Jared Kushner and the Mystery of the First US Lockdown

The possibility of U.S. lockdowns—never attempted on this scale in the history of pandemics—was already in the air in early March 2020. The theory of lockdown had been floating around for 15 years but now China was first to try it, and claim enormous success, however fraudulently.

Incredibly, the United States was set to try it out too but getting Trump on board was going to take some doing. The federal government had the quarantine power since 1944. That much we knew. But just how expansive could its exercise be? Would they dare quarantine the well with the sick? How far would this go?

Thanks to several journalistic accounts, we have a better idea of what went on in the White House before the dreadful March 16, 2020, press conference of Donald Trump, Anthony Fauci, and Deborah Birx in which the lockdowns were announced. Along with that came a flier with tiny print about which the ever-trusting Trump apparently knew nothing: “bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

Read those words again. Has anything like this ever been issued by any government in the history of the world, before China did it? I cannot think of a case. It shuts not only the places where people do “congregate” but also everywhere where they might congregate. Churches. AA meetings. Civic clubs. Libraries. Museums. Homes! And this happened under Trump’s watch right here in the United States! There ought to be a word to describe something more extreme than totalitarian.

There were a number of people in Trump’s circle in those days who proved panicked and confused enough to embrace the idea. But who precisely wrote those words in the sheet handed out to reporters?

We cannot say for sure but Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner played an important role. He had enlisted two close friends from college to help: Nat Turner and Adam Boehler. Both were graduates from the Wharton School, like Trump. Jared somehow believed that they knew something about pandemics because they worked in health-care delivery. So, he called them.

Boehler headed the $60 billion U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and still does. It’s one of those many agencies that throws contracts and cash to big shots within industry. Before that job, he was head of Landmark Health delivery services, which means that he knew business and finance, not public health. He is among those high-finance execs who were drawn to healthcare not for the science but for the money.

As for Turner, he is a serial entrepreneur who got his start selling snakes from his parents’ garage. Truly. He founded an ad agency that he eventually sold to Google 10 years ago, Invite Media, for more than $70 million. His company Flatiron—oncology-related electronic record software—sold to Roche in 2018 for $1.9 billion. His page at the Wharton School describes him as “Young, Entrepreneurial and Google-Owned.” He is now a billionaire investor at an implausibly young age.

The book “Nightmare Scenario” (2021) explains what happened next. On March 13, 2020:

“Boehler and Turner burrowed into a room in the basement of the West Wing and started calling people who grasped both the scale of the crisis but also the politics. Over that weekend, they put together recommendations and then circulated them with Birx and Fauci. The guidelines were refined further before being presented to Trump in the Oval Office. They wanted to recommend shutting down in-person education at schools. Closing indoor dining at restaurants and bars. Canceling travel.

“Birx and Fauci saw the guidelines as a crucial pause that would buy them some time to better understand the pandemic. Shutting down flights was not enough, they said; more would have to be done. … Boehler, Kushner, Birx, Fauci, and other aides presented Trump with the recommendations several days later, anxious over what he might say. Kushner had been preparing Trump for the possibility that they were going to need to take more ‘draconian’ actions.”

This account was not speculative. Kushner himself in his new book tells a very similar story:

“On my way to the White House early the next morning, March 12, my [billionaire investor] brother Josh called from New York City. He described the worrisome signs: the city had canceled its annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade, thousands of people were self-quarantining, and millions more were leaving the city. When I told him that I was asked to jump into the response, he made a suggestion: ‘You should call Adam.’”

Why not call, oh, for example, a public health scientist? Someone with some expertise in viruses? A medical doctor? Universities are packed with them. Someone, anyone, with actual knowledge and experience? Nope. It was entirely a crony operation, privileged fools about to take over the private lives of hundreds of millions of people.

“Boehler was the perfect person to help us with the federal government’s COVID response, especially because he had the skills to overcome the fierce rivalries among the administration’s health-care team …. After the meeting, Boehler and I huddled in my office and began sketching out how we could help with testing and supplies. To get additional support, we called our mutual friend and successful health-care entrepreneur Nat Turner. …

“As we dealt with the shortage of cotton swabs and other supplies, we faced another problem: the need to develop public health guidelines.”

