White House defends Ivanka and Jared’s personal travel during lockdown

Cries of hypocrisy greeted news that members of first family disregarded stay-at-home order

The Trump administration has responded forcefully to criticism of the first daughter and her husband after they travelled from Washington, DC to New Jersey and back again in spite of stay-at-home orders.

Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and their three children went from DC to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, where they celebrated the first night of Passover. In a statement to CNN’s Betsy Klein, a White House official gave an account of the trip:

“Ivanka, with her immediate family, celebrated Passover at a closed-down facility considered to be a family home. Her travel was no different than had she been travelling to/from work and the location was less populated than the surrounding area near her home in DC.

“While at Bedminster she has been practising social distancing and working remotely. Her travel was not commercial. She chose to spend a holiday in private with her family.”

The couple’s journey home has seen them ridiculed for their hypocrisy, not least since Ms Trump has repeatedly stressed that “social distancing works” in videos posted on Twitter. Mr Kushner, meanwhile, has been appointed by Mr Trump to a coronavirus task force, despite his lacking any experience whatsoever in either medicine or public health policy.

Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, issued a stay-at-home order on 30 March. Among other things, it specifies that anyone who “willfully violates” it “may be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, subject to a fine not exceeding $5,000, imprisonment for not more than 90 days, or both”. The order has now been extended through 15 May.

The governor of New Jersey, meanwhile, has urged owners of second homes to stay in their primary residences after cases of Covid-19 are thought to have been brought to the Jersey shore by New Yorkers seeking to self-isolate outside the city. The state has seen more than 3,500 deaths.