Fox News Hosts Are Assisting Jared Kushner To Procure And Distribute Personal Protective Equipment. Seriously. (And It's Not Going Very Well.)

Just when you think that this cluster cannot get any more fucked, along comes Jared.

A person cannot possibly fuck things up this bad unless fucking it up is his only goal and he works really hard at it.

Washington Post, May 5, 2020:

The coronavirus response being spearheaded by President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has relied in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks they were assigned, exacerbating chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs, according to numerous government officials and a volunteer involved in the effort.

About two dozen employees from Boston Consulting Group, Insight, McKinsey and other firms have volunteered their time — some on paid vacation leave from their jobs and others without pay — to aid the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to administration officials and others familiar with the arrangement.

Although some of the volunteers have relevant backgrounds and experience, many others were poorly matched with their assigned jobs, including those given the task of securing personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals nationwide, according to a complaint filed last month with the House Oversight Committee.

The volunteer team played a significant role in helping the government vet leads and send the results to a procurement team at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where government officials made final decisions about purchases and procurements, two senior administration officials said. The team’s problems underscore a broader pattern of missteps and missed opportunities that has plagued the Trump administration as it struggles to cope with the pandemic. ...

"Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade, for example, called two people he knew in the administration to pass along a lead about PPE in an effort to be helpful, said two people familiar with the outreach. Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro also repeatedly lobbied the administration for a specific New York hospital to receive a large quantity of masks, one of the people said. ...

[S]ome government officials have expressed alarm at the presence of the volunteers, saying that their role in the response is unclear and that they have needed guidance on basic questions. ...

Even as the volunteer group struggled to procure PPE, about 30 percent of "key supplies," including masks, in the national stockpile of emergency medical equipment went toward standing up a separate Kushner-led effort to establish drive-through testing sites nationwide, according to a March internal planning document obtained by The Post and confirmed by one current and one former administration official. Kushner had originally promised thousands of testing sites, but only 78 materialized; the stockpile was used to supply 44 of those over five to 10 days, the document said. ...