Let’s just stop right there and consider this realization. Oh, they needed guidelines for the rest of us to follow, for reasons of politics and public relations. After all, they are surely the masters of the craft. Continuing:

“Given that people across the country were confused and concerned, Birx and Fauci had been discussing the need for a unified set of federal standards to help Americans understand what they should do to keep themselves safe and slow the spread of the virus. They insisted that these guidelines would help prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. Despite all the talk over the past week, no one had taken steps to produce a document. When Nat Turner flagged the issue, …”

Again, let’s stop the tape there. Nat Turner pointed out that no one had yet issued any orders? Good call, dude. Someone needs to get right on that. Just open up a Google doc and get to work on writing a central plan for the whole country. You have a two-hour deadline.

“I asked him to coordinate with Derek Lyons to produce a draft and encouraged him to call Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA and a renowned public health expert [and Pfizer board member]. I had been trying to persuade Gottlieb to come back into government for a short-term stint to help us better organize our response and support our effort to develop a vaccine.

“When we called Gottlieb, he was grateful that we were preparing guidelines. ‘They should go a little bit further than you are comfortable with,’ he said. ‘When you feel like you are doing more than you should, that is a sign that you are doing them right.’”

Look, this whole scene truly just boggles the mind. Phone calls. Rushed documents. Friends of friends. Pharma executives. People in the know!

The result was a document that shut down the United States and the world, all banged out by rank amateurs with ungodly privilege, with nary a thought of asking disinterested experts. Whatever they typed would affect the lives of 333 million people coast to coast. Did they think about that? Did they even care? Did the even once think about people not of their class and pedigree?

The result: Trump agreed to the “guidelines,” which led to the most momentous lockdown decision in the history of public health and even in the whole of human history. It locked down hospitals, nursing homes, and every commercial establishment in the country except those called essential. Homes too: the CDC said no more than ten can come to your house for dinner.

So let’s get this straight. This decision, which wrecked life in the United States and all over the world, and eventually caused the loss of the presidency and the Congress, was made by a handful of well-connected tech entrepreneurs with ZERO experience in infectious disease, epidemiology, immunology, pandemic history, or anything other than management and business classes at the Wharton School. With close Google connections. And they did this in cooperation with one name board member of Big Pharma that ended up making billions in profits from mandated vaccines that were forced on the American people. Also, Google made a mint.

Apparently, the above is a true story, based on one first-hand account and one journalistic account. The world was wrecked by a literal snake salesman, the Google-funded inventor of DoorDash for medicine, a big pharma executive, some bureaucrat who lived off AIDS largess, an octogenarian media star who had been in government for 40 years, plus the son-in-law of an easily bamboozled name-brand purveyor who imagined from his years as a CEO that he could just shut down a country and turn it back on! They constitute a plethora of elites who scammed their way to the top and deployed their new-found power in grossly immoral ways that wrecked this country and many others.

Now, to be clear, there is surely much more to this story. For one thing, even as these birds were deliberating, the Department of Health and Human Services had already issued on March 13 a lockdown order marked as classified. So, it was already in the cards. Maybe these bozos only believed they were in charge when the real power was higher up. I do not know. But I would like to. It’s like a kaleidoscope that never stops turning. What we know now is enough of a scandal.

Everyone needs to understand that Trump trusts Jared 100%.

Jared spearheaded the Abraham Accords and convinced Trump to not listen to the State Department about the embassy move and the peace deals.

Trump did get lots of bad advice from many people. Fauci and Birx were responsible and they were pushing for lockdowns.

Don’t blame Jared. This is just a means to drive a wedge between Trump and his trusted family members.

(the Abraham Accords)

This will end badly. I’m sorry to say.

Now truth be told, Carter, Hillary, Obama et al were also pushing for this.

It’s following a scenario I’ve expected for more than two decades re: the name.

I expect it to come to complete fruition. How that shall eventually happen remains to be seen.

