The Lincoln Project has launched a scathing new attack ad against Donald Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner and his handling of the coronavirus, branding the senior adviser "evil”.
The Republican anti-trump political action committee (POC) released the advert on Monday which opens with the statement that “evil is real,” before launching into a video compilation of Mr Trump and Mr Kushner.
“We ignore it when it seems educated, polite, superficially charming, even sophisticated. We trivialize it, ignore it, and when we do it grows,” the ad continues.
The advert then attacks the senior advisor’s role in the handling of the novel coronavirus at the onset of the pandemic, alleging that he contributed to the development of policies that led to the deaths of Americans.
“On 31st March in the Trump White House Mr Trump’s Covid team led by Mr Kushner decided to ignore testing in states with Democratic governors. Evil was in that room,” the narrator reads.
“It was that meeting that led to policies that led to more killings than Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, 9/11, more Americans than World War I.”
In March, Mr Kushner was appointed to the coronavirus taskforce, separate from the White House’s official group led by Mike Pence, to develop a nationwide testing and supply plan.
The advert refers to a report by Vanity Fair that claimed a national coronavirus strategy developed by the second taskforce was shelved to score political points against Democrat governors.
The national plan to accelerate testing and supply, which Vanity Fair reported it had obtained a copy of, was never used.
“It was deliberate, cold, political, premeditated,” the ad concludes, referring to the reportedly rejected the national plan.
“Some people say Mr Trump and Mr Kushner were incompetent when it came to Covid but let’s call it is: evil,” the advert concludes.
When contacted by The Independent Trump campaign spokesperson Erin Perrine said: “this is the swamp – yet again – trying to take down the duly elected President of the United States.“
“President Trump is the leader of a united Republican Party where he has earned 94% of Republican votes during the primaries – something any former president of any party could only dream of.”
The Lincoln project has previously attacked Mr Kushner in other adverts in the run-up to November’s election, publishing a video earlier this month titled: ”Secretary of failure”.
Reed Galen, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, previously labelled Mr Kushner “beyond evil”.
“Mr Kushner doesn’t care about your life or mine,” Mr Galen said in a statementaccording to The Hill. “He thought the pandemic was just another political prop — and now we’re all suffering."
More than 5.71 million Americans have been infected with the novel coronavirus since the pandemic began in March and over 177,000 people have died of the disease in the US.
