Disbelief as Jared Kushner insists Trump's pandemic response has been a 'success' on live TV

Jared Kushner has stood by his belief that the way Donald Trump has handled the coronavirus pandemic has been a “success story”.

Back in April, the husband of Ivanka Trump confidently predicted what he thought the economy would look like in the future:

I think you’ll see by June that a lot of the country should be back to normal and the hope is that by July, the country’s really rocking again.

The federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. 

When asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday evening whether he still thought Trump’s response to the pandemic was a “success story”, Kushner confirmed:

Yes.

He went on to claim that the US is in the “middle phase” of the pandemic and they know a lot more now than they did back in April. Kushner also added:

What we’ve been able to do is have a very strong rebound. So, I do think that, again, we’re getting the vaccine, we’re making great progress. 

We’ve done our best. The case fatality rate has dropped tremendously. We’ve developed a lot of therapeutics. If you get the virus today, the risk of dying is much less than it was five months ago. We’ve continued to operate but we’re allowing Americans to live their lives, obviously with some restrictions.

When pressed again about whether he thought Trump’s response was a “success story”, he said:

One American dying every day is too much. But if you look at where we were back in April, we had 2,500 Americans dying a day. And, again, it was because the virus was spreading out of control.

People couldn’t believe Kushner would suggest 170,000 deaths across the US is a “success story” and took to social media to condemn his latest remarks:

At the time of writing, over 5.44 million people in the US have contracted coronavirus and sadly over 170,000 people have died by far the largest total for any country in the world.