One notices that lockdowns of whole ecnomies has wreaked havoc around the world, and the continued effort by the Chinese Communists abd their allies to play “monkey see monkey do” games with their repeated lockdowns — none nationwide, it should be noted — has been an effort to get the West to eviscerate itself ecnomically. The first one worked. Never before had people without an illness been quarantined, since the last few attempts which were during the second world war against “vermin.” The scam worked once, and made billionaires in its wake.

I couldn’t be more in agreement. Trump is not an expert on everything, no Chief Executive ever is. They have to take advice from “Experts”.

In this case, like it or not, those “Experts” were Fauci and Birx, two unethical people who have shown themselves to not only be professionally and ideologically flawed, but personally flawed as well, and highly so.

And both Fauci and Birx eyed Trump with malevolence from day one.

I had to stand outside in January to visit my dying M-I-L through a window, while talking to her on my cell phone.

Having said that, this is a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking. Look, Fauci and Birx scared the crap out of everyone by using a completely bogus and half-baked paper from England stating 2 million people could die rapidly. No one, except perhaps Fauci from his gain-of-function study, knew what the country or the world was dealing with. Add to this that Democrats and the corrupt MSM were already trying to “Katrina” Trump, mocking him and calling him a racist for shutting down flights from China.

So, in a small way, these guys really moved the needle quickly, and I would like to think, they did so from altruistic motives. The problem came the minute Fauci began working with Democrats, the media, and big tech, to bludgeon Trump and kill off his roaring economy. Just go back and read AOC’s text at the time where she says its worth keeping things closed and destroying the economy if it results in Trumps defeat.

The problem is that once the shutdown began all the blue state tyrants began to quickly exploit the situation and implement voting law changes and a host of other matters. Petty health care officials in local counties suddenly wielded a lot of power. Nobody was willing to dial it down. The public was in a near frenzied panic, hanging on the word of every two-bit health director. And it just spiraled from two weeks to well over 18 months.

So yeah, Kushner deserves some blame for his hubris here, but Fauci and Birx could have been the voice of reason at any time, but they became wholly intoxicated with their own newfound attention. They willingly offered themselves up to their partisan Democrat brethren to help get Trump.

I can understand how people were confused in the beginning, while the nature of the beast was still poorly understood, but then authorities kept clinging to the initial panic driven original recipe (masks, distancing, self-quaranteening) for the next two years while ignoring or outright dismissing new information or new and better expert advice.
They implemented a bad solution by force on the entire world and outlawed alternate remedies and dissenting voices.
I will not forgive CDC, FDA and Fauci for that.
Fauci said he did not force anyone but somehow his words became law for all practical purposes.
There were way too many people in positions of authority who enjoyed inventing and imposing new restrictions on millions, without any scientific basis.

Here is what else happened on March 13, 2020 :

....As outlined in National Security Presidential Memorandum-11 of May 8, 2018 (Ceasing United States Participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and Taking Additional Action to Counter Iran’s Malign Influence and Deny Iran All Paths to a Nuclear Weapon), the actions and policies of the Government of Iran — including its proliferation and development of missiles and other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities, its network and campaign of regional aggression, its support for terrorist groups, and the malign activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its surrogates — continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.

For these reasons, the national emergency declared on March 15, 1995, must continue in effect beyond March 15, 2020. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to Iran declared in Executive Order 12957. The emergency declared by Executive Order 12957 constitutes an emergency separate from that declared on November 14, 1979, by Executive Order 12170, in connection with the hostage crisis. This renewal, therefore, is distinct from the emergency renewal of November 2019.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 12, 2020.

DO NOT FORGET what they’ve done to you.
Do not let their sudden realization they are in bad shape politically excuse the last two-plus years of abuses.
They shut down your job.
Called many of you “non-essential.”
Closed your kids’ schools.
Expected you to live off $1200 for months while they got richer and richer.
Denied you the ability to be with your dying loved ones.
Then denied you the ability to give those loved ones a proper funeral.
While they let George Floyd have three.
While they went on vacation.
Visited family.
The hair salon.
They arrested you for paddle boarding by yourself.
They shut down the parks and the playgrounds.
They called you a grandma killer if you questioned them.
Suspended you from social media if you didn’t obey the narrative.

