Grisham declined to comment.)

Trump’s press conferences for the last few weeks had mostly been rally substitutes—boastful, contentious, featuring Trump as pitchman, selling the great job the administration was doing and the beautiful future after the novel coronavirus had magically flowed through, while compulsively blame-shifting to China, the media, governors, anyone but his own administration. But on Tuesday the event turned somber, with Trump trying to put the best possible face on a terrifying set of metrics—100,000 to 200,000 dead Americans, even if, as Dr. Deborah Birx said, safety measures continued—that he’d been trying to push away and wish away for weeks. Whatever his tone, it will be a very hard future to sell.