Even after the coronavirus pandemic had killed more than 40,000 Americans, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner bragged in April to journalist Bob Woodward that Trump was “getting the country back from the doctors” through a “negotiated settlement,” according to audio obtained by CNN. “That doesn’t mean there’s not still a lot of pain and there won’t be pain for a while, but that basically was, we’ve now put out rules to get back to work,” Kushner explained. “Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.” In the recording, Kushner says that he wanted Trump to be thought of as the “open-up president” come Election Day. He also revealed Trump’s political strategy in putting testing plans in the hands of the governors. “But the President also is very smart politically with the way he did that fight with the governors to basically say, no, no, no, no, I own the opening,” he said. “Because again, the opening is going to be very popular. People want this country open. But if it opens in the wrong way, the question will be, did the governors follow the guidelines we set out or not?”