They called you domestic terrorists when you demanded your kids get the education your tax dollars paid for.
They mocked you when you demanded a return to normalcy for children.
They sneer at your concern over empty shelves and exploding grocery and utility bills.
They messed with supply chains and emptied store shelves, while the elites partied on yachts and Martha’s Vineyard.
They queered women’s sports and the military, and made the citizenry pay for it.
They sexualized schoolchildren, and persecuted parents at school board meetings.
They denied you the chance to try alternative treatments for COVID.
Then they fired you for not getting the vaccine.
When you stand up for your freedom, they call you Nazis and bigots.

Do not forget what they have done.
Do not forgive them.
They are hoping that, by November, you have forgotten the nightmareof the last 2+ years.
YOU struggle to make ends meet and the best the Biden administration can do is free crack pipes for “racial equity.”
This is on top of the woke, cancel culture bull they shove down our throats, the 2020 riots, being accused of racism and bigotry because we oppose their agenda.
As the election draws closer, they’ll pretend they didn’t do any of this.
They’ll gaslight us.
Project.
Blame the GOP (like they tried to when defunding the police went south).

DO NOT give them power.
They haven’t learned a damn thing from this.
You re-elect them, and you can expect masks and lockdowns and nonsense in perpetuity.
Not just for COVID, but for whatever else they deem a “public health emergency” (guns, climate change).
(Remember, they are the very same people who ignore a pubic health emergency aka AIDS.)
They will trample your rights.
VOTE THEM OUT.

NEVER FORGET.

REMEMBER…..in NOVEMBER!

EO to Order the Selected Reserve and Certain Members of the Individual Ready Reserve of the Armed Forces to Active Duty
WHITEHOUSE.gov ^ | 03/27/20 | Pres Trump
Posted on 3/27/2020, 9:09:59 PM by blueyon

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), and in furtherance of Proclamation 9994 of March 13, 2020 (Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak), which declared a national emergency by reason of the threat that the novel (new) coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 poses to our Nation’s healthcare systems, I hereby order as follows:

(Excerpt) Read more at whitehouse.gov

The other thing that happened on March 12, 2020 is a Chinese official started a rumor :

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Chinese Regime Ramps Up Global Propaganda on Coronavirus Pandemic
epoch times ^ | 3/13/2020 | BY BOWEN XIAO
Posted on 3/15/2020, 11:34:58 PM by bitt

The Chinese Communist Party has ramped up its propaganda efforts to control the narrative surrounding the novel coronavirus—by rejecting criticism and painting a picture that Beijing is effectively handling the outbreak.

The regime’s propaganda has gone through several phases: first ignoring the severity of the outbreak, then creating positive coverage, and now, blaming the United States.

Internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times have highlighted how the regime bungled its data tracking and censored discussions of the outbreak, fueling the virus’s spread.

High-ranking communist authorities have pushed a handful of talking points to deflect blame, including that the origin of the virus isn’t clear and may have come from the United States—a conspiracy recently pushed by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.

The virus first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

Zhao wrote on Twitter on March 12, “When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army [sic] who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe [sic] us an explanation!”

A February opinion article by state-run Global Times claimed that “so far, even the scientific world has no conclusion where the virus came from.”

(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...

First â€˜Silk Roadâ€™ Train Arrives in Tehran From China
AFP via Yahoo News ^ | February 15, 2016 2:07 PM
Posted on 2/24/2016, 12:55:58 AM by Olog-hai

The first train to connect China and Iran arrived in Tehran on Monday loaded with Chinese goods, reviving the ancient Silk Road, the Iranian railway company said.

The train, carrying 32 containers of commercial products from eastern Zhejiang province, took 14 days to make the 9,500-kilometer (5,900-mile) journey through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. [...]

According to Iranian media, more than a third of Iran’s foreign trade is with China, which is Tehran’s top customer for oil exports.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani agreed last month to build economic ties worth up to $600 billion within the next 10 years.

It came during a visit to Iran by Xi, the first by a Chinese president in 14 years, and just days after sanctions against Tehran were lifted under a historic nuclear deal with world powers. ...

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com

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