'We'll all be dead by June': Jared Kushner lashed out at a health official after hearing about mask shipments, according to a new book

Oma Seddiq
Mon, June 21, 2021

Jared Kushner. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Kushner reportedly grew so frustrated about mask shipments last year that he threw a pen at the wall.

"You f---ing moron," Kushner reportedly said to a health official. "We'll all be dead by June."

The Washington Post said the scene was detailed in a forthcoming book by two Post reporters.

Jared Kushner lashed out at a public-health official when he learned in late March 2020 that millions of masks wouldn't arrive in the US until June, a forthcoming book says, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

"You f---ing moron," Kushner reportedly said to Robert Kadlec, then an assistant secretary of health and human services, who had purchased 600 million masks as coronavirus infections spiked across the country. "We'll all be dead by June."

The Post said the scene was described in "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History," a book by its reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta set to be published later this month.

Kushner grew so frustrated that he threw his pen at the wall, the book says, according to the report. At the time, he had taken on greater responsibilities as senior advisor to President Donald Trump, playing an influential role in the White House's COVID-19 response.

The Post reported that the book detailed many more chaotic moments of the Trump administration's coronavirus response, including a time when another Trump aide blew up at Kadlec.

Upset at the administration's rollout of the antiviral treatment remdesivir, Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, reportedly shouted at Kadlec in a phone call, "I'm going to fire your a-- if you can't fix this!"

The reporters wrote that the handling of the pandemic had turned the Trump administration into "a toxic environment in which no matter where you turned, someone was ready to rip your head off or threatening to fire you," according to The Post.

The book is also said to describe an instance in February 2020 when Trump asked officials in the Situation Room whether people with COVID-19 could be sent to Guantánamo Bay.

"Don't we have an island that we own?" Trump reportedly said. "What about Guantánamo?" The idea shocked the officials, who dismissed it, the book reportedly says.

‘Testing is killing me!’ Trump feared Covid

numbers would doom his re-election, new

book claims

Nathan Place
Mon, June 21, 2021

Then-US President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at the BOK Center, 20 June, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Getty Images)

While president, Donald Trump reportedly yelled at aides to shut down testing for Covid-19 in the United States, fearing the growing number of infections and deaths due to the virus would cost him his re-election.

“Testing is killing me!” he allegedly yelled at Alex Azar, who was secretary of Health and Human Services at the time. “I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?”

The tantrum is just one of many chronicled in an upcoming book, Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. On Monday, the Post published excerpts of the book, which chronicles the United States’ early, bungled handling of the virus.


According to the authors, Mr Azar was baffled by the former president’s outburst.

“Uh, do you mean Jared?” he allegedly replied. Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, had just taken over the national testing strategy.

Mr Trump evidently thought the whole effort was a mistake. In conversations with his aides, he appears to have been more bothered by the Covid statistics themselves – which he called “my numbers” – than on the actual illnesses and deaths they represented.

“This was gross incompetence to let CDC develop a test,” the former president reportedly told Mr Azar.

Meanwhile, members of the coronavirus task force fought with each other for dominance, aides blocked Mr Trump from firing staffers he didn’t like, and efforts to distribute masks and medicines faltered. The overall result, the book says, was a slow and “rudderless” response to the crisis.

In another disturbing episode, Mr Trump allegedly floated the idea of quarantining Covid-positive Americans at the same naval base in Guantanamo Bay where terrorism suspects are held.

According to the book, the suggestion came up during a Situation Room meeting in February 2020. At the time, most of the world’s Covid-19 cases were still outside the United States, and White House officials were debating what to do with Americans who had been infected abroad. Some suggested bringing them back into the country to receive treatment at US hospitals.

Donald Trump, reportedly, had another idea.

“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the former president allegedly asked. “What about Guantanamo?”

White House officials reportedly put the kibosh on the idea – even after Mr Trump suggested it a second time.

The Independent has reached out to Mr Trump’s company for comment, but has not yet heard back.