In April, Max Kennedy, Jr. [...] sent an anonymous complaint to Congress detailing dangerous incompetence in the Administration’s response to the pandemic.
[...]
“I just couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I was so distressed and disturbed by what I’d seen.”
newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…
he showed up at [FEMA HQ] and joined around a dozen other volunteers
[...]
He was surprised to learn that they weren’t to be auxiliaries supporting the government’s procurement team. “We were the team,” he said. “We were the entire frontline team for the federal government.”
Kennedy believes that the Administration relied on volunteers in order to sidestep government experts and thereby “control the narrative.”
[...]
one of the political appointees who directed the task force, pressured him to create a model fudging the projected number of fatalities
According to Kennedy, the group paid special attention to Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News personality [, who was] “particularly aggressive,” and demanded that masks be shipped to a hospital she favored.
The volunteers were also told to direct millions of dollars’ worth of supplies to only five preselected distributors. Kennedy was asked to draft a justification for this decision, but refused.
[...]
“We were super frustrated we couldn’t get the government to do more.”
It’s very interesting to revisit this press conference, where Rear Admiral John Polowczyk - head of FEMA's supply chain task force - is essentially saying that FEMA is abdicating their normal responsibilities, and sending “product” to 5 or 6 companies.
Because prior to all of this, in March, Kushner had come up with “Project Airbridge.”
This was another instance of the Trump family playing “deal maker” with our tax dollars.
They guaranteed a portion of the supplies to 6 companies. What did we get in return?
Back to Jane Mayer’s article:
“In the end, the task force failed to procure enough equipment, leaving medical workers [...] wearing garbage bags and makeshift or pre-worn masks. States were left to fend for themselves, bidding against one another for scarce supplies.”
[Kennedy says that] political appointees who supervised him were hailing Trump as “a marketing genius,” because, Kennedy said they’d told him, “he personally came up with the strategy of blaming the states.”
This further confirms what many of us long suspected was the strategy.
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