The story linked above by Robert Roaldi regarding Michael Caputo, the Trump appointed Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Public Affairs, and his activities to change, delay, suppress and retroactively edit scientific reports on COVID-19 by the Centers for Disease Control that were deemed to contradict or undermine what President Trump was saying publicly, just gets more insane. His job is to coordinate the messaging of HHS that functions as the center of the U.S. public health bureaucracy and includes the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, which lead the government’s pandemic response.
Yesterday, Caputo in a Facebook Live broadcast went on a deranged rant in which he said...
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Donald Trump. The CDC was riddled with anti-Trump researchers who “walk around like they are monks” and “holy men” but engage in “rotten science.” Scientists “deep in the bowels of the CDC have given up science and become political animals.”
- They “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next,” Caputo said. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
- “You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,”
- Caputo on Sunday complained on Facebook that he was under siege by the media and said that his physical health was in question and his “mental health has definitely failed.” “I don’t like being alone in Washington,” he said, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.”
- He then ran through a series of conspiracy theories, culminating in a prediction that Trump will win reelection but his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, will refuse to concede. “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. The drills that you’ve seen are nothing. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”
- Caputo continued his social media effort after the Facebook event, retweeting a conspiratorial post that hinted with no evidence that armed camps were being established in Washington, D.C.: “Occupants don’t look like vagrants. Looks like forward basing for militant street ops,”
Caputo boasted in his Facebook talk that the president had personally put him in charge of a $250 million public service advertising campaign intended to help America to get back to normal. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I swear to God, as God is my witness, I am not stopping.” “I don’t want to talk about death anymore,” he said, adding, “You’re not waking up every morning and talking about dead Americans.”
The Health and Human Services department said in a statement: “Mr. Caputo is a critical, integral part of the president’s coronavirus response, leading on public messaging as Americans need public health information to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Michael Caputo has no background in health or science. In the 1980s Caputo was mentored by Roger Stone in politics, and became his driver. He learned from Stone that political campaigns could be turned into wins for candidates if the public found them entertaining. He and Roger Stone are very close friends. He testified before a House investigations panel that he talks with Roger Stone almost daily and has for years. He has also been close to Paul Manafort for almost as long.
Caputo moved to Russia in 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and was an adviser to Boris Yeltsin. He established his own political public relations firm there. He worked for Russia's Gazprom Media in 2000 where he worked on improving the image of Vladimir Putin in the U.S. and once entertained Vladimir Putin at a reception at his house in Russia. He moved back to the U.S. and founded a public relations company, and then moved to Ukraine to work on a candidate's campaign for parliament.
Donald Trump hired Caputo in 2014 to launch an astroturfing campaign in support of his stalking-horse bid for the Buffalo Bills. Caputo established a shell organization "Bills Fan Thunder" and hired a fake leader. When Trump placed his bid and was no longer allowed to have ties to the organization, Caputo went fully rogue and launched a naked smear campaign against one of the other bidders, Jon Bon Jovi and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.
Caputo was a senior adviser to Trump's campaign from November 2015 to June 2016. On March 12, 2020 Caputo tweeted in response to the baseless conspiracy that the US brought coronavirus to Wuhan that, "Sure, millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters but some foreigner snuck in a bottle of the good stuff. That's it." He was appointed to his current position as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services the next month.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/michael-caputo-coronavirus-sedition-electionhttps://www.baltimoresun.com/ct-nw-nyt-michael-caputo-video-seditionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Caputo
