Jared Kushner's coronavirus 'impact team' mocked as the 'Slim Suit Crowd' and a 'frat party' descended from a UFO

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Jared Kushner's coronavirus 'impact team' mocked as the 'Slim Suit Crowd' and a 'frat party' descended from a UFO
Jared Kushner Iraq

DoD/Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro/Handout via REUTERS

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Jared Kushner meets with Service Members at a forward operating base near Qayyarah West in Iraq, April 4, 2017.

  • Jared Kushner's outsize role in the White House's coronavirus response is ruffling feathers, with senior officials mocking the president's son-in-law in interviews with The New York Times.
  • Kushner has dispatched "dozens" his own political appointees to various federal agencies in an effort to streamline efforts like sending out medical equipment, but many of his deputies are from the private sector and, like Kushner, have little public health or disaster management experience.
  • His self-described "impact squad" has been nicknamed the "Slim Suit Crowd" by FEMA veterans more accustomed to sporting khakis, according to The Times.
  • Another senior official described Kushner's squad as a "frat party" that "descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government," according to The Times.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Jared Kushner once made a Gossip Girl cameo, but now he seems to be in a real-life version of Mean Girls set in the White House during a deadly pandemic.

Two descriptors that would be perfectly at home in a burn book emerged in a recent New York Times story on Kushner's outsize role in the White House's coronavirus response.

Kushner, who is both a White House senior adviser and President Donald Trump's son-in-law, has reportedly assembled "dozens" of private sector go-getters to be dispersed through federal agencies in an effort to streamline public health response efforts.

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His self-described "impact squad" has been mocked by FEMA veterans as the "Slim Suit Crowd," a reference to their fish-out-of-water vibe from those in the agency more accustomed to sporting khakis or maybe a windbreaker, according to The Times.

Another federal official pulled no punches in his assessment of the Kushner squad.

"The culture clash between public and private sectors has been jarring," The Times reports. "The senior official described the Kushner team as a 'frat party' that descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government."

Kushner's cohort even used the website freeconferencecall.com to conduct "high-level meetings," according to The Times.

These leaks come amid Kushner's growing public role in the coronavirus response, with his first briefing appearance coming yesterday and his coronavirus "shadow" task force facing criticism for downplaying the severity of the pandemic to President Trump.

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