Newly released audio recordings reveal that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner bragged to reporter Bob Woodward that President Donald Trump was blowing off advice from medical experts about doing more to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic back in April.
CNN reports that Kushner told Woodward on April 18th that the administration was moving away from a containment strategy for the virus and was instead pushing toward reopening the economy as soon as possible.
"There were three phases [of the pandemic]," Kushner told Woodward. "There's the panic phase, the pain phase and then the comeback phase. I do believe that last night symbolized kind of the beginning of the comeback phase."
Roughly 40,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 at the time of Kushner's statement about being in the "comeback phase." Since that time, an additional 187,000 Americans have died from the disease.
Kushner then bragged to Woodward about wresting control of the pandemic response away from the medical experts.
"Trump's now back in charge," he said. "It's not the doctors. They've kind of — we have, like, a negotiated settlement."
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