Donald Trump and Mike Pence have done a lot of bragging about “Project Airbridge,” the effort—supposedly led by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner and his merry band of inexperienced "volunteers"—to quickly bring in personal protective equipment (PPE) through a public-private partnership. The deal is that the federal government pays for planes to bring masks, gloves, and gowns sourced overseas by private companies, and half of the equipment is sold to coronavirus hot spots while the other half goes to wherever those private companies care to sell it.
“If you think about it, if there are 100 cargo planes, then right now what we know at a minimum is that 50 cargo planes full of much-needed, desperately needed PPE is coming to America and we have no idea where it’s going,” Rep. Ted Deutch said in April. But a new Washington Post investigation suggests that—as with so many things when the Trump administration is involved—what we’re getting is not the best case scenario.
N95 masks have been one of the most desperately needed forms of PPE throughout the coronavirus crisis, and to hear Trump administration officials talk, you’d think that Project Airbridge has been a major source of the masks. Pence has claimed that Airbridge delivered 1.4 million N95 masks to Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. But far from delivering 1.4 million masks to three states, Project Airbridge has only brought 768,000 masks to the entire U.S., according to FEMA records.
Trump officials similarly like to brag about the overall numbers of the equipment brought in through Project Airbridge—but they don’t so much mention that 90% of the nearly 1 billion items have been disposable gloves. The 768,000 N95 masks work out to just 0.1%, by the way.
There’s also no way to track where the supplies are really going, and the Trump administration doesn’t want the information getting out. The Post interviewed officials in the 10 states and 10 counties hit hardest by coronavirus: “Officials in three of the 10 counties said they believed they had not received any supplies through Project Airbridge. In seven counties, officials said they said they had no way to know.” A spokesperson for the Maryland governor’s office said: “The FEMA guidance specifically says the information is not for release” when asked about Airbridge deliveries to the state.
Oh, but that’s not all. While Kushner has been given—and has eagerly taken—credit for Project Airbridge’s supposed successes, the idea actually came from Valerie Karplus, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Only Karplus didn’t suggest putting so much power in the hands of private companies. Her plan had the COVID-19 Policy Alliance helping to prioritize where supplies were most needed. But that’s not the Trump administration way.
