Kushner describes how trump sought credit for coronavirus re-opening while preparing to pin blame on governors

In audio from an April interview for journalist Bob Woodward's book _Rage_ that was obtained by CNN and published Wednesday, Jared Kushner explained to Woodward how his father-in-law,

President Trump, settled on his coronavirus pandemic strategy. Trump, he said, eschewed a formal cohesive federal testing plan, instead leaving that up the nation's governors. The

decision was partly ideological, Kushner said, since "that's the way the federalist system works," but it was also a political calculation. Trump wanted the states to handle

the execution of federal guidelines on their own, but he sought to take the credit for a successful economic re-opening, and so attempted to include a fail-safe in his plan. "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," Kushner 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?"

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From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter,

get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. Back in April when he gave the interview, Kushner believed the United States had entered the "comeback phase" of the

pandemic, but the virus has continued to rage in the U.S. and elsewhere, so it remains to be seen if he and Trump are still confident that the strategy worked. Read more at CNN. Explore More

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