Kushner's axed coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and they could blame the governors, report says

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• Some members of Jared Kushner's axed coronavirus task force believed the pandemic would affect Democratic areas worse, according to a Vanity Fair report, and may have adjusted their approach accordingly.
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• During March and early April, Kushner gathered a team to devise a nationwide response to the pandemic.
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• A public health expert in regular contact with the team told the magazine that "the political folks" believed a nationwide response was a bad political move.
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• At the time, the pandemic was worst in Democrat-voting states and cities. The source suggested some close to Kushner thought it was best to hold back and blame the results on local leaders.
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• Kushner's plan was indeed dropped in favor of a mainly state-by-state response. Since then, cases have surged in states on both sides of the political divide.
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• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Members of Jared Kushner's discontinued coronavirus task force considered a national-scale response early in the US coronavirus outbreak.

However, according to a new Vanity Fair report, the plan never came to be - partly because the task force believed that it would be a better political move to hold off.

The logic, according to a source who spoke to Vanity Fair, was the the virus would hit Democrat-voting areas hardest, and the damage could be blamed on local governors instead.

Throughout March and early April, Kushner led a task force, parallel to the White House's official efforts, to devise a coronavirus plan that would accelerate testing and supply chains nationwide.

Ultimately, it didn't go forward, and Trump instead shifted much of the responsibility to individual states.

But the new report, by Vanity Fair's Katherine Eban, sheds light on how that decision may have been made.

A public health expert who was in regular contact with Kushner's team as they worked said that political reasoning may have influenced the decision.

"The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," the unnamed expert told Vanity Fair.

The expert also said the final call would have been Kushner's. "It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out."

At the time the team was working, the Democratic state of New York was the US epicenter of the coronavirus, with more than 300,000 cases by early April.

It is not the first time that the Trump administration has been accused of using politicized reasoning in its pandemic response.

In early July, the president wore a mask in public for the first time, signaling a more serious take on a pandemic that he has previously talked down.

On Monday however, reports emerged that Trump's pivot may have been motivated by advisors showing him increases in cases in Republican and swing states - or "our people," as a senior administration official told the Washington Post.

The virus has seen a major resurgence in both Red and Blue states since states began to ease their lockdowns. Arizona, Florida, and Texas - all of which have Republican governors - are among the states that now have more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 head of population, according to The Guardian.