Patterico's Pontifications

5/6/2020

Kushner’s Bumbling PPE Acquisition

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:29 am



A whistleblower says Jared Kushner’s efforts to get PPE has been a clown show:

The coronavirus response being spearheaded by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has relied in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks they were assigned, exacerbating chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs, according to numerous government officials and a volunteer involved in the effort.

About two dozen employees from Boston Consulting Group, Insight, McKinsey and other firms have volunteered their time — some on paid vacation leave from their jobs and others without pay — to aid the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to administration officials and others familiar with the arrangement.

Although some of the volunteers have relevant backgrounds and experience, many others were poorly matched with their assigned jobs, including those given the task of securing personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals nationwide, according to a complaint filed last month with the House Oversight Committee.

But at least everyone talks the talk — corporate talk, that is:

I, for one, believe Kushner has appropriately actualized a collaborative array of methodologies to leverage his multidisciplinary “outside the box” approach, with real-time integrated solutions that have empowered infrastructures. Also, he fast-tracks suggestions from Trump buddies:

Supply-chain volunteers were instructed to fast-track protective equipment leads from “VIPs,” including conservative journalists friendly to the White House, according to the complaint and one senior administration official.

“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, for example, called two people he knew in the administration to pass along a lead about PPE in an effort to be helpful, said two people familiar with the outreach. Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro also repeatedly lobbied the administration for a specific New York hospital to receive a large quantity of masks, one of the people said.

The New York Times says “100,000 masks were sent to a hospital [Pirro] favored.” There is no truth to the rumor that the hospital rewarded Pirro with a lifetime supply of Franzia. (Nobody can afford that much Franzia.)

I don’t see the problem. All Kushner did was maximize client-centric deliverables and functionalities to dynamically generate cross-platform and collaborative customer service for stakeholders, as well as formulate an expanded array of metrics to maintain a stable of frictionless partnerships that will optimize our core competencies going forward.

He’s done a crap job with the PPE but you can’t win ’em all.

21 Responses to “Kushner’s Bumbling PPE Acquisition”

  1. This sort of cronyism happens to some degree in every administration. What Trump has done is to plummet it to hitherto unknown depths of incompetence.

    Kishnevi (73b7f7)

  2. Heh!

    I have tried, tried very hard, to use that kind of talk. I cannot. Period. It’s impossible for me.

    nk (1d9030)

  3. …according to a complaint filed last month with the House Oversight Committee.

    Oh, no! Just hold your pony rigght thar, pardner…!!!

    Those poopy-heads don’t like sheref Don, so you can’t believe anything they say!

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  4. Everything about Kushner is a clown show.

    Gryph (08c844)

  5. I was going to made a quip about talking dirty first thing in the morning, but thought better about it…

    Dana (0feb77)

  6. Okay, this is confusing. First this:

    has relied in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks they were assigned, exacerbating chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs

    And then there is this:

    Although some of the volunteers have relevant backgrounds and experience, many others were poorly matched with their assigned jobs,

    How many had “little expertise”? How many had “relevant backgrounds and experience”?

    Are we talking about two different groups, or the same group being described differently in each paragraph?

    Anyway, that anyone was poorly matched to their tasks certainly speaks to a failure on the part of whoever managed the group. Ultimately, that’s Kushner.

    Dana (0feb77)

  7. 5. Sounds to me like that description of Kushner’s s**tshow was a vain effort to polish a turd.

    Gryph (08c844)

  8. Now that his PPE effort is an unheralded FUBAR, maybe now Kushner can return to the FUBAR of him solving the Israel-Palestine dilemma. One miserable failure at a time.

    Paul Montagu (b3f51b)

  9. Was it Steve Bannon who said that if it wasn’t for their relationship to Trump Jared and Ivanka would be brand managers at a mid tier company?

    Time123 (441f53)

  10. Donald Trump is a terrible leader. Everyone sees this and very few people want to work for him. He demands the utmost loyalty from subordinates and most competent people aren’t willing to destroy their reputations for him. I think this leaves him only able to trust family members who make their money off the Trump brand.

    We where a mediocre president would have someone competent coordinating PPE we get Jared.

    Time123 (441f53)

  11. Kushner, being a lawyer, probably honed his talent for mangling the language while earning his JD.

    beer ‘n pretzels (5ff531)

  12. Kushner, being a lawyer, probably honed his talent for mangling the language while earning his JD.

    Our esteemed host must have skipped out on that class in language mangling.

    Radegunda (354236)

  13. Kushner got a joint JD/MBA degree from NYU. Corporatespeak is taught in business school, not law school. Law schools teach legalese, a very different dialect.

    Kishnevi (73b7f7)

  14. 11. I’m sure Patterico has that ability. What he doesn’t have that so many lawyers do have is the need to show it off.

    Gryph (08c844)

  15. Trial lawyers work VERY hard at speaking the lingua franca of juries.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  16. 14. I know of what you speak. It’s all emotional appeal and as little fact as one needs to get the point across — particularly in civil trials.

    Gryph (08c844)

  17. Well, I’ll disagree. An overtly emotional argument is often received by a juror as just that. They tend to be turned off by that. If there is an emotional aspect to the case, you elicit that from the testimony of your witnesses, as in a case where you have a death or a burn victim. The jury gets it, and you run the risk of over-stating that aspect. If you’ve done your job, the jurors heard the testimony.

    You HAVE to make a record on the facts, because the cold trial record is what will be considered on appeal.

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  18. There is not enough synergy in this post.

    (I am dismayed that synergy doesn’t actualize spellcheck. Actualize doesn’t either.)

    Nic (896fdf)

  19. Any resemblance between Kushner and Bill Spooner from The Tubes (Analysis, Guitar, Vocals) is strictly coincidental…

    Dave (1bb933)

  20. Here’s Jared Kushner going for the world record of most meaningless corporate buzzwords used in a single one-minute video clip

    I bet it gets Ivanka all hot and bothered when he talks like that.

    The SNL skit pretty much writes itself…

    Dave (1bb933)

  21. Things you will never hear said in Texas:

    “Well, you can’t fix that with duct tape.”

    “Is my hair too big?”

    “I’d like a small bag of pork rinds.”

    Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1)


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